Total Marketing: 3 Things You Must Understand About Omnichannel Today

Marketing today happens through a lot of different devices and channels, most of which marketers understand pretty well. But as the channels multiply and merge quicker and quicker, understanding the integrated marketing environment is less about putting the channels together than seeing them as one omnichannel whole. To succeed in that omnichannel, total marketing environment, there are three things all marketers must understand. 1. It Defies Channel Boundaries Most marketers understand that different channels drive different kinds of customers and different sales. What's different is — thanks to changing device technology and the emerging world of IoT — channels are morphing all the time without warning. A great example is the emerging world of voice search. Phones have supported voice search for years, but only recently have people started using it in earnest. In fact, adoption only really picked up steam with the rise of keyboardless devices like wearables and smart speakers. This trend shows no signs of stopping. ComScore estimates that 50 percent of search will be done via voice by 2020. According to Udayan Bose, founder of NetElixir, there are 10 million voice-first devices being developed today. That means voice is going to continue to reshape how people search, skewing algorithms toward the simpler search strings used in voice search and shifting SEO away from a text-based interfaces to voice-based ones. That kind of shift is happening all over marketing, and will keep happening at an accelerated rate. Our sister publication Dealerscope covers the consumer electronics industry, and they've already begun speculating about a future where augmented reality is the primary platform people use to interface with the digital world. 2. It's People-Focused, Not Conversion-focused You're starting to hear the buzzword people-based marketing — for example, Seth Garske wrote about people-based marketing in yesterday's blog post — but this really predates that buzzword. In fact, people-based marketing, account-based marketing, personalization and AI are all moving in the same direction: Toward marketing that recognizes, respects and speaks directly to the individuals it is being sent to. This is easiest to show in account-based marketing, which uses high-quality data and automation to send different marketing content to the right individuals within the target company. Yes, you do that to get to a conversion, but the activity focuses first on identifying with the individual recipients. It recognizes that understanding, even empathy, will lead to conversions. Tomorrow, you can hear John Miller, one of the thought leaders on this marketing strategy, talk about the secret sauce for doing account-based marketing successfully. 3. It Takes a Total Marketing Team Finally, as channels are being dissolved and people become the focus, executing omnichannel marketing is becoming very technically hard. It takes a total marketing team with many skills that have been underappreciated until now. Building that team takes a focus on marketing management and operations. The people who can make a lot of different things happen without degenerating into chaos become key swing players, like point guards in basketball who make the scoring happen. Having the right players around them is no different than assmebling a great basketball team (or football, if you've got that kind of budget). All About Integrated Marketing There's one place you can learn about all of those topics and more, and it's happening tomorrow: The All About Integrated Marketing Virtual Conference. The show has sessions speaking about all of these topics and more! If total marketing is where you're headed, click here to register today.

Multichannel Integration

Total Marketing: 3 Things You Must Understand About Omnichannel Today

1. It Defies Channel Boundaries

Thorin McGee

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1. It Defies Channel Boundaries

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Thorin McGee