A great multichannel ecommerce strategy is crucial for brands looking for long-term success for online product sales. However, it’s common for brands operating multiple marketplaces and channels to get in over their heads only to watch their ecommerce performance slip. Many brands start to experience price erosion and even the Profitability Death Spiral.
If you find yourself struggling to support your multichannel commerce strategy, we have five simple recommendations to help. Pattern is an ecommerce accelerator that helps brands experience growth both domestically and internationally. We have the expertise, experience, resources, and technology brands need to operate a truly successful multichannel ecommerce strategy. Before we get into what your brand needs, let’s first clear up the term “multichannel ecommerce.”
What is Multichannel Ecommerce?
Multichannel ecommerce is selling products on more than one ecommerce channel. Common channels include DTC, Amazon, Walmart.com, Target +, macys.com, and more.
The purpose of a multichannel ecommerce strategy is to help your target consumers find your brand online in places they’re searching and shopping.
1. Understand Your Online Representation
This first piece of advice can’t be overlooked. Whether you have a strong multichannel ecommerce strategy in place already or not, your brand is likely showing up on multiple online marketplaces. So, it’s good to take stock of where you know your products already are and to check other channels to see if an unauthorized seller is distributing them somewhere you don’t know about.
If you have a wide distribution model rather than narrow, it’s common to see your products showing up in unauthorized locations. Many brands also have issues with counterfeit products, which can seriously undermine the brand if left unchecked.
2. Optimize Your Main Channel
Once you know how your consumers are experiencing your brand online, we recommend focusing on your main channel’s performance first. For some, that means Amazon. For others, a focus on DTC should be higher priority.
We offer this advice to our brand partners because one well-performing channel is a vital foundation for optimizing your performance on others. If you’re experiencing true profitability on your biggest channel, you’ll have more resources to allocate to other channels, too. The ripple effect of one truly successful channel is powerful.
3. Create a Consistent Consumer Experience
Once your main channel is highly optimized and working well, you can shift your focus to your next most important channel. The goal is syndication, or creating the same brand experience for your consumers every time they encounter your products.
However, this doesn’t mean using the exact same images, descriptions, and tactics for each channel—they all have different requirements, and brands need to be following channel-specific best practices everywhere they sell.
You can create a great consumer experience by using consistent tone, having clear visual branding, leveraging a data asset management partner, and using an ecommerce retail calendar to coordinate promos.
4. Keep an Eye Open for New Opportunities
Remember—the goal of a multichannel ecommerce strategy is to capture the sales of your target consumers. To that end, it’s important to be aware of opportunities on channels you haven’t considered selling on before.
For example, TikTok launched TikTok shops, and there are up-and-coming opportunities on growing marketplaces like macys.com. International expansion is more doable than you may think, especially on marketplaces like Mercado Libre and Amazon.ca.
Remember that the world is constantly becoming more and more ecommerce-focused. If you’re proactive in your approach to new opportunities, you can have a notable competitive advantage.
5. Find a Multichannel Ecommerce Expert to Guide You
Our last recommendation is to find an expert to guide you through your multichannel ecommerce journey. It’s easy to give advice like “control your distribution” and “optimize your main channel,” but we know it’s much harder to execute those initiatives in practice.
Getting expert advice can make a world of difference for brands trying to improve their ecommerce performance. The right partner or consultant can guide you through the steps you, specifically, need to take now, next, and later to have a healthy and thriving multichannel ecommerce strategy.
Improve Your Multichannel Ecommerce Strategy with Pattern
Our 10+ years of experience working with brands has shown us that most ecommerce teams don’t have enough resources to truly take their ecommerce performance to the next level. An ecommerce accelerator like Pattern layers our capabilities and resources on top of the success you’re already experiencing, and works with your team to help you achieve real multichannel ecommerce control and long-term profitability online.
Ready to improve your strategy? Contact us here.
