This year, the most successful multi-location brands will look for opportunities to maximize the customer experience. The fact is, in the increasingly competitive franchised marketplace, more and more consumers value the customer experience over price and product. Try thinking about it this way – the customer experience is the reason why many consumers prefer Chipotle over Taco Bell.
More than just great food made with simple ingredients, Chipotle customers know what the brand "feels" like. Additionally, customers know that they will receive the same great experience from one location to the next.
The same applies for print and digital marketing. Your multi-location brand needs to deliver significant value through these channels. Moreover, your brand needs to be consistent across these channels. Unfortunately, building a great omnichannel customer experience is easier said than done.
5 Barriers to Building a Great Omnichannel Customer Experience
In this article, we'll cover the most significant obstacles to building a great omnichannel customer experience and what your brand can do to overcome.
1. Marketing Personalization
An outstanding omnichannel customer experience starts with marketing personalization. The good news is that personalization in marketing can come in many forms like a mailer addressed to the customer's first name or a digital advertisement that references the customer's previous purchase.
Unfortunately, getting personalization right is tricky. In most cases, great marketing personalization requires an investment in customer relationship management (CRM) software. When paired with a brand management solution like ours, franchisees can automatically insert customer information into pre-approved print and digital marketing templates – it's that easy!
2. Marketing Localization
Another barrier to building a great omnichannel customer experience is marketing localization. What is "localization" exactly? The phrase refers to a brand's ability to adapt enterprise-level marketing assets for regional and local use.
The problem is that most corporate brand managers don't understand the local customer. For example, if the corporate entity is based in Dallas it might have difficulty understanding the local dialect in Portland, Maine. In this scenario, the corporate entity relies heavily on the local affiliate to deliver messaging that aligns uniquely with local customers' preferences.
A brand management solution enables teams to automatically "lock" mission-critical features inside the creative. Additionally, these kinds of tools give franchisees the ability to add simple local customizations.
3. High-Quality Marketing Campaigns
An amazing omnichannel customer experience requires an investment in high-quality marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, it's difficult to orchestrate high-value marketing campaigns, especially within the distributed ecosystem.
The good news? You guessed it – brand management allows teams to store quality marketing assets right inside the software. Rather than creating a piece of marketing from scratch, corporate teams can upload pre-approved creative templates. In this scenario, marketing campaign quality is never left to chance.
4. Technology and Humans Working Together
With artificial intelligence becoming commonplace inside the distributed network, many multi-location brands struggle to get new technologies and local affiliates to work together. Unfortunately, technology-human misalignment is one of the biggest barriers to building a great omnichannel customer experience. We get it – investing in a new piece of technology can be massively overwhelming, especially for new franchisees, dealers, and local affiliates.
Fortunately, our customer success team offers in-depth training and personalized support. They introduce key stakeholders – corporate leaders, brand managers, graphic designers, local users – to the software. Our guided training experiences drive increased software adoption and give teams everything they need to leverage the full potential of our software.
5. Building Great Local Marketers
What does it take to build a great local marketer? Your brand's ability to create great local marketers will undoubtedly produce a powerful omnichannel customer experience. More than just personalized software training and support, your brand must work alongside local affiliates, guiding them towards greatness. Use this as an opportunity to lead by example – show local affiliates what great marketing looks like, speak to the importance of high-value marketing campaigns, and reiterate the importance of corporate-local marketing alignment.
CampaignDrive Powers the Omnichannel Customer Experience
To capitalize on consumer's need for a deeply personalized, unique, and authentic omnichannel customer experience, national brands must work alongside local affiliates and support them with the right tools and resources.
For more than two decades, our software has supported some of the world's largest and most recognized multi-location brands. Our clients enjoy access to the following features and services:
Permission & Control: Enforce brand standards locally while giving affiliates customization and flexibility.
Digital Asset Management: Store, manage, deliver, convert, and reuse both print and digital assets. All assets can be manipulated into creative in various formats.
Reporting & Analytics: Access rich insights to execute and improve campaigns.
