How to Create a More Engaging Omnichannel Experience With Video

“Omnichannel.” It’s a word we hear a lot in commerce, but many brands are having a hard time nailing down the best ways to make omnichannel work for them. A substantial 73% of customers use more than one channel in their purchase journey, so it makes sense that brands would want a presence not just on multiple channels, but on every channel.But that’s a lot of coordination — and a lot of content — making it hard for brands to create truly engaging content on every channel. How can brands create a more engaging live shopping experience for their customers while making content that goes further? One word: Video.

What Is an Omnichannel Experience?

You’ve likely seen instances where a customer discovered a product on their social feed and visited the eCommerce store to shop online or just to learn more about it. That’s the impact of omnichannel marketing.The omnichannel retail experience takes an integrated retail approach to reach your target market on the channels they spend their time on. The hallmark of this approach is that it goes beyond one single channel and ensures that your product is visible and available to the customers across multiple channels throughout their customer journey.

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel

It’s important to distinguish the difference between multichannel and omnichannel retail experiences, though many incorrectly use these terms interchangeably. The primary difference is that multichannel refers to being present on many channels, while omnichannel refers to being present on all of them with a consistent message. The clear benefit to omnichannel over multichannel is that regardless of which platform your customers choose to use for their shopping experience, your brand will always be there.

Benefits of Video for the Omnichannel Experience

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Videos appear in 62% of Google’s worldwide searches. So, when it comes to optimizing your content for search, video is no longer a minor consideration — it’s a critical piece of the omnichannel strategy.However, we all are learning that Google is not the only search engine getting high volumes of traffic anymore. Video-only platforms YouTube and TikTok have become popular search engines in their own right, as younger generations turn to short-form video for answers to their questions. Without video, your brand is skipping over entire platforms and a population of video-first searchers.

Increased Conversions

Numerous studies have shown the quantifiable conversion benefits of utilizing video for omnichannel experiences:

• Companies using video enjoy a 27% higher click-through rate than those that don’t
• Companies using video experience a 34% higher web conversion rate compared to those that don't
• Video has the highest average organic reach on Facebook, with 135% higher reach than photos
• 46% of consumers say they've taken some sort of action after watching a branded social media video

Better Online Experience

Video provides better context to products than descriptions or photos alone. Detailed product descriptions on your website are great, but in reality, very few descriptions are read through completely, and many customers make purchases based on what they see in product photos and reviews.Videos have a much higher rate of grabbing the viewer’s attention while providing a clearer and more contextual understanding of the product as a whole. That means when a customer purchases a product online, it’s because they have a thorough understanding of the product and are much more likely to be satisfied once they receive it.

Improve Phygital Experience

It may be surprising how often customers are engaging in some form of a phygital shopping experience — utilizing digital brand content while shopping in person. Incorporating video into your omnichannel strategy provides in-person shoppers with high-quality video content that keeps the customer excited about the shopping experience. Feel free to experiment with a wide range of video styles, such as in-store QR codes and livestreaming to reach more customers online. Beekman 1802 saw amazing success with the phygital experience when they partnered with Firework and Live Rocket to blend the in-person thrill of a holiday shopping pop-up at Live Rocket’s NYC studio in the Seaport with a livestream, shoppable digital experience to spur excitement in person and around the globe.In just an hour and a half, Beekman 1802 realized 51% of its sales for the day at the height of the holiday shopping season. Beekman 1802 achieved a 3.25x higher average watch time, a 4.4x higher click-through rate, and a 2.4x higher engagement rate, compared to Firework benchmarks. Read our blended in-story and online shopping experiences case study to learn more.

5 Ways To Integrate Video Into Your Omnichannel Experience

1. Draw in Customers With Video

One of the best ways to capture the attention of prospective customers can be with video. Video encapsulates your brand better than any other content format, so use it to introduce the brand, be authentic, be informative, demonstrate your products, and provide clear steps for how to further engage.

2. Incorporate Video Into the Marketing Funnel

This means understanding where video fits in for your marketing strategy, and also understanding which stages of the customer journey respond best to different video formats. Every audience in every industry is different, so there’s no one clear-cut answer. The best way to quantify these answers and use them to integrate video into the funnel is to collect first-party data. That means hosting videos on your own website and gaining access to customer viewership data only your site can provide, as opposed to third-party data from social media. Once you’ve collected significant first-party data and have a better comprehension of which stages of the funnel are best for different video formats, you can break it up like this:

• Top-funnel: short-form video
• Mid-funnel: influencer livestreams
• Bottom-funnel: product tutorials

3. Show Product Value

For many mid- and bottom-funnel customers, there is a desire to be educated and helped to understand the value of the products they’re exploring. Video provides a unique opportunity to educate customers about the value of a product in the format they retain most. Some examples of product value videos include:

• Tutorials
• Q&As
• Influencer videos

4. Provide Engagement Opportunities

A video on its own is great, but without the opportunity to further engage with your brand, the return may not be worth the investment. The goal is to put as little mental burden on the customer as possible, guiding them seamlessly through the purchasing journey. Using interactive video, brands can place in-video opportunities for viewers to continue engagement, such as links to purchase, learn more, or watch another video.

5. Personalize

The modern shopper, especially the Gen Z customer, is incredibly sensitive to being marketed to and craves authenticity in their shopping experience. One of the ways to make shoppers feel special is to use personalized video content. When you have first-party customer data, you can use a shoppable video platform to serve content to different audiences based on their viewership data, and even personalize CTAs based on the ways they’ve interacted with your video content.

Deliver Video Wherever Your Customers Are With Firework

If omnichannel is the best strategy for meeting your customers where they are, then it needs the best kind of content to deliver to those customers. If you’re ready to integrate seamless video into your omnichannel strategy, book a meeting with the experts at Firework today.