According to Time, the average consumer attention span is just 8 seconds. Marketing is all about promoting the most relevant service in the best way possible, at the right place and time. As consumers adopt a large variety of digital channels to interact with brands, it is no surprise many are turning to omnichannel marketing to better engage their customer bases.

Here are some key questions you should ask when developing an omnichannel marketing strategy for your business.

Is your data in order?

Every omnichannel marketing strategy needs to be paired with—or rather, rooted in—a comprehensive examination of your customer data.

How many data sources do you have? Is the data format consistent across them? Do you have the means to integrate the data into a single database? How much of your data is duplicate or erroneous? Can your systems cope with the significant data volumes that omnichannel marketing requires?

Are there any customer attributes critical to more relevant marketing currently missing? Do you have the tools to capture useful insights from all your touch points and systems? Can you reliable identify every customer—anywhere, anytime—so you can link all the disparate data points to a singular audience identity?

These questions and others need to be answered before you even begin working on the other parts of your omnichannel marketing strategy.

Can you effectively target and personalize?

Finding the right audience for your campaigns and targeting them with effective communications remain a key task in omnichannel marketing.

Slicing up your audience base into smaller segments based on broad attributes like age, gender, and location might not be enough, however. You need to build your segments with a bigger mix of attributes—including persona, lead score, behavior, and so on. Mapping out those important actions and events that will trigger just-in-time communications is just as critical.

Of course, one-time segmentation will not get your far, especially when omnichannel marketing demands continuous engagement across the customer’s lifetime with your brand. You need to deliver personalized experiences—which are made possible by a consistent view of the customer and enriched by insights about them derived by technology over time. It is almost imperative that you consistently optimize where, when, and how the customer is engaged in real-time based on their unique journey. And it will be worth it, since 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a company that provides them with personalized experiences.

Go omnichannel

A successful omnichannel marketing strategy can deliver a 91% year-on-year (YoY) increase in customer retention rate. The strategy places focus on the customer as compared to multichannel marketing, where brands simply communicate to customers using a large number of channels, without necessarily weaving them into a singular, coherent experience.