How Can Omnichannel Distribution Amplify Content Experience?

Target audiences and customers alike are spending their time across multiple channels in search of quality content that appeals to them. As brands continue to embrace the omnichannel approach, here is how omnichannel distribution can amplify content experience.

Customers are no longer confined to a single platform. They seamlessly navigate through different marketing channels and touchpoints to consume content. Therefore, the content experiences you create should not live in isolation. While focusing on increasing organic reach is an excellent strategy, it simply takes a lot of time, and your content is probably stacked against the content of the most successful contemporary brands.

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You can increase the reach of your content in a much shorter time by making content distribution a core part of your content strategy. As organizations continue to embrace personalization as a core aspect of customer experience, you need to upgrade your content distribution strategy from multi-channel to omnichannel.

What Is Omnichannel Content Distribution?

Omnichannel content distribution is a marketing practice that utilizes paid, earned and owned media to distribute content to users depending on the stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in.

Contrary to the multi-channel distribution strategy that takes the one-size-fits-all approach, the omnichannel distribution strategy breaks down channel silos and focuses on delivering a consistent and personalized content experience across all marketing channels.

Also Read: Multichannel vs. Omnichannel Marketing: Key Differences and Similarities

What is Customer Journey?

To create an omnichannel content distribution strategy, first, we need to understand the customer journey.

A customer journey is a series of steps a user takes to become a customer. You can equate the customer journey to the marketing funnel. A marketing funnel, in general, consists of the following stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Evaluation.

While going through each step (moving through different stages of the funnel), the user performs a series of micro-tasks. For example, while in the awareness stage, the user identifies a need and starts looking for a potential solution. In the consideration stage, the user consolidates various alternatives and evaluates them, and in the decision stage, the user selects the best possible solution.

Omnichannel distribution gives organizations an opportunity to place content experiences at the right places throughout the buyer’s journey directing the consumer through the marketing funnel.

How to Craft an Effective Omnichannel Distribution Strategy?

Before we get into how omnichannel distribution benefits content experience, let’s look at the five steps to help you go about crafting an omnichannel distribution strategy:

1. Make enhancing customer experience the core of your omnichannel distribution strategy. Ask yourself, “What’s in it for them?” rather than, “What’s in it for me?”
2. Analyze data to understand your customers’ wants and preferences.
3. Different strata of your prospects follow different purchase paths. Group customers with similar behavior and identify their path to purchase.
4. Create different distribution plans for each cluster depending on their spending habits and buying behavior.
5. Personalize content experiences as much as you can to cater to changing needs and stages.
    

Also Read: What Will Content Experiences Look Like in 2020 and Beyond?

How Omnichannel Distribution Amplifies Content Experience

Now that we saw how to craft an omnichannel distribution strategy, let’s move on to understand the benefits of doing so.

1. Adds Value to Your Customers
 

Suppose you’re in the market looking to buy a marketing automation software. You have scoured the internet, but still, you’re unable to decide which software to buy. Later in the day while browsing your social feed, you come across a downloadable ebook titled ‘The Ultimate Buyer’s Guide to Marketing Automation’ from one of the vendors you’d visited earlier in the day. You instantly download the book, and by the time you’re done reading the book, you’ve made the purchase decision. This is what omnichannel distribution does.

It’s not just about delivering content, it’s about delivering real value to your customers at the right time in their buyer’s journey.

2. Strengthens Brand Recall
 

When you log into Twitter, you are swamped with a barrage of tweets. Every brand online is trying to gain the attention of their audience. The adage “Out of sight, out of mind” rings so true in the age of information overload.

You constantly need to stay on top of the minds of your customers. Omnichannel content distribution helps you achieve this by sending content via different channels throughout the buyer’s journey. Brands can use email marketing, paid ads, social media, and other marketing avenues to deliver content and further use remarketing to reinforce the message, strengthening brand recall in the process.

3. Engages Customers
 

According to Randy Frisch (Co-Founder, CMO, and President of Uberflip), content experience comprises of three elements:

1. The environment in which we serve our content
2. The structure in which we organize it
3. The way we compel people to engage with the content
    

Content that reaches users right when they need it is sure to get tons of engagement.

Utilizing the omnichannel distribution strategy helps brands in two ways. First, content delivered at the right stage of the journey invokes positive emotions. Second, positive emotions lead to users proactively engaging with your content through likes, comments, and shares across social media and your digital properties.

Also Read: Impact of Brand Collaborations on Content Experience

Conclusion

Today, your customers have multiple avenues to connect with your brand. Prioritizing omnichannel content distribution along with omnichannel customer experience can lead to higher levels of customer engagement, enhanced loyalty, and personalized content delivery across every customer touchpoint.

How do you intend to integrate omnichannel distribution in your content strategy? Tell us on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook!