In our previous blog, we discussed one of the important themes of 2023, the theory of omnichannel sales. Omnichannel enables brands to sell to their customers in their preferred channels, unifying the customer experience in each channel and offering brands valuable data about their customers in each channel.
Understanding the omnichannel theory is the first step towards more multichannel sales. Just as, every company and sales needs a strategy and methods to work, so does an omnichannel. In this blog, together with our client Billebeino, we focus on omnichannel and how to implement an omnichannel strategy.
Billebeino
Billebeino is a Finnish clothing brand created by former NHL player Ville Leino. Billebeino's collections are inspirations and stories of the unique combination of art and sport, in which a wide selection of colors and finely honed details are repeated. In addition to strong consumer sales in Finland, Billebeino has sales especially in the United States. In addition to consumer sales, B2B sales have a strong share of the business, in which case collections can also be found in retailers' selections.
Billebeino's omnichannel experience
Billebeino strives both with its products and its brand to constantly create new, more customer-oriented experiences. The desire to develop and develop one's own operations requires correctly selected tools and strategies to succeed. As the brand's recognition increases and the number of customers increases globally, customers' expectations and ways of making purchases also become more diverse. This is why it is important to be able to find the right channels to interact with different customers as personally as possible and in the channels preferred by customers.
"It is important to constantly strive to find new channels where people can find us and where we can make our brand and products easily accessible to customers"- Billebeino
With the increase in omnichannel channels, it is important that the channels work together and without interruption. From the point of view of the controllability of brand communication, it is important that the experience in different channels remains as uniform as possible, so that the image of the brand remains as desired. When the channels and customer experience work in an integrated manner, the development of operations becomes easier. Centralizing the data in one place enhances channel-specific optimization and thus enables a constantly more unified and versatile customer experience for different customers in the channels that are important to them.
"In order for the image and experience of the brand to remain the same from channel to channel and interaction to another, it is important to make the experience in different channels as consistent as possible. This offers the brand an opportunity to strengthen the brand and develop sales continuously.''
-Billebeino
5 steps to create an omnichannel strategy:
1. Set goals: Every strategy needs goals to work. Define concrete, inspiring and binding goals for what you want to achieve in omnichannel. Goals can be related to, for example, increasing sales, increasing customer loyalty or expanding reach.
2. Analyze your customers: The most common pitfall in defining customers is assumptions. Don't make assumptions, but research and get to know your customer and the different segments. What your customers are interested in, what kind of needs they have and what kind of ways your customers buy. There are many ways; interact with your customer face-to-face or analyze existing data from different data sources. You can read more about the importance of data for company growth from our blog.
3. Choose the channels: Based on customer understanding, choose the channels where you hope to reach your most potential customers. These channels can be, for example, an online store, brick-and-mortar store, social media or e-mail. Each chosen channel has a meaning in the customer's experience. Define the role of the channel in the customer lifecycle. The task of one channel may be to reach customers, while the task of another channel is to create customer loyalty.
4. Integrate the channels: This step can often be the most challenging of all, in order to achieve omnichannel sales, you need a technology that works to integrate the channels so that the channels work together seamlessly. It is essential to connect channels so that information about customers and behavior can flow between channels.
5. Measure and optimize: Currently, with the right tools and technology, you concentrate all information on one platform, from which you get valuable information about customers and their behavior in different channels. In order to achieve the best result, you need as many different experiments as possible. With the right tools, you can test, for example, which of the ads reach your customers best or which collections on the landing page convert best. Continue with a more successful message and optimize the competing option. Thus, you create increasingly individualized content for your customers, thus creating loyal customers who come back to shop again and again.
Summary
Starting omnichannel sales requires time and financial investments. Creating and maintaining an omnichannel strategy includes planning, management and active optimization. Brands can lighten the workload and maintenance costs with the right technology.
We help brands build profitable omnichannel solutions. We prefer and recommend Shopify as a platform for planning an omnichannel solution, as well as the analysis tools offered by the platform and partners. If you want to hear more about our operating methods, please contact us.
