If you have ever wondered if integrated marketing is something that your organization needs, this article will give you a great start on your information hunt. We are going to explain how integrated marketing helps to creates a cohesiveness that exponentially increases your brand recognition while making it easier for customers to find the information that they need about the services and products that you offer. It will also explain how integrated marketing helps to improve customer experience and increase customer satisfaction with your brand. Integration marketing is probably the best program to outline your goals.
What Is Integrated Marketing?
Integrated marketing is a form of consumer outreach and examples that works to unify your consumer’s experiences with your company across multiple platforms of communication, a strategy if you must. Technology has both increased chances for exposure to potential clientele while massively diluting the market. In the past, organizations only had a few avenues of customer outreach. This included billboards, signs, and averts in limited media such as television, radio, books, and newspapers. Mind you, that limited outreach, took an entire agency. On the other hand, today, managing this is so much easier because of technology and the ability to have mass outreach and objectives at your finger tips.
This was fairly effective since there were only a few of these channels, stations and papers; there was a certain guarantee that messages would reach a significant level of the population. The tricky thing with this today, there are agencies (yes, multiples) out there that use integrative services that make this happen for you. Meaning you don’t even have to fully take it over yourself. The bad thing about the growth of these companies? There is a need for it. You’ll more than likely have a tough crowd. This puts things into perspective; Remember that if you’ve got any integrity in your business, don’t let the status define you. Market yourself proudly.
Now, consumers get their information from thousands of internet sites, dozens of social media sites, and hundreds of cable channels; Years ago, you had to read a book to learn the lay of the land. Music services such as Pandora and Spotify are rapidly overshadowing Clear Channel’s grip on the music market. In the meanwhile, sites like 4Chan and Reddit take over alt media. This means that, without integrated marketing, your company’s branding and communications could become diluted and confusing–basically getting lost in the systems management that we call the internet. For example, you may even find yourself losing consumers to your competition– While they’re getting a promotion, you’re getting a demotion in the system. There is a science to it. While it may not seem like it, that science is an integral part of the plan when it comes to integrated marketing. Also, being marketing masters helps too.
Key Tips for Successful Integrated Marketing Campaigns
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Information Is King
The internet has opened an avenue for interactive communications with consumers that makes integrated marketing an incredibly productive pursuit in this digital world; A credence of programs that offers a solution or role solves a direct problem. Formerly, advertising was a passive process in the markets. This means that consumers watched or read an advertisement and then they would come to you… or not. Now, the consumers come to us from the start because they want one thing, information. Organizations that are willing to share this commodity with consumers in an efficient and helpful way earn consumer respect and loyalty in a big way. This is why any successful integrated marketing campaign should be focused around providing valuable information to consumers if possible.
Why is it King?
Integrated marketing is of utter importance. Think of a teacher as an integrative marketer. Sounds funny, but think about it. They choose a major, the attend college, whether it be NYU, Northwestern, WVU, they attend the studies at their chose school with their chosen major. After they’ve completed their studies, they graduate, and so begins their career as a teacher. They market their education by teaching at an institue, much like they’ve been taught. This is a great description of integrative marketing. How you ask? They’re marketing the things that they’ve learned and you’ve got the person that has the job of accounting for what they are teaching right in front of you.
Be Utterly Consistent with Messaging and Logos Across EVERY Platform
It is vital to use a consistent and very visible identifiers across all of these platforms. After all, how much good does a billboard advert do if the consumer doesn’t already recognize the logo and it’s too small to spot? What good does a blog do if the consumer doesn’t know that you’re the awesome company giving them a hand in selecting the best lawn seed for full sun exposure in the summer? While being consistent, also make sure that you simple yet bold you want your efforts to reach not only your target audience, but globally as well too, from east to west.
It’s a Fact
A widely used, very unique, and recognizable identity is more vital now than ever. Specification has it’s purpose. Anyone who has studied the bounce rate on web pages knows that no matter the medium, we only have seconds to engage the consumer. It helps to have tools that create instant recognition with every post, Tweet, meme, advertisement, billboard, email, etc. The goal is to make your brand synonymous with your product or service. Apple is a master of this skill. How many people have called a generic MP3 player an iPod by accident? Integrated marketing at it’s finest has a millennium to make this possible and integrate it into our marketing operations.
The Only Way to Get Anywhere Is to Be Everywhere
The only way to be anywhere in our overloaded environment is to be everywhere. As stated above, getting your name out and making sure that it is recognizable is key. However, it is surprised how many organizations go through the effort of writing informative blogs or how to websites and then miss the mark. This is because they thought the few links to their products that they inserted into their page would be sufficient when combined with a little search engine optimization. Hardly. It’s about integrating yourself into society with a degree of mystery still there. You bait them enough to get them on the hook and then you sink them.
Start conversations on your social media outlets that further expand on the information in the blog. Mention the information you provide to consumers in your passive media outlets. Send emails so your loyal consumers know you have something new to offer. The point here is that any time you pull the trigger on something new on one information outlet, every other outlet should be talking about it and vice versa. Don’t just mention it on your website and hope that people see it. It’s not a private thing, you want to shout it from the roof tops so that all aspects of the world see it, hear about it, and learn what aspects you’ve got available.
Track Your Consumer Comments
This is the greatest benefit that our now interactive consumer experiences have to offer. Comment sections and discussion boards help those who are running integrated marketing campaigns to track consumer perceptions of those products. All feedback is valuable, both positive and negative. This information is funneled to the proper channels in your team, then your organization can formulate real time responses to mitigate negative public feedback while tracking positive feedback to further successful strategies.
Collaboration Is Key
This is the most important tip for successful integrated marketing campaigns. Often, an organization will have a social media team, television advertising team, and public outreach team. These teams will only get together periodically to compare notes.
Value
Valuable information that should be helping the organization sifts through Power Points, Word documents, memos and spreadsheets in several different locations. Plans may never be shown to the other teams at all. This is no longer sufficient because information changes so quickly and feedback is instant. It’s also the entire reason for developing innovating integrated marketing strategies.
No matter which platform or geographic area a team member is working on, they need to be able to access and update information and feedback for all other platforms in real time. This allows each team to focus on making effective changes that benefit the entire campaign while maintaining consistency.
Here’s Why
This doesn’t matter if one part of the team is in NYC or Boston, one is in San Diego or Los Angeles, and the other is in Toronto or Chicago, there should still be collaborations with each team. The meeting doesn’t even have to be held in person so long as it’s held with the proper introductions, so be it! So long as you are communicating and following a scheduled calendar date for each week, that is all that matters.
If you’re in driving distance, it’s best to meet face to face, but if you can’t graduate from the digital world, that’s ok too. Just be thorough with your data and know your abc. The goal of integrative marketing is to have an even trade that makes it easy for the customer to have a free analysis of the product to be able to communicate with the brand itself.
Summing Up
These are just a few of the tips that help today’s integrated marketing campaigns. They get the most bang for their buck. It’s a very deep subject that is still developing as the information market advances. It may work today, but not tomorrow. The planning that comes with the right here and right now is what matters to the principals of integrated marketing.
And Finally
You can find tons of ebooks, articles, and many 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition contemporary pieces… Just on the principles and jobs in integrated marketing. The reason there are so many editions? Protocol like this is constantly being changed, looking for better solutions and maybe more simplified plans. This isn’t something that you learn at university. The great thing is, you can learn through and internship and by doing. It’s more of a hands on things, rather than an automation.
Changing the format can be a big disadvantage of marketing. The core of the idea stays the same when using it in the long run. Do you have any tips or tricks that you would like to share with the rest of us? Please share your wisdom and experiences in the comments below!