Omnichannel sales is an industry term for selling your products or services in multiple places at once. That could be a combination of physical sales, your website, a third-party website or marketplace, and through partnerships with other businesses.
Omnichannel may sound complicated, but it’s not just for large enterprises. Savvy small business owners and entrepreneurs integrate multiple sales and marketing methods to maximize their reach. Here’s a closer look at how small businesses can tap into the power of omnichannel sales to reach more customers with a positive retail experience and grow the bottom line.
Employ a CRM to track your leads and customers
A customer relationship management (CRM) system is a computer program that helps you and your team keep track of customer leads, communications, sales, conversion rates, and more. You can also find a CRM with features such as automated email series to build customer relationships and new sales.
Online product businesses use CRMs to build their email and social media lists, maintain warm connections with customers even when they have not visited a store in a long while, and push for sales at the ideal moment. A service business can use a CRM to keep the offering front-of-mind and encourage repeat business on a regular schedule.
Capturing leads online is critical to keep your funnel full of new customers and sales opportunities. Integrations with social media platforms, email services, business apps, and your company website help centralize customer data and interactions, so you don’t duplicate efforts and maintain a professional and personalized relationship with every customer.
Create a thoughtful social media funnel
TikTok, Instagram, and other social media platforms are popular ways for potential customers of all ages to spend their time. If your customers are already on a specific platform, post content and interact with them. For example, if you run a fitness studio, look for local fitness influencer profiles to follow, comment on, and interact with, engage with their followers as well.
Social media is an important part of brand discovery and central to an omnichannel strategy. It’s easy to waste time and money on social media if you don’t have a clear strategy and conversion funnel. Make it easy to follow and subscribe and let your fans know what to do next. Don’t leave them floundering when they’re interested in buying or shopping.
Capture email addresses and phone numbers where you can
Email and text messaging are effective ways to reach a customer directly at a low cost, and changing rules or advertising requirements from social networks won’t keep you from reaching your audience when you have their email addresses and phone numbers.
Building an email list from day one is a great idea. If you don’t have one, today is a good time to start. Once you get the email addresses, don’t let them get stale. Send regular updates to consumers and interact frequently so people don’t forget signing up or who you are.
Sending too many messages can also be a turnoff, so find a good balance that makes sense for your product or service and customer base.
Build a long-term relationship with positive messaging
Businesses, even ones that feel impersonal, are all about relationships. Repeat exposure to your brand and positive messaging help build a positive customer relationship. These relationships lead to repeat sales and referrals. Stay consistent and make your subscribers feel like individuals, not simply a number in a large sea of people.
Keep your messaging positive and on brand. While it may be tempting, it’s wise to avoid alienating perspective buyers with controversial topics. Your personal beliefs may not align with others. Showing off your favorite candidate or cause may attract some customers but could push away others. Think carefully about how you want to wade into these topics as a business owner, if at all.
Also, don’t feel you must focus every email on getting a dollar from someone. Be genuine and helpful, and try to solve customer or client problems. If you can build trust and show that you’re trying to help your customers, it will show through and hopefully improve customer loyalty further.
Know when and how to close the sale artfully
At the right moment, demonstrate your value and present a deal too good to turn down. Whether it’s sent by email, text message, or a social media DM (online slang for direct message), putting the right offer in front of your customer at the right time is critical to conversions.
With a CRM and omnichannel marketing system, every customer can receive a personalized or semi-personalized series of communications. Based on the customer profile, you may send them a specific email series for new customers, repeat customers, long-term customers, clients in a specific region, past buyers of a specific product, or any other way you want to slice and dice your list by demographic or other criteria.
Master the customer conversion pipeline
Regularly check in with your pipeline. Testing multiple emails to see which does best can help improve overall conversion rates. This is a built-in feature with many email and CRM systems called split testing. Focus on what works best, even if it’s not an area of your business or marketing plan you expected to outperform.
When you keep your audience and lists warm, send meaningful and helpful messages, split test, optimize, and repeat, your business results should steadily grow over time. Keeping data on your costs and results, you can measure a clear ROI that helps you confidently invest in marketing and omnichannel sales for years to come.
