Omnichannel vs multichannel marketing which is better for your SMB?

In today’s digital environment, numerous small and medium-sized businesses are searching for the perfect solution to reach and interact with their target audience effectively. 

With plenty of available marketing channels, it’s becoming a challenge for companies to develop the right strategy and choose the best channels for it. That’s why more and more marketers come up with a versatile solution of combining several communication channels when incorporating omnichannel and multichannel marketing. These two strategies offer distinct pathways to connect with potential customers, but which one is the perfect fit for your company? 

Let’s discover the difference between the two concepts and dive into the details.

Omnichannel VS multichannel marketing 

Omnichannel and multichannel marketing are the two popular strategies for businesses to consider. Yet you need to pay attention to several factors and your company’s goals before making any decision. Below you’ll find some points to consider about each of them. 

Omnichannel marketing 

When marketers choose omnichannel marketing for their companies, they can focus on providing a unified customer experience across all communication platforms. Whether a customer interacts with your brand online, through mobile apps, or in a brick-and-mortar store, they still have consistent and interconnected customer experience across all channels. Omnichannel marketing allows you to synchronize all customer information and ensure a personalized approach based on previous purchasing history, behavior, and items explored, regardless of the channel.

Although the strategy carries a lot of benefits to business owners and can streamline some business processes, it requires them to have advanced technology and resources to ensure seamless integration of data and customer interactions across all channels. When implementing this approach for the first time, companies need enough resources for the initial setup and ongoing maintenance, which might be quite expensive. Even more, it needs a high level of coordination between various departments, including marketing, sales, and customer service, to provide a unified approach across all the platforms.

Multichannel marketing 

With multichannel marketing, businesses can interact with customers across several channels, yet each operates independently and delivers its messaging and branding. This approach ensures different experiences on different channels because customer data isn’t synchronized.

Unlike omnichannel marketing, multichannel marketing is easier to incorporate because each channel operates independently. Marketers can decide which channels to focus on based on their resources and target audience. With this strategy, you have greater flexibility in managing individual channels. Moreover, it’s a cost-effective approach, enabling small and medium businesses with limited budgets and other resources to effectively communicate with customers using several platforms. They can easily scale by increasing or reducing the number of channels based on performance and budget especially if you are using digital marketing platforms that let you have several channels at your disposal. .

In short, the choice depends on the business goals, budget, and other resources your business can afford to implement one of the strategies. It’s also influenced by the way you want your communication channels to operate for your customers. Let’s find out about the main differences between the two mentioned above strategies. 

Key differences between omnichannel and multichannel marketing 

Omnichannel and multichannel marketing differ in the company’s goals. While omnichannel marketing is a good fit for companies focusing on integrated customer experience, long-term loyalty, and comprehensive customer insights, multichannel marketing suits businesses to reach a wide audience across multiple platforms with a lower initial investment. That’s why small and medium-sized businesses should consider their specific goals, resources, and customer expectations before deciding which one to choose.

Despite the strategy you decide to select for your business, you’ll need a special platform to handle all the channels. We’ll review one of the solutions for multichannel marketing so let’s explore it in detail.

SendPulse as a multichannel marketing tool

Small to medium-sized businesses often seek out tools to streamline their marketing efforts while effectively reaching their target audience. SendPulse, a multichannel marketing service, has emerged as a powerful platform for companies striving to communicate with clients using numerous channels without the complexity and costs associated with omnichannel strategies. With its help, you can integrate seven marketing channels, including email, SMS, web push, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp chatbots, from a single CRM without any coding knowledge. Their bots for WhatsApp are probably the best on the market since SendPulse is the official WhatsApp Business provider which means there are no extra costs for setting up the API.   

Setup and use

Whether you create email campaigns, build chatbots, send SMS, or develop web push notifications or pop-ups, SendPulse is easy to use and set up. Its intuitive editor enables you to handle all the things fast without having to hire additional specialists. As a result, you save costs. You can automatically add all the customer data to the platform’s CRM and send campaigns to the right people at the right time without effort. 

Automation

SendPulse’s Automation 360 allows you to establish engagement at every stage of the sales funnel. With its help, you can recover abandoned carts, provide customer support, encourage repeat purchases, and update lead statuses in your CRM system. You can develop and send email, SMS, and chatbot campaigns tailored to user behavior, pipeline stages, and other criteria. The platform enables you to schedule relevant campaigns and deliver them across multiple communication channels at the right time, allowing you to improve customer engagement and satisfaction.

Choosing the right strategy for your business

When choosing between multichannel and omnichannel strategies for your business, there are several factors you need to pay attention to. By defining those, you’ll be able to find a perfect fit for your company and team. These are the key factors you should keep in mind when deciding on the strategy:

• Business size and resources. Before choosing between the two strategies, you need to determine how much resources you can allocate for the tools needed. If you are just starting a business and have a limited budget, it’s better to begin with a multichannel marketing solution. It’s more affordable and doesn’t require you to have a team of specialists to handle the platform. Since in multichannel marketing, the channels operate independently, it will be much easier for you to incorporate. 
• Customer base and preferences. Second of all, you should conduct a short research on your target audience. Find out what they like, which channels they usually use, and what type of communication they prefer. All this information will help you identify the right strategy for your customers. 
• Long-term marketing goals. Finally, when you focus on long-term goals like customer loyalty or seamless customer experience, you should opt for omnichannel marketing. With its help, you’ll be able to provide a seamless integrated experience for all of your customers, ensuring that they will come back and stick to your brand. 

Conclusion

Both omnichannel and multichannel marketing carry a lot of benefits for businesses including personalized communication and seamless customer experience. However, this isn’t the only factor you should pay attention to. Whether you incorporate an omnichannel or multichannel marketing strategy, the most essential step is choosing the right platform. With a solution that 100% meets your business goals, needs, and requirements, you’ll be able to boost productivity, efficiency, and interaction.