Omnichannel marketing is a great way to incorporate new mobile technology into something that every salesperson already knows—the shopper needs to enjoy the shopping experience. People are using their mobile devices to enhance the shopping event and make purchasing easier. They are using reviews to help in decision making, Internet coupons to save money, and direct messaging to communicate with other decision makers. The savvy marketer will use these devices and the associated apps to entice people into the store.
Geo-Based Marketing
Shopkick and LivingSocial are two forms of advertising that rely of geography for their marketing power. Shopkick is a mobile app that uses geo-fencing technology, also called iBeacon on the new Apple iPhone 6, the application senses the user’s location and sends relevant and local notices of sales or hot products to the phone. Compared to that, LivingSocial is somewhat old-school. This is an opt-in coupon system that supplies deals based on the region that the user selected. Both of these systems have a huge sales impact because they minimize wasted marketing costs for people outside of your physical demographic. By targeting only people in the area of your store, you increase the chances of creating engagement and, ultimately, a sale.
Online But In-Store
Multi-channel conflict is when a consumer sees your product on multiple marketing platforms and gets confused about the value for each, reports System Dynamics. This happened with the advent of Amazon and eBay. Retailers placed their product on each of these sites plus on their own websites and in their stores. In essence, retailers end up competing against themselves and losing the sale in the process. To reduce multi-channel conflict while increasing the customer’s enjoyment, some stores are offering on-line shopping kiosks within the brick-and-mortar store. This way the customer gets to physically touch the object but get the benefits of on-line purchasing. The retailer gets the advantage of in-store browsing without losing a sale to a competitor.
In-Store Giveaways On Facebook
A variation on the kiosk is using social media giveaway strategies inside the physical store. Rafflecopter is a contest, raffle, and giveaway application used on websites with a strong social media crossover. This free app lets you set up contests, using your entry guidelines. You can require a Facebook like or a Twitter follow. To drive traffic into your store, make one of the entry requirements a picture taken within the store then posted to Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. This gives you a solid marketing mix over a variety of media and it forces customers into your store.
Content-Aware Ads
When you are looking at Google or Facebook, you most likely will see ads flashing on the sidebars. These are not randomly chosen for you. They use a sophisticated algorithm to select and place ads based on your past history of searches. These are content-aware ads and they can be tailored to include location information, reports Science Direct. One system that does this is the Inmobi platform. It allows you to combine behavioral targeting with geo-targeting for your advertisements so that they get the greatest penetration. Your ads are then delivered to the mobile device so that they can drive people into your store.