Digital marketing isn’t the apple pie of everybody’s table, and where there’s competition, there’s also an ultimate need to discover new ways.
The ways less traveled!
Yes, the unexplored part opens up new opportunities for you.
Integrated marketing is a “newborn” technique that strives to save everything – your money, time, efforts, nails, etc.
But remember that roads less traveled always don’t stay the way they are.
There are many explorers out there who are looking to breathe the fresh air of such lush green paths where success lies.
We want you to realize those ultimate benefits before your competitors do. So, your next 5-minute journey of reading this article can save a bundle of dollars the very first month.
What Is Integrated Marketing?
Integrated marketing is all about unifying various aspects of marketing communications starting from traditional-style advertising to social networking activity to public relations and beyond – in such a way that generates a consistent, seamless, customer-centric experience every time.
In simple words, it’s about providing people a harmonious experience that feels and looks the same no matter where they encounter it, and no matter which channels your company is using at the moment.
Yes, this may sound identical to omnichannel marketing, but the two terms aren’t the same and should never be treated the same way either. Omnichannel marketing is based on offering a seamless customer interplay with your brand.
The interacting experience on your website feels similar to your branded mobile app, Twitter page, or even when someone just holds the phone and gives a call to your customer service team.
Integrated marketing, on the flip side, is all about the central message you’re presenting to the world. It’s about bringing everything together – from promotions to social media and public relations ads – to target your customers in the most effective way possible.
The channel itself may change, but the message remains intact – and that is what permits your integrated marketing campaign’s all disparate elements to come together and form something far more robust than any one of them could be single-handedly.
What’s the Need of An Integrated Marketing Strategy?
Now, let’s keep it simple.
If marketing success is dependent on displaying the right message in front of the targeted person at exactly the perfect time, one of the biggest provocations that most businesses come across is the fact that the “perfect place” is something like attempting to hit a moving target.
Now, that’s what we call a “challenge.”
These days, not just have consumers become desensitized (the credit goes to constant exposure to advertising collateral). Still, they’ve grown frustrated by it.
In a time when over 200 million people use ad-blocking software on their computers in the world (a 700% increase from 2010, though), it’s tough to stay optimistic about how digital marketing’s old school “best practices” are going to work to bring you an advantage while moving forward.
Equally complicating things is the point that consumers are also spreading out in more directions than ever before, as well. They aren’t just using their smartphones or computers. They’re on tablets as well. They’re using streaming services also.
No, there’s still more!
They’re on Internet-connected set-top boxes and game consoles. Roku or Apple TV are cool examples.
This is what makes integrated marketing so important. Brands have already drowned hundreds of thousands (and mind me) and even millions of dollars on numerous marketing channels to better hit their ideal consumers in ads.
What are the biggest advantages of an Integrated Marketing Strategy
Generate More Leads & Sales
An integrated marketing strategy proves to be a great way to generate high-quality traffic and leads because people have a mile better understanding of who you’re and what you do. They aren’t confused when they visit your website (believe us, it is a bigger point than you think).
They already understand your services and products and can see how well they fit into their lives. Not, this benefit brings one more benefit with it, and that’s a greater return on your investment while moving forward.
Cost-Effective
The biggest advantage that an integrated marketing campaign will add to your table is that it’s pretty more cost-effective in contrast to the other alternatives available to you.
Creating unique and attractive collateral such as images, graphics, and written content for all of your numerous marketing channels doesn’t just consume time – it costs dollars, too.
When all your campaigns are integrated together, you can share this collateral across numerous channels using less than half of the resources you did in the previous case (when you didn’t follow an integrated marketing strategy).
Brand & Trust Building
Creating a consistent experience through an integrated marketing campaign is also an astonishing way to build trust among your audience.
People are generally skeptical of brands today, and inconsistent messaging just adds to that fact. However, when everything is already integrated and consistent, getting people to recognize you as a genuine brand is far easier. Not just that, selling your stuff to people who already trust you is easier in contrast to those who don’t.
Best Practices to follow for an Integrated Marketing Strategy
If you desire to develop a perfect integrated marketing strategy that brings immense profit to your business, there’s a small bunch of key considerations:
Look For Opportunities in Channels
You’ll also desire to hunt for opportunities in channels that genuinely make sense, given whatever your targets happen to be. If you’re passing through a huge rebranding effort and looking to acknowledge people with your new logo and various other visual collateral, obviously, people want to be able to notice it.
We mean, in such a case, radio advertisements aren’t necessarily what you should be investing in. Regardless, be smart to carefully examine various channels like sales promotions, social media, content marketing, email marketing, and more to figure out which ones prove to be the most sensible for your integrated marketing campaign. Choose those special ones only.
Get Internal Alignment
The thumb rule is that you should begin by first getting an internal alignment. In simpler words, all key stakeholders should actually agree on the direction and dimension that your messaging will follow and cover. This will ensure that everyone is moving in the same direction, and we all know that mass efforts always count.
Stay Consistent
All the while, you’ll need to make an effort to keep yourself (and your proceedings) as consistent as possible concerning your message. Everything from font selections, headings, word choices, etc. should feel like they’re arriving from the same place, no matter where someone encounters them.
Never Neglect Overlap
While you do, deeply consider that the majority of the collateral you’re creating as your campaign’s part is going to overlap from one channel to the other. For example, you might use the same graphics on social media that you do on your website. Don’t shy away from this. You need to embrace it, as that’s one of the most considerable benefits of integrated marketing to start with.
Tweak When Necessary
Finally, never feel afraid to tweak your current integrated marketing plan as compulsory. Not every step you take will be an entire success right out of the gate.
You need to pay attention to what’s working and, even more importantly, what isn’t. Hence, you can put double energy on the former and quickly get rid of the latter.
How to Create a Tremendous Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy
Without exception, the very first step you should take when creating your first integrated digital marketing strategy includes establishing goals for your targeted accomplishment. This will help generate a better idea of what sort of key performance metrics and indicators you should be following.
Perfectly Optimize Your Google Analytics
Optimizing your Google Analytics is highly critical because you can never improve what you aren’t actively measuring and tracking. You should use this as a sort of A/B test for certain key pieces of collateral such as your website, as you’d be stunned by what a huge impact that even “so-looking” minor changes in word choice and design can have on your overall target audience.
Build Your Target Audience Quickly and Strategically
During this time, you’ll have to build your target audience on a strategic channel-by-channel basis. Buyer images will be invaluable to that end because it helps you figure out exactly who you’re conversing with on every medium and how you should customize specific assets to play into what makes your customers feel unique in the first place.
Establish Goals
Undoubtedly, if your mission was to increase engagement with only your target audience, you would make various decisions (and closely understand various success indicators) than if you were attempting to increase your brand reach or website traffic.
But the focal point is you should understand what you’re looking to accomplish. That way, you can work your way back to leveraging integrated marketing to hit the main point and attain conversions.
Analyze Data & Finetune Strategy
Always, you should analyze the data you’re gathering and fine-tune your integrated marketing strategy for the ultimate results while moving forward. You should return to the metrics you recognized when you laid out your goals for your campaign and start tracking them week by week, monthly, and lately, on a quarterly basis.
If you’ve attained success in your integrated marketing strategy in your early days only, you should be targeting slow but steady gains over such periods. If you aren’t, it means something related to your integrated marketing campaign isn’t working. You need to find it, and without wasting time, fix it so that it can be adjusted rapidly, without harming the campaign’s results.
Create Attractive Content for Digital Channels and rule the game
Beyond that, work hard on creating compelling content for every single channel and, again, don’t feel afraid in leaning into those minute overlaps that may exist. Your website and blog are great chances to also send outbound links to your social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter.
A blog post doesn’t need to simply get live on your website. There’s much more to do. Besides that, you can share it on social media. Even your email signature forms a tremendous chance to expose the audience to your website URL or relevant blog/video links.
So, what’s your further plan? Need some help?
Se, you can use a hundred new tricks, and design your building the best way possible. But what if the base itself isn’t strong?
Justice won’t be done to your hard work, and there will be no results.
Not scaring you, but if your website’s structure isn’t what Integrated Marketing demands, then success won’t be on your side. Not just that, your social media channels should be optimized as well.
We, at AccuwebTech, don’t believe in selling. We believe in helping and support.
So, if you feel that you won’t be able to perfectly solidify the base of your Integrated Marketing campaign, just let our Experts know.
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