Consumers are more likely to buy from businesses and brands that offer seamless and consistent shopping experiences across various channels. Several brands have already recognized the significance of expanding beyond traditional brick-and-mortar stores into eCommerce websites and popular marketplaces such as Amazon. Multichannel selling opens the door for several opportunities and benefits, including improved customer loyalty and retention, competitive advantages, and increased revenue. However, multichannel selling can be a businesses owner’s worst nightmare if not managed properly.
What is multichannel selling?
Multichannel selling is a business strategy that offers customers different sales channels to purchase goods or services. Multichannel selling puts your brand in front of as many customers as possible and connects you with shoppers at different points of the buyer journey.
5 Tips for Successful Multichannel Selling
Here are five practical ways to build a winning multichannel strategy.
#1 Place your bets on profitable channels
Multichannel sales can introduce a variety of operational overheads from sales and marketing to inventory management and fulfillment. Monitoring and measuring revenue from your sales channels will help you identify the most profitable channels. This step is key to ensuring that you’re not spending time and resources on channels that give little or no returns.
#2 Scale-up order management and fulfillment
While selling on multiple sales channels can boost revenue dramatically, companies also need to prop their order management and fulfillment to handle the additional volume. Not using an integrated platform to manage orders from multiple sales channels can cause your team to spend a considerable amount of time manually keying in orders, making it prone to errors and leading to a high product return rate. An efficient order and fulfillment management software that integrates your sales channels to pull in orders and manage them in one place is essential to building a winning multichannel sales strategy.
#3 Use a multichannel inventory management software
Multichannel or not, tracking inventory on its own can be quite challenging for companies. Selling your products on multiple channels also requires managing your inventory across these channels. Inaccurate inventory levels on your sales channels could lead to customers placing orders for out-of-stock items, or even worse, losing revenue on items incorrectly appearing as out of stock. Maintaining accurate real-time inventory data across channels is a critical success factor for multichannel selling but is often overlooked. A cloud-based inventory management system like AccelGrid integrates with popular eCommerce platforms and marketplaces to automatically update inventory data across channels.
#4 Boost social engagement and customer service
Social platforms are quickly becoming the favorite shopping channel for millions of consumers today. A well-designed social commerce strategy is critical for increasing engagement, retaining customers, and building your brand. Research suggests that 67% of consumers expect high-end customer services through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Delivering excellent customer service experiences through social media platforms makes it easier to create a loyal customer base and gain new customers. It’s no secret that customers are likely to spend more on the brands that engage with customers through social media, making it a reliable way of boosting sales.
#5 Get better at forecasting demand
One of the most significant challenges for businesses adopting a multichannel sales strategy is the ability to forecast demand accurately. It is relatively easy for businesses to misestimate inventory needs and have excess inventory on hand, or sometimes, too little inventory to meet the demand. In a multichannel sales environment, companies must incorporate demand forecasting into the procurement process to ensure they have just the right amount of inventory to meet consumer demand at all times.
Wrapping up
Multichannel selling is a powerful way for merchants to reach and engage with their customers. Many businesses have embraced multichannel selling by expanding their sales channels and optimizing their fulfillment to meet consumer expectations. Using the right technologies to support your multichannel sales strategy is critical to scaling up quickly and efficiently. At AccelGrid, we offer powerful multichannel inventory software that can help you track inventory across multiple eCommerce platforms and efficiently manage orders at scale. Start a free 14-day free trial or get in touch with us to learn more.
