Tips for developing a successful omnichannel strategy

An omnichannel strategy aims to unify all of a brand's online and offline channels to produce cohesive customer experiences across touchpoints and throughout the customer journey. It pulls teams and channels together by focusing on shared goals — customer satisfaction, customer retention, customer lifetime value, etc.

Think of an omnichannel strategy as bringing the sprawl of content, channels, and individual team strategies together and making them laser-focused on the customer experience.

An omnichannel strategy cuts through channel-centric goals to focus on what drives revenue for the business: the customer. It aligns sales, marketing, product, and customer service teams so they can deliver the seamless experiences customers expect across channels and touchpoints.

An omnichannel strategy is different from multichannel marketing

In the last chapter, we talked about the differences between multichannel and omnichannel strategies. Both strategies use multiple channels to reach and engage customers. The key difference is that omnichannel puts the customer at the center and orchestrates messaging across channels.

Instead of pushing individual (and often inconsistent) messages out to each channel, an omnichannel strategy integrates multiple channels strategically to create rich user experiences that deepen customer engagement.

As we mentioned in the last chapter, an omnichannel approach has many benefits. Benefits of an omnichannel strategy include:

Increasing sales and conversions. Sales and marketing teams are most effective when they share a single source of truth and a cohesive strategy. Yet, only 35% of marketers say their sales and marketing teams are strongly aligned, according to Hubspot's 2024 State of Marketing report.

Increasing loyalty and engagement. Customers vote with their wallet and their attention. They’re quick to abandon brands that fall short of delivering delightful experiences with every interaction.

Building better customer experiences. Personalized, connected experiences start with an omnichannel strategy that unifies teams around the customer instead of dividing them up between channels.

Connecting with customers where they are in the moment. Customers want to engage with brands on their own terms and preferred channels.

Understand the existing customer journey

Start by understanding the current customer journey. Most companies are already using multiple channels. Data from these channels can provide insights on customer preferences and how customers engage with your brand on different channels.

Go beyond an internal conversation and draw on customer data, interviews, and insights from people closest to each channel. This will empower you to make research-based, data-driven decisions.

Questions to consider include:

• What are the customer needs and goals on each channel?
• How does content performance vary by channel?
• How do customers use channels in combination?
• What are their preferred channels?
• Where are the disconnects between channels?
• Can customers easily navigate websites and other channels or does site navigation reflect your internal organization?

1. Get buy-in and set goals

Integrating multiple channels into an omnichannel strategy isn’t going to happen overnight. Take time to align stakeholders, identify quick wins to build momentum, and develop a plan for long-term changes.

An omnichannel strategy requires changes in mindset, team structure, and the tools you use.

Understanding the changes you need to make and setting achievable milestones with measurable impact will help carry you forward.

This is the step where you form your omnichannel strategy and decide how you will implement it. Getting broad support and communicating how changes will contribute to organizational goals will help with change management.

2. Connect content, data, and teams

Delivering cohesive front-end experiences requires integration and orchestration across back-end systems. Look for systems that connect data, content, and the teams that deliver customer experiences.

This is the superpower behind the Contentful Composable Content Platform. Our composable architecture enables brands to connect everything — content, data, and tools — teams need to build and manage omnichannel experiences so they can deliver seamless, personalized experiences at scale.

3. Experiment and measure

Once you have a strategy and the right tools to implement it, you can start experimenting and refining your omnichannel marketing strategy. While you'll want to understand how individual marketing channels perform, think about how those channels work together to create a seamless and consistent customer experience.

Avoid performance measures that might inadvertently incentivise competition between channels or tempt people to push a message out on every channel regardless of fit. Focus on the impact your omnichannel strategy has on customer behavior, conversions, and revenue. Build in feedback loops so you can keep improving.

Content is the heart of every experience, but for many brands content is scattered across disparate systems. Unifying your content accelerates progress toward a successful omnichannel approach. Content that is structured and organized for easy use across channels is the thread that connects touchpoints throughout the customer journey.

Contentful enables brands to connect content from multiple sources, structure it, and orchestrate it across touchpoints, channels, regions, and brands. Our composable architecture and market-leading ecosystem allow you to integrate content with all the tools you love and experiment with new technology like generative AI.

Teams can pull components together into stunning experiences with Contentful Studio, an intuitive visual canvas that allows you to design once, manage, and reuse experiences everywhere.

This provides a powerful foundation for your omnichannel strategy. Teams can access a unified collection of content and assemble it in different ways across channels to tell your story. Integrating personalization, localization, and AI tools becomes easier, opening more possibilities for hyper-personalization and omnichannel experiences that scale.

Up next: Omnichannel experience

Discover what an omnichannel experience entails, how to map and design seamless customer journeys, and create impactful results.