Omnichannel lead generation strategies need to be powered by real data. Without data backing up a multichannel lead generation strategy, you’re essentially blindfolding yourself before playing a game of darts. It might be entertaining, but it won’t be effective.
By using audience data in order to inform your lead generation strategies, you can put your marketing content in the right place for your specific target audience, ultimately aligning marketing efforts, linking tactics together, and creating a cohesive brand and clean customer journey.
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What Does Omnichannel Mean?
An omnichannel strategy is defined as one that aligns messaging across a brand’s entire digital presence. This includes their website, emails, social media platforms, paid ads, and anywhere else their brand lives online. In the context of marketing, an omnichannel strategy leverages this unified messaging to create a seamless and consistent consumer experience, generate additional sales opportunities, and deepen brand loyalty.
While using this as a point of reference, let’s take a microscope to omnichannel strategies and how you can optimize yours.
What is Omnichannel Lead Generation?
Lead generation is all about finding new pockets of potential customers, making first contact with them, and establishing some level of brand awareness. An omnichannel lead generation strategy accomplishes this goal through a series of touchpoints with consumers in various online spaces.
For example, sharing a compelling quote from a blog on Twitter might grab the attention of a potential customer. The clickable link in the Tweet then leads the interested consumer to the full blog. After scrolling through the entirety of the blog, if that consumer decides to subscribe, engage further, or take other actions that progress the sales journey, they’ve effectively become a lead.
You might recognize this model as a sales funnel which tracks how general consumers learn about and engage with a brand before becoming qualified leads. In the example above, the Tweet acts as the attract and engage stage of the sales funnel.
This is just one example of how lead generation can benefit from an omnichannel approach.
Implementing an omnichannel strategy is a good way to bolster engagement in various digital spaces which can lead to more traffic and eventually more conversions.
In digital marketing, dozens of companies are constantly vying for the attention of people and businesses, being able to effectively do this over multiple channels increases the chances of your company staying top of mind, increases overall engagement, and improves brand affinity.
All of these combine to lead to more sales and a higher overall value obtained from customers.
Omni channel customers have a 30% higher lifetime value over those who only use one channel, making multichannel prospecting an absolute must for modern businesses.
What Makes a Successful Omnichannel Strategy?
An omnichannel approach to digital marketing means giving your customers a better experience across multiple platforms. This shift of focus directly onto the customer delivers a seamless experience while still following best practices toward optimizing buyer journeys and creating more organic lead generation channels.
One of the keys to a successful omnichannel marketing approach is utilizing the best technology available every step of the way. Do you have the latest tools and programs for analytics, tracking, social media management, and managing email campaigns? Having the right tech in place is vital to creating a smooth and measured process for multichannel prospecting.
On average, companies with omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain 89% of their customers. Compared to a 33% customer retention rate for companies with weak omnichannel strategies.
– Charlotte Blicher –
Marketing technology is always evolving so having the best tech available is a necessity for modern marketing. Not only that, but using cutting-edge tech also gives you a massive advantage over competitors who lack it.
Benefits of an Omnichannel Approach
- Better User Experience: Because omnichannel lead generation relies on a cohesive experience, aligned messaging, and multichannel lead nurturing, your audience has a smoother, easier time engaging with you and getting what they need when they need it.
- More Cohesive Strategy: A seamless strategy that stretches across multiple channels requires alignment between brand and identity in order to work successfully. When done right, an omnichannel marketing strategy can help create stronger, more unified branding.
- Increased Revenue: A more engaged audience is comprised of loyal customers who spend more, return to the brand, and boost reputation through good word of mouth. Customers who engage with multiple touch points are at least 30% more valuable to companies over their lifetime.
- More Audience Data: Tracking more engagements gives businesses access to more accurate data and more data in general. Subsequently, this helps build stronger customer journeys, improved content strategies, and higher performing campaigns in the future.
How to Best Use Audience Data Within Omnichannel Lead Generation
Audience data is a critical part of digital marketing because it allows marketers and businesses to understand their target audience and the specific types of people that are engaging with their content, visiting their website, and, eventually, converting into customers.
Understanding this data undoubtedly helps with SEO lead generation and multichannel prospecting by giving you deep insights into your specific target audience and the success of the marketing tactics currently employed.
Some forms of audience data that businesses can collect include:
- Online interests from browsing histories and previous search queries
- Purchase intent based on buying and research activity
- Demographic information like gender, age, income, location, etc.
- Activity on social platforms and participation on these platforms
- Devices used most often
All of this information is typically used to build buyer personas. These are then used to construct ideal buyer’s journeys that are designed to gently lead prospective consumers from content, social posts, or website pages onto conversion pages (gated content or email subscriptions, for example) and eventually into a sales action.
During the attraction and engagement stages of the funnel, businesses can use audience information to continually hone their marketing efforts, especially when it comes to executing an omnichannel marketing strategy powered by multichannel lead nurturing.
Because omnichannel strategies are so complex and involve many moving parts, it’s important that businesses know who their target audience is and how to target them.
That’s where audience data comes in. If you know your audience’s age, gender, interests, and preferred platforms, you can target more specific consumers who are already interested in your content, products, and services. Additionally, understanding the needs, wants, and lifestyle of your target consumer will help you better connect with them on a personal level.
Using audience data to hone your omnichannel marketing strategy can lead to higher digital traffic, stronger consumer engagement, higher brand loyalty among consumers, an improved brand reputation, and an increase in sales as a result.
With enriched data and a more holistic view of your audience, you’ll be able to craft and execute a powerful omnichannel strategy that fuels the growth of your business.
Data in Omnichannel Lead Generation: A Few Final Thoughts
Using audience data is key in modern digital marketing and omnichannel strategies.
Multichannel lead generation efforts are greatly improved by targeting the right consumers, in the right place, at the right time. In sum, understanding who is engaging with your brand can open up a lot of doors that boost sales opportunities and optimize marketing strategies going forward.
All in all, optimizing omnichannel lead generation, consumer engagement, and sales opportunities comes down to how you use that precious audience data.
An omnichannel strategy is just one of the many foundational marketing tactics modern businesses need to employ to stay competitive in the modern marketplace. Read Impact’s eBook, The Ultimate List of Marketing Resources for Any Campaign, for a full run-down on what you’ll need for your next push.
