Marketers face a dozen different challenges in today’s business world. Consumers turn to different platforms and types of media to consume information.
If you’re a marketer and you miss one of these platforms, you miss out on expanding your customer base. You also have to keep the brand experience consistent across the different marketing channels.
Marketers overcome these challenges by implementing integrated marketing campaigns. These types of campaigns have improved effectiveness by 57% over standard marketing campaigns.
What is integrated marketing? Keep reading to find out what integrated marketing is and how you can create a complete marketing campaign.
What Is Integrated Marketing?
Integrated marketing is a method of marketing that ties together dozens of marketing channels to create a clear and consistent marketing campaign.
What usually happens to a business is that they do very well on one marketing channel. For this example, we’ll say Facebook. They try to expand their marketing to Instagram, but it doesn’t go very well.
That’s because the business just reposts the same exact content on both channels without regard to the audience. People are on Facebook and Instagram for different reasons. If you don’t take that into account, then your content will fall flat with users.
Integrated marketing campaigns give your brand consistent messaging to give consumers the same experience. These campaigns do not only focus on digital channels but also traditional marketing channels like Direct Mail Postcards which is still in vogue and is a great way to achieve your marketing goals. These campaigns are also flexible enough to tailor content for each marketing channel.
The best integrated marketing campaigns cross-promote the different marketing channels, so your followers can follow you throughout the web.
Benefits of Integrated Marketing
Is integrated marketing worth it? Integrated marketing solutions are more effective. That alone should make it worth it.
Some of the other benefits of integrated marketing will shine a light as to why these campaigns are so effective. For example, when you have an integrated marketing campaign, you give your brand more chances to get seen. That keeps your brand top of mind.
The more consumers see your brand, the more likely it will inspire trust and loyalty with your company.
Another reason why integrated marketing campaigns work is that they’re cost-effective. You can make minor adjustments to your marketing collateral rather than recreate the wheel with every post.
How to Create an Integrated Marketing Strategy
Do you see why an integrated marketing campaign makes so much sense for your business? They save your business money and make money at the same time.
How can you take these insights and apply integrated marketing to your own business? These are the steps to create an integrated marketing strategy.
Create Marketing Goals
You’re about to invest a considerable amount of time in an integrated marketing campaign. You should decide what you want the integrated campaign to do for your business.
Perhaps you want to promote a new product or service. You might want to increase brand awareness or drive more traffic to your website.
Write down the 1-2 most important goals for your campaign.
Map the Brand Experience
The brand experience is every single touchpoint a customer has with your company.
For example, you can get direct mail pieces printed and mailed to people in the Chicago area. The direct mail campaign directs people to the website. You also have social media posts that direct people to your website.
Once they purchase, they may interact with your customer service team.
All of these things will help you figure out the steps you need to take to create your integrated marketing campaign. In the example above, you need to make sure you have a Chicago printing company print your mail pieces.
Keep the Experience Consistent
Consistency matters most in integrated marketing campaigns. There are two levels of consistency in your marketing campaign: the consistency in the amount of content you post and brand consistency.
Brand consistency is hard for many businesses to achieve because they don’t understand what the brand is. A brand is an emotion that people feel when they think about your company.
You want to convey that emotion with every piece of content. Take Nike as an example. The brand is that everyone is an athlete and Nike’s products help people reach their athletic potential.
Nike’s content can be categorized as aspirational. That is the one thing that is consistent in the company’s posts and commercials.
You need to think about what your brand stands for and what your main marketing messages are. Once you have your messaging down, you can then create content that supports the message.
You also need to keep visual consistency. Write up guidelines as to what colors should be used, fonts, and how the logo is used.
To help you create a consistent posting schedule, you can use a social media scheduling tool.
Break Down Data Silos
The one thing that you need to be aware of is that your business can still run in silos, even if you have an integrated marketing campaign.
That’s because you still have to turn to different platforms to manage content and analytics. If you have several people handle content marketing, you run the risk that they will get siloed.
The best way to break down these data silos is to invest in technology. There are great tools that help you manage content and data in one dashboard.
Some of these tools let you schedule content in advance.
Create a Successful Integrated Marketing Strategy
Your customers are diverse, and you want to serve them all at the highest level. The only way you can do that well is to run an integrated marketing campaign.
What is integrated marketing? It’s a way to develop the same marketing message and brand consistency that resonates with your audience. These campaigns are cost-effective and they get great results.
Do you need more marketing tips? Check out the Marketing section of this site.
