Sell as much as you can in as many places as you can. That’s one of the tenets of sales management, and in today’s world, businesses have many options. Traditionally, companies were limited in their sales channels option, and expanding them was an expensive, risky process.
Nowadays, you don’t have to only sell through your physical location. You can sell through the phone, snail mail, email, social media, apps, or website. A multichannel sales strategy streamlines the online and in-store customer experience. The concept requires your business to leverage every channel it has at its disposal. Multichannel selling is vital to a business because:
- Companies that use multichannel sales retain 89% of their customers compared to those that don’t and only retain 33%.
- Of the customers who use smartphones for research, 71% believe that the device is important for their in-store experience.
- Customers who use both in-store and online channels have a 30% higher lifetime value than those who use a single channel.
- Smartphones influence more than 28%of all retail sales.
- Choosing the Right Sales Channels – Where Do Your Customers Usually Shop?
Every great sales strategy centers itself around the customer and their behavior. You need to find out where your customers are shopping, what kind of experience they are looking for, and their habits. Once you have that information, you will find it easier to sift through the multitude of sales channels available and develop a strategy that works.
Use the knowledge and research you have gathered on your customers to choose the appropriate sales channels. For example, mail order works well among senior citizens, while teens tend to shop through social media. You can expand your business by adopting a bunch of sales channels like Amazon, eBay, Jet, and Rakuten. However, this will only work if you understand the challenges and complexities of each channel while balancing them with your customer’s behavior.
Read Also – How to Create a Marketplace Website Like eBay
- Picking the Right eCommerce, POS, ERP Solutions
Business processes become more complex as you add sales channels to your strategy. Each channel will need integration with your system to handle operations like orders, inventory, customer relations, and accounting.
Your backend systems will need to support your new sales channels. If you have outdated systems, they will have a hard time integrating with new channels.
You will also need to build native checkouts on each channel. Each contact point that the business has with the customer must effortlessly include a way to close the sale, whether it is on an e-commerce site, social media, text, or email.
- Streamlining Supply Chain Operations
Although you have sales coming in from multiple channels, they will draw from a single source of inventory. You will need an inventory system that can track orders and stock levels in real-time, set minimum stock levels, and automate ordering, along with providing order tracking. All these functions must be able to integrate with a multichannel sales funnel.
Building a system like that can be difficult, but you don’t have to do it yourself. You can enlist an eCommerce fulfillment service company to handle everything for you. Additionally, it can label your products, provide discounted shipping rates, increase your distribution to new locations and manage product returns, among other benefits.
- Engaging Customers Across Different Selling Channels
Convenience is vital for customer relations. As customers reach you through multiple channels, they need their experience to be unified, seamless, and effortless. Customers want to have meaningful conversations with your business, so your business needs to answer their queries on any channel and not just share information. It’s frustrating for a customer to change from a communication channel they are comfortable with to accommodate your business processes.
Customers are savvy; they have access to information and can find your competitors easily. If you don’t offer a satisfying experience, they will quickly switch to another brand.
- Setting Up Cohesive and Automated Campaigns Across All Channels
Now that you have set up multiple channels, you will need to spread your message on each of them. Manually managing your marketing campaigns is unnecessary, cumbersome, time-consuming, and distracting. You can automate your marketing strategy using SEO, search engine, social media, or internet advertising. Automation makes the process of reaching current and new customers simpler and more cost-effective. Using the data you have collected, you can merge it with what the advertising platform offers to create targeted ads.
Strengthen Your Sales Strategy Through More Channels
Customers love having options, so give that to them. Adopt a strategy that will align your backend processes and customer-facing operations to customers that enjoy having options. Use every channel available to increase your sales and improve the customer experience.
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