How Social Media Fits into Your Omnichannel Strategy

By Marouane El Baghati

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Omnichannel marketing stands out as one of the best strategies for e-commerce and online branding. It involves using multiple channels to give customers a seamless and integrated experience. This way, customers can easily interact with your channels, see what your business can offer them, and continue to form a relationship with your brand.

Businesses can improve their omnichannel strategies by updating email newsletters, discussing SMS marketing solutions, and using other approaches. If your business is looking to improve the use of social media in its omnichannel strategy, you’ve come to the right place! This article will show you why social media matters, its role, and some ideas that you can implement to maximize its potential.

Why Social Media?

The answer is simple: social media has become a part of everyday life. People check their social media accounts every day to learn about news and updates from friends, family, and businesses that they care about. Social media continues to grow because of its massive, highly-engaged user base that allows people to access the information that matters to them.

Social media marketing statistics

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That’s right: around 3 billion people use social media and most of them access it on their mobile devices, and not only for interacting with friends. You need to keep in mind that 9 out of 10 people use social media to reach out to businesses, too —- social media has become the primary medium for researching your various products and getting in touch with any questions they may have.

Social media can play a large role in your omnichannel marketing strategy. Since social media has so many users, your business can take advantage of those platforms to interact with your customers and leads, allowing you to spread brand awareness. For these reasons and more, your business should be looking to incorporate social media into its omnichannel strategy.

Social Media’s Role in Omnichannel Marketing

If you want to effectively harness social media’s potential in your omnichannel strategy, you need to understand the role it plays in your customer’s lives and learn how they engage with various brands.  Here are a few tools that you can use on social media to communicate and interact with your audience:

  • Personal messages to directly communicate with your customers.
  • A social media page where your business can post updates and information so that your followers can see them.
  • Ads that target people in the demographics that apply to your business.

For example, personal messages and comments allow you to easily and naturally communicate with customers. Posting updates, sharing news, and displaying ads will allow more people to gain information about your business and share your brand with others.

In essence, social media plays the role of customer relationship management (CRM) when it comes to omnichannel marketing. You can use social media’s features to remain in contact with customers, inform them about your business, and invite them to interact with you. This way, you can properly utilize the tools available through social media platforms.

Ideas for Integrating Social Media

Proper integration requires you to decide how you will use social media in your omnichannel strategy. However, with so many platforms to choose from, each offering various pros and cons, you might not know where to begin! If you feel this way, then the following three ideas can help you to further utilize social media marketing and help your customers have an integrated experience.

Customer Service

Social media pages work perfectly for customer service since many of them allow you to receive direct messages from your customers and leads. If you want customers to form a positive opinion of your business, then you should offer customer service tools to your users.

Customer satisfaction statistics

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These statistics show that you need to make customer service a priority, and you can do so through social media.

Make sure that you form a social media team to respond to comments and messages. When people comment on your posts with questions or send you messages, your team members can respond and provide information. This way, they can help customers and redirect them to other channels as needed.

Exclusive Offers

Social media allows you to give specific offers to followers. This way, you can encourage people to follow you on social media and further interact with your business so that they can enjoy different deals. When it comes to exclusive offers and deals, you can take multiple approaches.

  • Allow people to enter raffles and contests when they comment or share posts.
  • Post discount codes on your social media pages that people can use on your website.
  • Inform people about your other channels that will give them offers and deals.

Keep in mind that people won’t want to follow your social media pages or join your other channels without getting something out of it. You’ll need to be engaging, interesting, and offer deals that are attractive and exclusive so people will want to join your other channels. Spend some time considering what kind of discounts and specials you can offer your followers.

Cross-Promotion

Online Shoppers buying behavior

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More than 1 out of 3 people use social networks when they want to make a decision on a purchase. This shows the influence that social media has when it comes to online marketing. Since people use social media for purchase decisions, this gives you an excellent opportunity to cross-promote your content.

Cross-promotion involves directing people towards your other platforms so that they can have a more integrated experience. For example, you could make a post about your email newsletter and include a link that takes people to the sign-up page. This way, more people can subscribe to your newsletter and gain access to more information.

As your channels begin to work together and cross-promote each other, you can encourage more people to use your channels. This, in turn, will allow your customers to fully experience your omnichannel strategy as they visit your channels. 

Final Comments

Social media can play an important role in your omnichannel strategy if you use it correctly. It comes down to recognizing the strengths of social media and using those points to improve your customer relationships. Remember that this channel works because it allows you to directly interact with your customers.

As you properly use social media and find ways to fit it into your omnichannel strategy, you can help your social media pages to grow while you assist other channels. Social media remains a valuable way for you to reach out to customers, so make sure that you utilize it in your omnichannel strategy.

 

Marouane EL BAGHATI is a digital marketing and SEO specialist at Omnisend - Ecommerce Marketing Automation platform. When not blogging, he likes to read about SEO, digital marketing, e-commerce and last technology trends.

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