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Sometimes finding the right advertising strategy is just about putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. Let’s say you are at home and suddenly notice a bathroom leak. At this point, you know that you need a plumber asap to fix the damage. 

The first thing you might do to find a plumber is search online for “plumbers near me,” then, you could revert to Facebook to see if you got a reply from the companies you wrote to and look for additional details through business listings and more.

Indeed, there are many options for a customer to find you, and the one thing you cannot overlook is the importance of your presence on all potential channels.

Nowadays, a company that only advertises on one channel will sooner or later find itself in a tough place in the online plane. A business that offers local services must be visible and accessible across all the most utilized channels.

Businesses that adopt an omnichannel strategy retain 89% of their customers, while those that don’t only retain an average of 33%.

Omnichannel marketing allows you to be in the right place at the right time and connect with your audience deeper.

What Does an Omnichannel Strategy Entail?

When talking about omnichannel marketing, we are referring to an advertising method that consists of operating across various channels, online and offline.

This method is so effective because consumers usually follow a multifaceted journey to encounter the option that best suits their needs. 

Be mindful that you do not have to advertise on all channels or use the same emphasis. You only need to focus on the most relevant channels for your audience, and you can implement a dynamic omnichannel strategy in which you can give different connotations to your message or share diverse content.

Steps to Create an Effective Omnichannel Strategy

1- Audience Segmentation

When creating a comprehensive omnichannel strategy for a company that offers local services, the first thing is to segment audiences using data based on consumer behavior. This data from your target audience will be the key to creating relevant content for your ads, emails, and posts.

Key points you should have in mind for your audience segmentation are age, gender, location, interests, and income. Be mindful that there might be other elements depending on your channels.

2- Mapping the Customer’s Journey to Find the Best Suited Channels

The most complex part of mapping out the customer’s journey is the jumpstart since you do not have much data to rely on. You would need to wait at least three months to get enough data to analyze and apply significant adjustments.

In this case, you can start by researching the most effective platforms for local services and select the ones that best suit your goals and budget. As soon as you have enough data, you can determine how each channel stands on its own and how it possibly connects to another so you can use them to their fullest while connecting those interactions to reach your ultimate objective.

3- Content Alignment

Avoid repeating the same message across all channels! This is not how an omnichannel strategy works. This approach is about using each channel to complement your strategy. 

You’ll need to determine which content types perform best on which channels; for instance, text-based content is better for blogs, photos are ideal for social media, and videos are best on YouTube.

4- Testing Plan

One of the most significant advantages of digital advertising is that you can track your campaigns’ results at a granular level to assess how users react to your content. With these insights, you can determine which efforts need to be potentialized or which are the ones that you need to change to try a new approach.

Best Practices for Omnichannel Performance

Make your website mobile-friendly. 

You don’t even have to look at the numbers for this one. When you rush to get something fixed or taken care of, you might first turn to your phone or voice assistant device to find an immediate solution. This is why you can’t afford to overlook mobile; creating a mobile-friendly site and optimizing it for success will be a determinant factor in connecting with more customers.

Invest in your MarTech Stack.

Implementing an omnichannel strategy always brings great benefits, but this might also represent more work. If you adopt this approach, make sure you have marketing technology tools that can help you monitor, optimize and manage all your platforms simply and efficiently.

Provide support on all ends.

Usually, it does not take more than one bad experience for a customer to consider switching to another company. If you manage different channels, you need to ensure that every one of them is receiving the same attention. This means that every channel needs to be constantly updated, optimized and would need specialists to resolve any issue immediately and provide excellent customer support.

Closing Thoughts

An omnichannel strategy goes beyond just using multiple channels. It is all about taking advantage of the qualities of every one of them to connect with your audiences across different stages of the funnel and convince them your products or services solve their needs.

With an omnichannel approach, your local services business can:

• Increase loyalty
• Enhance brand awareness
• Boost leads and sales
• Deliver exceptional consumer experiences

At our marketing agency, we work with multiple platforms such as Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and more to ensure that our client’s campaigns run on the best-suited channels and obtain optimal results. If you want to know more about us and how we can help you reach outstanding advertising, talk to one of our experts.