Multichannel vs. Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing is more than just a buzzword. It represents a significant shift in the way brands must interact with potential customers.

90% of consumers begin a task on one device and complete it on another*. When the customer journey can begin or end at any time, on any channel or mobile device, brands must provide a consistent experience across all of them.

It's what makes digital marketing so complicated today — and why so many businesses are adopting omnichannel marketing strategies to engage, convert, and retain customers.

So, what is the definition of omnichannel marketing success? And how does it stack up against multichannel strategies?

Multichannel Marketing Definition

Interacting with potential customers across multiple platforms, such as a website, email, social media, paid ads, remarketing ads, and product packaging, is what multichannel marketing is all about.

To define multi channel marketing, you must recognize that it is an important method of communicating with users because they may not receive your communication through only one channel. Sending it out across multiple channels — in effect, using multi channel messaging — greatly increases the likelihood that a potential customer will engage with your brand.

Omnichannel Marketing Definition

What exactly is omnichannel marketing? Omnichannel marketing offers potential customers a unified brand experience that is consistent across all channels, from desktop and mobile to brick-and-mortar. To incorporate it into your campaigns, you'll need an omni channel platform, which means you'll send your marketing campaigns through a martech platform capable of delivering a consistent experience across multiple channels.

"Instead of thinking of a desktop experience, mobile experience, tablet experience, and smart device experience," Hubspot* says, "marketers need to think in terms of a single, holistic experience across all channels."

Difference Between Omnichannel & Multichannel Marketing

Although the differences appear to be minor, the strategies themselves take very different approaches and have very different goals.

Multi-channel marketing aims to broaden a campaign's reach by broadcasting on as many channels as possible. The majority of businesses have a paid media strategy, a social media strategy, an email marketing strategy, and so on. The goal is to cast a wide net and reach potential customers wherever they are, while keeping the brand at the forefront of their minds.

Although all omnichannel campaigns employ multiple channels, not all multi-channel campaigns are omnichannel. You can have engaging social media campaigns, popular blog content, and a stunning website — but it's not omnichannel if they don't all work together.

Omnichannel marketing integrates campaigns and messaging across channels to provide a comprehensive, consistent customer experience. Every point of contact nudges them in the same direction.

The goal of omnichannel is to strengthen brand relationships by ensuring customers receive the same experience and messaging across all channels and devices — not just marketing, but also PR, product, customer support, and sales. And it works: businesses with a strong omnichannel strategy retain 89% of their customers.