Philip Kotler’s book Marketing Management (2014) explains that companies today must use communication tools to present themselves to potential and existing customers. Individual communication is no longer effective.
This is true. Kantar claims that customized and integrated campaigns are 57% better than those without. Is there a term to describe this strategy? We have. It is integrated marketing. What is integrated marketing? Why is integrated marketing so important? This article will show you how to use this unique marketing strategy.
What is integrated marketing?
Mark Schmukler, CEO and co-founder of Sagefrog Marketing Group, says that integrated marketing combines outbound traditional marketing with inbound marketing to accelerate success in businesses.
Integrated marketing refers to a marketing strategy in which customers are placed at the center of a campaign. It aims to communicate a consistent message to customers using marketing channels that work together.
Integrated marketing strives to communicate a consistent message
Let’s suppose you see a poster advertising a local organic food company while shopping at a supermarket. You are an organic product lover and you decide to scan the QRcode on the banner to go to the online store. You will see the exact campaign displayed on the banner of the supermarket when you land on the store. This is a form of integrated marketing in which all touch points of customers to a brand convey the same message.
Integrated marketing, as it is known, is a type of marketing communications (marcom) that allows marketers to communicate with prospects and influence their buying behavior. There are many marketing channels and customers can switch between them. Do you also know that we are bombarded with over 1,700 banner ads each month? We don’t know how many ads we can remember from them.
Integrated marketing was created to increase the likelihood that a customer will notice your brand by repeating the brand message.
In summary, integrated marketing can be described as: Repetition + Channels = Customer Journey
Step by step guide on how to create an integrated marketing campaign
Define your goal
You can clarify your business’s goals and focus your marketing efforts on that purpose. For example, you should set a goal for your integrated campaign to get in front of customers, broadcast a message or increase sales. Make sure it is SMART (specific measurable, achievable and relevant), timely, and measurable.
Select the right channels
It’s possible to get a better idea of the channels through which your brand message will be delivered by defining your goals. If your goal is to increase sales, you might not use PR. However, influencer marketing may help you reach the right audiences with your new product.
Create detailed customer personas
This step is done in parallel to the customer segmentation step. It allows you to send precise messages and avoid wasting coverage on people who are not part of your segment. Because each marketing channel targets a particular buyer persona, integrated marketing requires that you specify audience audiences.
There will be overlaps but it is important to know how to reach different audiences and craft the right assets to make them successful.
These are the steps you need to take in order to make buyer personas who actually want to purchase from you.
- Conduct audience research (learn from people who have bought from you to identify a group of potential buyers).
- You can find out their paint points by engaging in social listening
- Identify their goals
- Learn how your products/services could help them
- Transform your research into buyer personas
After you have completed humanizing your customer group, you can tailor your content to speak to them.
Choose the person responsible for each channel
Now that you know who you want to convince and which channels you will use, the next step is to choose the channel manager. Why is this important? This is because you can select an expert in one channel, and then let them take the wheel. The second reason is that having someone in charge of multiple channels can be overwhelming and lead to disruptions. Ideal is to have one person responsible for one or two channels.
Use it to create content
Your integrated marketing plan is now ready to unleash your creativity. Here is where copywriting and design really come into play. You should remember that integrated marketing allows you to reuse your content for different channels.
Let’s assume that the campaign’s focus is a video featuring demonstrable customers reviewing their experiences with your products. This video could then be used to:
- A trailer video for your homepage banner
- A instagram post featuring still images
- A blog post
- Emails Integrated marketing is all about consistency.
Measure your campaign.
All is well! You can now launch your campaign. To evaluate your performance, don’t forget about tracking your metrics every time you launch your campaign. We all know there are many variables in our business that change every minute. While we can’t predict the future, we can track your progress and make sure you are ready to handle the tough situations.
Communication channels integrated for marketing
As we have already mentioned, integrated marketing can be described as a mix of various marketing channels. You are free to choose the channels that best suit your needs.
Advertising
Advertising is the creation of content that promotes a product, campaign, or service. Advertising will be an integral part of your marketing strategy because it stands out from the noise and clutter of daily life and grabs people’s attention. There are many advertising options that can help you achieve your business goals: outdoor advertising, radio, TV, podcasts, direct mail, personal sales, magazines, newspapers, and display ads (search engines, search engines, social media).
You must carefully study your target audience to determine the most effective advertising types. This includes knowing where they go online and offline, what they like to hear and see and how to reach them. You can only tailor messages to your customers if you really understand them.
Public relations
Public Relations simply means its name. It aims to build trust with audiences, brand awareness, and reputation. PR can be used in many sectors, including finance, politics, and health. However, it is also used extensively in business. Learn how to implement PR in your e-commerce shop. This is PR under the umbrella of product public relations.
You can use influencer marketing to increase brand awareness. Media relations is the process of informing the public about your policies, practices, or changes in positive, credible ways. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on advertising. However, it is possible to improve the brand image through mass media.
Direct marketing
Direct marketing is a type of advertising that promotes your products directly to the people you choose based on any factor. This approach emphasizes the focus (high segmentation and targeting), which allows you to create relevant messages and optimize your marketing budget. Direct email marketing is a great strategy. This tactic can help you get to know your customers, increase their commitment, and encourage future sales.
Selling personal
This method is popular if you work in the B2B industry. Personal selling is about helping prospects find the products they want, rather than trying to sell them. This helps salespeople build a relationship with prospects and opens the door to potential purchases. There are two types: inside and outside sales. Inside sales can greatly benefit from customer relationship management tools in the digital age. These tools allow salespeople to prospect better, nurture, follow up and increase sales. Read more: The Pros and Cons of Personal Selling
Digital Marketing Services in Miami
The transfer of information from offline to online has become more common for most people. This means that if someone hears or sees something offline, they will likely go online to find it. The digital transformation has created an information ocean that allows customers to find everything they need about your brand.
Digital marketing encompasses many tactics, including search engine optimization, search engine market, search engine marketing and pay-per-click marketing . Each of these tactics can be time-consuming, but integrated marketing allows you to align all of your efforts with a consistent message.
Marketing via social media
Although social media can be included under the digital marketing list, it is a wide-ranging topic so we have made it a separate tool. Social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Linkedin marketing and others have seen a huge increase in popularity over the last few years. These networks allow businesses to grow their reach, increase sales, and expand their audiences.
You are missing opportunities to connect with your prospects and audience if you don’t use social media. Social media is more than just a place to post content. It also gives you the opportunity to evaluate your audience, monitor and manage social opinions, and to better understand your customers.
Sponsorship and events
There are two types of event marketing: offline and online. These include conferences, seminars, ceremonies, galas, product launches and VIP events. Webinars & live stream. These types can be used to achieve common business goals.
Sponsorship is an excellent way to reach your ideal customer by focusing on what they are passionate about. Your brand will be able to promote your products and services at events that are relevant to your target audience.
Packaging
Are you familiar with the term integrated marketing? It is the combination of multiple channels and packaging. Packaging protects your products and represents your brand’s colors, slogan, and logo. It also tells customers stories about your brand. Packaging is an integral marketing tactic. Make sure it can convey your message and make each “unboxing experience” exciting and emotionally charged.
How can I evaluate/measure integrated marketing performance
We should all emphasize the synergy between tactics when we talk about integrated marketing strategy. This is what makes a campaign successful.
The evaluation of integrated marketing campaigns is difficult because of this synergy. To measure and recognize the impact of integrated marketing tactics on your business, you will need metrics.
- Referral traffic: If you notice that your referral traffic from certain channels is increasing while you are boosting activities from other channels it could be an indication that you have created a synergy through your integrated marketing strategies.
- Email engagement: If your message/content is effectively delivered to your audience, people should become familiar with your brand, products, and services. If you notice a positive trend in the click-through rate of your emails, it could be an indication that you are doing something right.
- Social media engagement: Take a look at key engagement metrics on social media such as mentions, shares, messages received and CTR. These are excellent indicators that can be used to assess the effectiveness of integrated marketing efforts.
- Performance of landing pages: In this context, a landing page is any website that you want to direct customers to. This can be any page, from an event landing page on your website to the Google Form where customers are surveyed. Look at key metrics such as traffic, unique page views, bounce rate, average time on page, etc.
Why integrate marketing can be your marketing strategy
The combination of traditional and modern marketing tactics with the use of different tactics like direct mail, print ads, personal sales, event marketing or SEO can be called integrated marketing. You can see the synergistic effects when you combine all of these elements.
You will be able to benefit from integrated marketing in many ways.
- Contextualized content is a great way to get the most out of your multi-channel approach.
- You can reach a wider audience: Your message will be heard by more people within your target audience
- Customers will trust you more if they see consistent messages from your brand
- It gives you better control: you can connect all of your marketing strategies, so you can better manage your campaign performance
- Cost-Effectivity: You can reuse marketing assets for other channels, as they are compatible with others.
- Better results: Customers will remember the message better if it is presented across all channels. This could lead to increased sales
Omnichannel marketing vs integrated marketing
You may have heard of Omnichannel Marketing. But, you might be curious about the differences between integrated marketing and omnichannel. Are they the same if you combine different marketing channels? Let’s take a look at these two examples.
Let’s suppose you own a local traditional handicraft shop that sells bamboo toys for children. You want to launch a campaign to:
- Increase your profile among parents with children younger than 6 years.
- The ultimate goal is to increase sales and revenue.
What can you do with omnichannel marketing? (to seamlessly transfer customers between channels until they complete their purchase)
- Remarketing can be used for people who have visited your site using display advertising that is connected to an event landing page.
- To remind them to complete the purchase, send cart recovery emails
- SMS reminders with a link to an event landing page
What about integrated marketing? (and how it conveys a consistent message across channels).
Integrated marketing is the opposite. It starts the campaign using a hybrid approach. This means that you will tell your brand story to the right audience.
- Sponsor events at local children’s amusement centers or bookstores on weekends. This is because you know your segmented customers often take their children there.
- To generate excitement and build positive connections between your brand and parents, distribute giveaway items (t-shirts, accessories etc).
- To allow parents to have a look at the website/event landing page, print QR codes on your toys.
- To engage children, create an educational series for your Youtube channel.
- To get parents to join a single community on Facebook, create a group where they can share their tips and raise awareness about toys that are environmentally friendly.
- To win the prize, run an Instagram contest. Invite parents to take selfies with their children and create something with their toys.
- All of these activities should be included on your event landing page, so that all who visit it are aware of what you’re doing
You can see that omnichannel marketing is focused on seamless buying experiences. On the other hand integrated marketing aims to deliver a consistent brand message (e.g. in this case, “let your children enjoy the beautiful nature with bamboo toys.”
Example of integrated marketing campaigns
How can brands integrate marketing into their marketing strategies? Even if you’re a small company, can integrated marketing still be used? Yes, you can. If you don’t know, integrated marketing can be any kind of tactic or campaign.
Let’s see!
Lush Cosmetics uploaded a Youtube video about the environment
Lush is a well-known natural-originated, handmade cosmetics company. Lush uploaded the video “Green Power” to their Youtube channel, celebrating Greta Thunberg’s moving speech on the environment. It raised awareness about the need to treat the climate crisis as an emergency. Lush conveyed the message that individuals and communities can make a difference for the environment by displaying their actions in the video. Its description takes you to their “Charity Pot”.
The key takeaways are: Don’t limit yourself to content that is related to your products or services. Think about the concerns of your customers and show them that they are open to hearing your ideas. This will help potential customers get to know your brand and encourage them to look into your products. They might even buy your products in the near future!
Festina Profundo is a watch brand that packaged its products in water.
The brand claimed their “waterproof” packaging would make them water-proof. This was such an impressive and convincing solution, that it made it easy to visualize their implementation.
The key takeaways are content marketing, advertising and PPC, SEO, and so on. If you are looking for a way to make a big difference in your marketing, packaging can be a great tool. Can you see that this brand sent a consistent message about quality through its packaging? This is possible with your packaging. All you have to do is add some creativity.
Are you ready?
We’ve covered integrated marketing, from its definition to the detailed examples that even small shops can follow to create their own campaigns. Although every brand has different purposes, it is clear that the concept of integrating marketing will help you build brand awareness, strengthen your brand image, and create loyal customers. Remember to remember the true value of your brand when developing your plan. It will serve as the constant fountainhead of all your marketing efforts.
