How To Use Social Media in Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy
If you want to provide a seamless omnichannel marketing experience for your customers, social media is essential.
Social media is a part of everyday life. It’s where we connect with friends and family, keep ourselves updated on news, or look for entertainment. We bet not a day goes by without someone checking their Facebook or Instagram!
Social media goes beyond personal use. It’s also used to engage with brands or businesses. A person can go to your account to check your menu, find out if you have new products, be updated if you have a sale or promo, or contact you if they run into an issue.
This makes social media a powerful tool for your omnichannel marketing campaign—it connects all parts of your brand’s ecosystem and makes you present everywhere.
Whether you want to start your brand’s social media journey or just want to improve it, we have you covered! Below you’ll find our roadmap on how to integrate social media into your omnichannel strategy, improve your visual branding (from your Facebook profile pictures to your YouTube banners), and help you reach your business goals.
What is omnichannel marketing?
Let’s first refresh ourselves on what omnichannel marketing is.
Omnichannel marketing is about creating a cohesive experience across all touchpoints—online or offline.
Here’s an example. A person gets directed to your website after clicking your TikTok ad. They add an item to the cart but don’t check out. Later, they’ll receive an email reminding them about their unpurchased product.
Since they also received a 5% voucher in the same email, they decided to purchase it and pick it up at the store. Upon picking up, they get a loyalty card to get a free item after 10 purchases. The customer is happy with the item and decided to follow your social media pages to be updated on other items they may want in the future.
This scenario is what omnichannel marketing is all about—a seamless synergy between all channels, where one touchpoint can easily lead you to another for a smooth buying process.
The Role of Social Media in Omnichannel Marketing
More than 5 billion people use social media. People may not be on every social media app, but they are likely using at least one.
This massive reach is why it’s the best channel for omnichannel marketing.
Your target audience doesn’t need to actively visit your page or follow your account to feel your presence. They can just scroll through their feed and see your ad.
They may see your post if a friend shares it. Some social media algorithms make it so that when a friend of theirs likes your post, your page gets recommended to them, too.
A brand is present everywhere as long as it is on social media. This makes social media a powerful tool for omnichannel marketing, whose main goal is to seamlessly connect its audience to the rest of the customer journey.
Using Social Media in Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy
Integrating social media is more than just making a post or running an ad. It’s all about making it a part of a whole game plan, with each action influencing another.
You can do so by:
Using social media as an information hub
Social media can be a central point for news, updates, promotions, and all other important information.
Make sure all your accounts have a complete bio. Fill out the necessary information as well.
For example, you can write your opening hours, store locations, and contact info on your Facebook page’s “About Us.” There is also Instagram’s “Highlights” feature to create separate categories for information (ex. “Menu”, “FAQ”, “Events” “Winter Sale”). You can also use the “pin” feature of social media platforms to keep your important content at the top.
All campaigns and updates should also be posted on social media. Running a huge Black Friday sale on your e-commerce site? Written a new article on your company blog? Have a special promo for your first 50 customers on your Los Angeles branch? Post them!
This way, your customers can know everything they need just by visiting your page.
For cross-channel integration
Social media shines at creating cross-channel connections.
Primarily because it’s the starting point of information. If your audience knows that you have a store at a certain location, they can then go there to browse. If they see an ad about your ongoing online sale, they can go visit your e-commerce store website.
Then you can go deeper by using it to have them actively participate and engage in your marketing strategies.
For instance, you can run a promo in your restaurant where they have to post a photo of their order in exchange for free dessert. Doing a trade show? Why not have your booth visitors follow your social media account to get a prize? You can also run a social media contest where the winner can get access to your product launch party.
Some other examples are:
- Website: Link to your website on your social media bios and to your social media pages on your website. You can also embed your social media feed on your website so users can see your latest posts without leaving your website.
- Blog: Enable social share buttons at the end of your articles.
- Email: Add your social media links to your email footers.
- Ads: Awareness or engagement campaigns can be directed to your social media accounts to encourage people to follow your page.
- In-store: Encourage visitors to follow your accounts to keep updated on your latest products and to share their thoughts on their recent purchase.
Encouraging User-Generated Content (UGC)
Social media is a goldmine for UGCs. People love sharing their thoughts and experiences on their social media. By simply checking mentions, comments, or hashtags related to your brand, you can collate various photos, videos, or reviews from your customers.
These UGCs can then be used in multiple ways.
The first is to serve as “social proof” on your website. Have tons of 5-star reviews? Display them on your website or your e-commerce product pages to build trust and credibility with your customers. You can also embed Instagram feed on website to showcase real-time content and engage visitors effectively.
Next is for your content marketing. Did someone make an Instagram Reel wearing clothes from your brand? Share them on your page. Seen a very detailed product review video? You can play this video on your in-store TVs so your customers can have a reference while they shop.
Don’t forget that you can entice customers to give you UGCs instead of passively waiting for them to post. This can be through social media contests, hashtag challenges, or giveaways.
The more exciting your UGC campaigns are (especially if some fun prizes are involved!), the easier it is to get results. UGC campaigns also drive a lot of buzz and traffic to your social media pages, making this a win-win situation.
Serve as another customer support channel
Social media is another platform for customers to reach out with questions, complaints, or concerns. Many people find social media more convenient and accessible than traditional support platforms like email or phone.
Fast and helpful responses on your social media pages can help provide a better customer experience. Seventy-six percent of people even expect a response within 24 hours. You can utilize AI customer support tools to provide speedy responses if you don’t have enough resources and manpower for a support team.
And it’s not just in your direct messages. Make sure to reply to their comments as well. Using alternatives to software like Braze can help you streamline responses to public comments. This is even more vital as comments are public. If people see that you don’t respond to people’s questions or concerns, they’ll think negatively of your brand.
Social listening and customer feedback
Social media listening can help improve your omnichannel marketing efforts by providing insights into customer preferences, behavior, feedback, and rising trends. They can then use these insights to adjust their omnichannel strategies to better suit their audience. For example, you can align these insights with enterprise email marketing to create hyper-personalized email campaigns based on trends identified through social media.
It also helps identify pain points or any friction in the customer journey. For instance, when a brand notices a recurring problem that customers encounter, they can address it before it worsens.
A brand can do social listening by tracking relevant keywords and brand mentions, checking popular keyword searches, monitoring trending hashtags and posts, and generally keeping up with social media conversations. These can be done easily with social media listening tools or by checking the analytics from your omnichannel tools.
Best Practices for Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
Here are some of our tips to further refine your social media marketing:
Have unified visual branding
Omnichannel marketing aims to provide a cohesive experience for all platforms. Whether you see a brand’s email or brochure, it should all feel like they came from the same brand.
How do you do this for your designs (particularly for social media)? The answer is through unified visual branding.
Consistency through your color scheme, font usage, logo placement, illustration style, and other design elements helps establish your visual branding.
And no, you don’t need to have your social media posts look literally the same. Your main color may be red, but that doesn’t mean that you need to use only red in all your visuals. You just need to make them look cohesive by strategically applying your set design elements.
A great example is Headspace’s Instagram posts. They follow the same visual pattern of bold, poppy colors, rounded illustrations, and the same font, making their posts look cohesive—whether they’re videos, infographics, or simple reminders.
Source: Headspace
Maintain a consistent brand voice
Another way to build recognition for your brand is by using a consistent brand voice.
Brand voice is the specific tone and style that a brand uses for all its written communications. Some brands may favor a friendly and conversational tone, while others prefer a professional tone.
Whatever brand voice you use, the key is to use it in all your captions and posts to maintain consistency. Leveraging simple text-to-speech technology can help ensure this consistency by converting written content into audio, allowing teams to review and refine the tone before publishing.
Source: MoonPie
Create a social media content calendar
A social media calendar can help you stay organized and be in step with all your omnichannel efforts. If you know there’s an upcoming online sale, then you can make a post for it. The same goes for an event, product launch, or important holiday.
For example, companies like Cloudways, which run major promotions during Black Friday or Cyber Monday, benefit greatly from using a social media calendar. By scheduling posts in advance, they can build anticipation for their sales event, tease exclusive offers, and maintain a consistent presence throughout the shopping season. This strategy ensures they maximize visibility and drive more traffic to their website at the most critical moments. Integrating a social media wall can further enhance these efforts by showcasing real-time posts or curated content during live events or campaigns.
It also helps you stay visually consistent. Since you know what’s coming, you can maintain the look and feel of your posts.
Using data and analytics to improve strategy
Last is to track, monitor, and analyze data to refine your omnichannel efforts.
For example, you may notice a huge spike in in-store visits during the Christmas holidays. To boost traffic further, you can adjust your social media campaigns to promote your store locations during those times.
If you want to see the success of your social media channels, you need to examine engagement, reach, and followers.
However, the metrics will be different if you want to see if your social media has a positive effect on your other omnichannel platforms.
For your website, you can check your social acquisition channel. Go to Google Analytics > Acquisition > Traffic > Channels > Social. This can tell you how many visitors to your website came from a specific social media channel.
You can also add UTM parameters to your posts to track which social media channel and which post bring you the most traffic.
Conclusion
Social media is the glue for your omnichannel efforts. It allows you to reach customers, seamlessly direct them to other platforms, and gather useful data to improve your strategies. One effective way to enhance this integration is to embed your Instagram feed on your website. This adds a visually appealing element that bridges your social presence with your site.
This creates a smooth and seamless experience, which is what omnichannel marketing is about.
If you’re ready to start your journey, check out BrandCrowd’s design tools now! We have thousands of high-quality, beautifully designed social media visuals that can support your marketing strategies. Check out our templates for YouTube channel icons, Facebook Stories, logo design, and more.
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