Consumers spend plenty of time online. Sometimes they take days to decide whether they want to purchase the product that’s been lying in their cart. Interestingly, they also jump onto other eCommerce platforms just to see if they can find a similar product. To their surprise, if they find your brand on another channel and it just reinforces and encourages them to hit the “buy” button. That’s the power of a multichannel presence.
Businesses that adopt multichannel selling & expand their reach are much more likely to keep customers engaged. It offers the freedom & flexibility to purchase from the channel of their choice.
Remember the saying that goes – ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket?’ Well, that applies here too. Treat your business as an investment portfolio. In such a case, you wouldn’t want to bet all your money on a single stock. Rather, diversifying your assets would be a more practical choice. The same goes for your business.
That being said, let’s have a look at the prospects of multichannel selling.
Why Sell on Multiple Channels?
As an eCommerce business, of course, you are focused on increasing sales. But there are a lot of factors that play a critical role in keeping your profits up. Many businesses that developed an eCommerce multichannel solution believed these factors played a crucial role. Here are some important reasons why:
- Understand Your Customer: For your eCommerce business to thrive in a competitive market, there’s one thing that matters the most – research! Yes, that’s right. Understanding everything possible about your customer is key. Questions like – what are the platforms your customers engage the most on, what are your hottest-selling products, what they like about your competitors are key questions you should ask yourself.
- Turning Prospects into Customers: This is one of the most critical aspects of your business. Once you have data about potential customers, it’s time to market yourself right. SEO paid marketing and even social media campaigns can help you tap on every possible channel to turn prospects into customers.
- Keep a Watch on Competitors: While you’re racing ahead keep customers engaged, don’t take a backseat when it’s time to watch out for what the competitors are doing. A trend that’s been successful for years on end could be quickly replaced by a new one. When that happens, it’s time to re-think your strategy and take inspiration from competitors.
- look at the Interwebs: Are you still unsure of where to venture off when it comes to understanding your competitors? Then just generally search for companies that sell similar products as yours. It will help you understand what they are doing differently. Perhaps it’s from a completely different region as yours, but if their USP is strong and aligns with your brand, consider implementing it.
Once you understand how multichannel selling, you will also understand the important data that you will gather. Multiplying your sales avenues will help you gain much more insight into your customers. Things like purchasing history, location, devices used for shopping, demographics & more become clearer to you. You can then tap on all this information to plan a stronger sales strategy and own your space in the market.
Ever thought about the seamless integration between communication and analytics? Well, meeting customer needs means increasing your ROI. Your multichannel platform will be able to tell you where you need to spend your time on understanding customer demand better. Apart from this information that you would gather, you’ll also derive important insights on where the customer is struggling or where you need to up your game. When this data is used, it drives better decision-making, in turn, increasing your conversion rates.
Summing Up
Planning the right strategy for your eCommerce platform will help you go a long way. The benefits will keep your business, bottom line and customers are happy. Remember, diversifying your channels is very important today. Not just because it’s what’s trending, but this is what’s happening globally. If you do have plans to take your business global, planning things will help accelerate growth.
