Successful marketing is something that can be very difficult for companies to pull off. There are many aspects to communicating with customers, and when a business does it poorly, they suffer.
Enter Ann Handley, marketing queen, writer, LinkedIn influencer, chief content officer for MarketingProfs, and mom. Ann is very good at marketing, and she discusses her knowledge and experience on a podcast this week. While she does give insight into how she does business, she mostly focuses on the key aspects of omnichannel marketing.
How Is Omnichannel Different?
Omnichannel marketing is a very customer-centric way to do business. To successfully use it, a company must take a walk in their customer’s shoes to see how each and every experience goes. After walking in their shoes, a business must focus on using all forms of customer interactions so that they are seamless and send a clear story.
In Ann’s own words, a marketing professional should “want to deliver a seamless and unified experience across every channel.” This could be described of multichannel marketing, but she thinks that omnichannel stand outs as the best way to keep customers in mind. In multichannel, the marketers are at the center of it all. With omnichannel, customers get to be.
An Example of Omnichannel Marketing
One of Ann’s favorite companies is Baking Steel, a company that makes high-quality cooking surfaces, and she tells the story of their success. One of the most popular things they make is a baking sheet for pizza, and although it may be incredible to cook with, Baking Steel faced a dilemma. For something that is a small aspect of making a pizza in a world where making a pizza is a very small aspect of our lives, how do they market their product?
Omnichannel marketing is how.
Baking Steel knew that although the crust is the only thing that touches the baking sheet, they need to think bigger. What about the tomatoes for the sauce? They give advice (on multiple platforms) for how to source tomatoes. What about the cheese? They give advice on picking the best cheese for your pizza.
They’ve even moved beyond the pizza, focusing on the experience of making homemade pizza and the love and warmth people share when doing this. They have given customers a reason to come back to them through thinking things through with the customer in mind.
MarketingProfs’ B2b Marketing Forum 2017
MarketingProfs’ B2B Marketing Forum is more than just a quirky (not-so-little) conference. It’s the place where leaders, innovators, and people who make things happen gather to learn about the latest in B2B marketing and share the secrets to success. (Plus belly laughs, creative networking, shenanigans, and marketers-after-dark antics.) Now celebrating our 11th year, it’s still intimate enough that you’ll surely see some of your favorite marketing pals, but big enough that you’ll find more than enough smarts to help you go the distance.
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