Integrated marketing is all about presenting a consistent message across different media. When you know exactly what you want to convey about your company, it's infinitely easier to deliver that message in a clear manner. No matter what channels you're using, integrated marketing is about building on and reinforcing what you've said before to help brand and advertise your company.
That understanding can help guide you through setting up your first integrated marketing campaign. Read on for tips on how your business can draw up, execute and tweak a plan as needed.
1. Find Your Focus
It's tricky to present a consistent message across multiple forms of media, so it's imperative that you know exactly what that message is going to be.
Have serious discussions about what your company brand is and what you want to achieve with this campaign.
This will help guide you to the right channels.
2. Do The Research
Who are you trying to reach with your campaign, and how can you reach them?
You'll need to do in-depth research about the consumers you are targeting to determine which media will best complement each other.
While you may be used to employing social media and banner ads exclusively, you may need to branch out to email and event marketing, depending on your audience.
3. Make A Plan
There are literally dozens of media to choose from to get your message across. You don't need to use all of them for integrated marketing, but you should be thinking about how each form of media will help you in these important areas:
- Developing your company's narrative, i.e. the story you want consumers to learn;
- Interacting with your audience through channels such as blogs, social media and email;
- Creating long-term plans for your brand.
4. Invest Intelligently
Integrated marketing must be meticulously planned in order to hit on a winning combination. For instance, if you are marketing to a small community, you may want to start by bolstering your Google+ and local SEO and complement that with Billboards to ensure you hit every possible place where your target audience will be looking. On the other hand, you may not want to target Twitter or LinkedIn, because those are places people are unlikely to look for that query.
Make sure your marketing reinforces ideas being seen on other platforms. Retargeting ads, for example, might make sense if you're advertising heavily online so that you can snare people who have already found you once before without converting a sale. And whenever you can integrate your customer into the plan, through using social media testimonials and such, your marketing will have a whole new dimension.
5. Listen To Feedback
Once you've launched your integrated marketing campaign, there's only one more step. You will need to evaluate what is working and what is not, and tweak your approach accordingly. If you're not getting the results you'd hoped for from one form of media or it doesn't seem to be working with the other media to bolster your branding, adjust your marketing mix.
I cannot stress enough the importance of testing your campaign, getting feedback, and revising it. You might be surprised that a tactic you would not have expected to work is the one that sends the most customers to your site.
There's no such thing as one-size-fits-all marketing. But by experimenting and paying close attention to the results, you can find the right formula for your business.