What is an omnichannel experience?

Previously considered a buzzword in the marketing and advertising space, omnichannel experiences are now the cost of entry for CPGs looking to scale their business. Nearly 90% of consumers say they want and expect an omnichannel experience.

An omnichannel shopping experience streamlines a customer’s journey, delivering brand consistency and convenience. It spans across direct-to-consumer, pure play, and retail ecommerce, meeting consumers where they shop to build relationships that transcend channels.

Capturing the full omnichannel experience requires an understanding of both omnichannel retail and omnichannel marketing.
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Omnichannel Retail

Omnichannel retail focuses on providing shoppers with a unified experience across digital and physical channels, from window shopping to fulfillment.

Simply stated: it’s being where shoppers want to buy. This approach aims to increase CPGs’ sales through channel diversification and a historically complex-but-necessary integration of data and systems. The belief behind omnichannel retail is that multiple touch-points add extra value, and, as a whole, it’s greater than the sum of its parts.

Omnichannel marketing

Before understanding omnichannel marketing, it’s important to note that “omnichannel” ≠ “multichannel.” A lot of brands believe that they’re executing on an omnichannel marketing strategy, when really what they’re doing is multichannel marketing.

Multichannel refers to the use of more than one channel to market and communicate information about a brand. These multiple channels are not integrated with one another. For example, a billboard is not directly connected to a brand’s website. While they both serve the common goal of increasing awareness, they are separate channels with no direct integration.

Omnichannel marketing also refers to the use of more than one channel to engage with consumers, but in this case, the multiple channels are integrated to create a seamless experience for the customer. In this example, a billboard could have a QR code that, once scanned, directs the customer to the brand’s product display page, which then provides them with a direct-to-cart link to their Target account, allowing the user to purchase the exact product they originally viewed on the billboard at their preferred retailer online - in one synthesized journey.

Omnichannel marketing aims to create total synergy between all the physical and digital touch-points brands use to market, communicate, and sell to their customers.
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Developing an omnichannel experience

Successful brands do more than just show up online. They understand their customers’ preferences and tailor their marketing and purchasing options to meet them.

A true omnichannel experience utilizes shoppable media, actionable store locators, and embedded shoppability on owned content. It also requires robust and current data about customers’ activities, most importantly their purchasing behaviors (who, what, when, and where).

In other words, brands need to know exactly which marketing strategies are working and why in order to optimize and earn customer satisfaction. Gaining this level of visibility into a brand’s data - particularly the who and where - can be a huge challenge.

That’s where Pear Commerce comes in.

By unlocking detailed sales data from the top of the funnel all the way down to the transaction level, Pear allows brands to discover more insights into their consumers’ behavior than previously possible. When CPGs use those insights to quickly optimize campaigns and capture more sales, they break down barriers to business growth.

Pear offers all the capabilities you'd expect, but has evolved shoppable media to empower CPG brands with performance marketing capabilities previously exclusive to direct-to-consumer brands - all with an incredibly easy-to-use user experience.

We’d love to talk with you about how Pear can help you get the capabilities, data, and insights you need to empower your brand’s omnichannel experience. Get in touch →