How to build an omnichannel marketing strategy that works

Are your marketing efforts pulling in different directions? You might have your social media campaigns working hard, but email engagement lagging. Your paid ads are driving traffic, but conversions aren’t following. Meanwhile, customers drop off when switching between your website, app, or in-store visits.

The disconnect happens when your channels work in silos without an omnichannel marketing strategy. Customers expect seamless, personalized interactions no matter where or how they engage with your brand. If you don’t deliver, you risk losing them to competitors who do.

What is omnichannel marketing strategy?

An omnichannel marketing strategy is an approach that integrates and aligns all customer touchpoints—online, offline, and in-person—into a unified experience. It creates consistency in messaging, branding, and interactions across channels like social media, email, websites, apps, physical stores, and customer support.

Omnichannel marketing strategies create a frictionless journey for customers, allowing them to engage with a brand on their terms and transition between channels.

Why does an omnichannel strategy matter?

Omnichannel marketing simplifies the process of connecting data across platforms. For example, a customer who adds an item to their cart on a website can receive a follow-up email with a discount offer or see the same product featured in a social media ad. 

The strategy helps create:

• Improved customer satisfaction: Customers can pick up where they left off, whether they’re switching between devices or visiting a store.
• Higher engagement and retention: Consistent, personalized experiences build trust and customer loyalty.
• Better ROI: According to Omnisend’s research, marketers get a 494% higher order rate when using three or more channels over a single channel in a campaign. Integrating channels ensures an optimized marketing channel mix, smarter budget allocation, and maximized returns.

Steps to building an omnichannel campaign strategy

Build an omnichannel marketing strategy that engages your audience and delivers measurable growth by following these steps:

1. Audit your current marketing strategy

Before diving into an omnichannel strategy, you need to understand where you currently stand. Auditing your marketing landscape helps identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.

How to perform a comprehensive marketing audit

Here’s a four-step process to understand where your marketing efforts stand:

• Analyze existing channels: Assess all platforms you’re using—social, email, paid ads, website, in-store marketing, and others. How do these channels interact with each other? Are there clear paths for customers to move between them?
• Measure performance: Review important metrics and conversion rates for each channel. 
• Understand your audience’s pain points: Identify where your customers engage most and which touchpoints drive action. Are customer preferences and behaviors consistent across channels, or do they vary significantly?
• Spot gaps and redundancies: Are certain channels underperforming? Is messaging inconsistent? Are there any touchpoints missing in your customer journey?

Once you have answers to these questions and a clear goal, you can start optimizing your marketing spend spread across these channels.

Keep learning: Understanding the difference between marketing mix and marketing strategy

2. Map your customer journey

Mapping the buyer journey allows you to identify key touchpoints and tailor full-funnel planning to meet customer needs. It helps you understand how your customers interact with your brand at every stage of their journey. 

Steps to map the customer journey

1. Identify key stages: Break down the customer experience into stages—awareness (discovering your brand), consideration (evaluating options), decision (making a purchase), and loyalty (ongoing engagement and advocacy). Based on the stages, structure your efforts and focus on each part of the journey.
2. List touchpoints: Note and understand where customers interact with your brand, such as:
   • Online: Social media, website, email, paid ads, customer support chat. 
   • Offline: Events, stores, phone calls, print materials. 
3. Track customer behavior: Observe how customers move through the funnel—where they first engage, what keeps them interested, and what actions they take. Identify key motivators like promotions, reviews, or personalized content that drive decisions.

For example:

• A customer clicks on a social media ad
• Visits your website 
• Downloads a free guide 
• Receives a targeted email 
• Completes a purchase

Keep learning: How to create a full-funnel marketing strategy

3. Align messaging, content, and experience across channels

Consistency is the cornerstone of a successful omnichannel strategy. Your customers should see a unified message, whether they’re browsing Instagram or opening an email. 

The alignment in messaging is especially important as omnichannel customers are likely to shop 1.7 times more than customers who only use a single channel, according to Tyler Harris, a McKinsey retail expert. If you’re not optimizing content, you risk losing the extra dollars.

How to align messaging and content

• Unify branding: Use consistent logos, visuals, and tone of voice across channels.
• Personalize user experiences: Tailor content based on customer data and preferences. For example, use purchase history to recommend relevant products in an email or on a social media platform.
• Create cohesive campaigns: Ensure campaigns work together. A Facebook ad can lead to a landing page, which follows up with an email offer.

For example, a customer who abandons their cart on your website should receive a personalized reminder email with a small discount. This messaging could also appear in their retargeting ads.

Use unified marketing measurement tools to help you measure your marketing impact across multiple platforms, ensuring your campaigns are consistent, personalized, and optimized to drive results. 

4. Choose the right tools and technology

An effective omnichannel strategy relies on the right marketing technology and tools to connect and optimize your efforts. Due to the increasing complexity of customer journeys, AI-powered solutions come in handy here. They analyze data in real time, predict customer behavior, and provide actionable insights, making it easier to align efforts and eventually demonstrate your marketing ROI to stakeholders.

Essential tools for omnichannel marketing

• Analytics platforms: Anticipate customer behaviors and trends using the insights. Measure performance, attribution, and ROI with tools like Keen, the AI-powered MMM platform. 
• CRM: Manage customer data to deliver seamless experiences. 
• Marketing automation: Automate campaigns across email, social, and other channels. 

5. Test, analyze, and refine your strategy

Building an omnichannel marketing strategy isn’t a one-time task. To create continued success, you must test, analyze, and refine your efforts based on performance to lead with data-driven marketing. 

Steps to optimize your strategy

Use the following methods to keep track of your performance:

1. Scenario-based marketing planning: A marketing mix model (MMM) helps advertisers simulate different scenarios. Test how reallocating budgets or shifting channel focus could impact your short- and long-term results.
2. A/B testing: Experiment with messaging, offers, and formats across channels and keep a close eye on incrementality based on your marketing efforts. 
3. Attribution modeling: Identify which channels contribute most to conversions. Choose an accurate and reliable marketing measurement tool for this step. 
4. Performance analysis: Use real-time analytics to measure KPIs like engagement, conversions, and ROI to stay agile in your marketing.

For example, you might test two different email subject lines to see which drives more clicks, or analyze whether paid ads or organic content generates higher ROI. 

Keen’s predictive analysis enables continuous improvement with real-time analytics and AI-driven insights. By understanding what’s working—and what’s not—you can refine your strategy to maximize results. 

Successful omnichannel marketing strategy example

Now let’s take a closer look at how a water filtration company turned their fragmented efforts into a cohesive, results-driven omnichannel marketing campaign. 

Their focus on upper-funnel channels, like linear TV and broad digital ads, failed to engage their target audience or drive immediate sales. To maximize a reduced marketing budget, they needed to align their channels for better performance.

Once the company analyzed performance across multiple channels, they found opportunities to redistribute spending from underperforming tactics, such as linear TV and Google Discovery, to more effective channels like TikTok and eRetail. By aligning their efforts, they created a cohesive strategy that balanced short-term sales drivers with long-term brand awareness. They:

• Achieved a $1.2M profit increase and 8.6% revenue growth while reducing their media budget by $500k.
• Leveraged a connected channel mix to better engage their target audience.
• Balanced upper, middle, and lower-funnel tactics to deliver consistent messaging and maximize ROI.

This case study showcases the power of an omnichannel strategy to optimize budgets and deliver seamless customer experiences. With Keen, the company unified their efforts, ensuring all channels worked together to achieve measurable growth.

Turn disconnected channels into a unified strategy with Keen 

An effective omnichannel marketing strategy helps you build stronger relationships with your customers by delivering consistent experiences across all channels. 

To succeed, you need to: 

• Understand their current channels and audience. 
• Map the customer journey and align messaging. 
• Use the right tools to connect, measure, and optimize campaigns. 

Keen is the ideal solution for businesses ready to simplify their marketing decision making and build the best omnichannel campaigns. With data-driven insights and centralized tools, MMM empowers you to connect every touchpoint, improve ROI, and deliver the experiences your customers expect. 

Ready to optimize your omnichannel strategy? Start a free trial with Keen and turn disconnected efforts into measurable growth.