The Omnichannel Hexagon - the common language for Omnichannel Marketing
Consumers increasingly expect that it is easy to do business with companies, that you as a business know what interests them, and that they can communicate and do business with your business across media and sales channels.
Therefore, as a company, you must take an interest in how you can give your customers a personalized and seamless buying experience across SMS, newsletters, online store and physical store. This is what is called omnichannel marketing.
The material here is based on my book “Make it all about me”, which I have written together with AI expert Colin Shearer. In the following videos, I explain in more detail what omnichannel marketing is and introduce the Omnichannel Hexagon. The Omnichannel Hexagon is a tool to guide companies' work with omnichannel marketing. Along the way, I give good examples of how different companies work with omnichannel marketing.
Invest 15-20 minutes on the material on the page here. Then you have an overview of what omnichannel marketing is and a simple tool for considering how you as a company can develop or adapt the way you communicate with and sell to your customers, so that each individual customer has the experience of being in center.
Introduction to the Omnichannel Hexagon
The Omnichannel Hexagon is based on a study of what companies that are successful with omnichannel marketing have in common:
-
They recognize and talk to customers across channels.
-
They systematically collect data from all points where they are in contact with the customer.
-
They find connections and insights in the collected data.
-
They use that data and insight to improve their service and communication.
-
They continuously measure the efforts from a customer perspective.
-
They have organized effectively about omnichannel.
This gives the six disciplines you see in the Omnichannel Hexagon on this page.
How do you use the omnichannel hexagon?
The model is read from the outside in. So for each discipline there are three levels or degrees of maturity, each of which moves the company closer to having the customer at the center of all communication and sales.
You can use the Omnichannel Hexagon as a tool if your company wants to use the digital possibilities optimally in relation to creating a customer-centric experience:
-
Use it to create a picture of where you want to go: Is the ambition to go all the way or can less do it?
-
Use it to get a better overview of how far you are on the journey towards omnichannel and thus what you should prioritize.
Let the different departments or employees give their take on where you are on the scale.
Or tag the omnichannel maturity test. Once you have mapped your company on the model, it will quickly become clear where you must primarily invest and in which direction you must develop. -
Use the customer target list to create anchoring and to qualify the omnichannel-related projects that you have to implement in your company: Hold the project up against the customer target list, which field does it contribute to, and how will it play together with the other fields? Does it bring you closer to the center?
In the following sections, you will hear more about each of the six disciplines and get examples of how companies work with them.
How mature is your organization for omnichannel marketing?Take the test!
Learn more about omnichannel marketing in the book 'Make It All About Me'
Customer Recognition and Permission Gathering
The basis for your company to be able to deliver a personalized customer experience is to be able to recognize the customer across channels and to have consent – permission – to communicate with the customer on their own media.
In this video, I talk about why it is a good idea to get customers over to your own channels, such as SMS and email, and how to work to increase volume on the customer base and keep the conversation with customers going.
Data collection
When you have to put the customer at the center, you need data at a customer level. It is your organization's memory of each individual customer.
In this video I talk about the three steps on the way to collecting and integrating data into a profile of each individual customer.
Data analysis and AI (Artificial Intelligence)
When your company has collected sufficient data on a sufficient number of customers, you can start using data to gain insight into different customer groups and into the individual customer's behaviour and wishes.
Here I talk about the three steps in working with data analysis.
Communication and Service
The first three disciplines are the basis for being able to communicate personalized to the individual customer. Communication and service is the discipline where you as a company use the preliminary work you have done in the other disciplines in the Customer Target Disc.
Here I talk about how to go from mass communication to one-to-one communication in a cost-effective way.
Performane Analysis
In order to know whether your company is on the right course – also in relation to omnichannel sales and marketing – it is important to measure the results.
In this video, I focus on why it is important to measure both sales and brand performance, channels and campaigns and individual customers.
Organization
When you seriously go into omnichannel sales and marketing, it also means that you shift the company's focus from product and sales to the individual customer - and that you organize the company accordingly.
I talk about that in this video.