Marketing encompasses a wide range of channels, but having a separate strategy for each opens the door for inconsistency, confusion, and inefficiency. With an integrated marketing strategy, your business will be able to unify all of your channels to create a seamless experience that attracts more customers. When consumers have a positive experience with your brand, they’re much more likely to do business with you.
Learn more about what is an integrated marketing strategy as well as the branding and revenue benefits it offers!
Integrated Marketing Definition
Integrated marketing is the process of aligning and coordinating all of your marketing channels and assets into a cohesive strategy to deliver a consistent and relevant experience to consumers. It seeks to eliminate disparities and differences between traditional advertising, sales, and digital marketing. Integrating your marketing channels is crucial because it makes your overall marketing more versatile and robust.
Benefits of an Integrated Marketing Strategy
There are numerous ways for consumers to interact with your brand which is why a holistic approach to marketing is key for growth. Here are the top benefits that an integrated marketing strategy offers, regardless of your business or industry.
- Ensures consistent, clear messaging
- Provides focus to campaigns
- Expands brand visibility
- Builds brand image and trust
- Enhances consumer experience
- Improves marketing efficiency
- Boosts team morale with a shared vision
- Lowers marketing costs and wasted spend
- Improves customer response rates
- Increases revenue and profitability
Now that you have a better understanding of why more brands are implementing integrated marketing, let’s take a look at how to build a strategy so your business can reap these benefits!
Creating an Integrated Marketing Strategy
Research and planning are critical for a successful strategy. There’s a lot to consider when unifying multiple marketing channels in a cohesive plan. Here are some tips to help you create an effective integrated marketing strategy to drive growth for your business.
Start with an overarching goal
Establishing an overarching goal is essential because it provides a vision for your team, regardless of what channel each person is involved with. Make the goal SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) to help you stay focused, track results, and refine the strategy.
Outline your marketing channels
List out your marketing channels in the strategy and what role each channel will play in reaching your overarching goal. Remember, marketing channels serve different purposes and should correspond appropriately to the stages of your customer journey map.
Set goals and KPIs for each channel
In addition to your overall goal, it’s important that each channel has its own specific goals. You should also outline which KPIs (key performance indicators) you’ll be using to track results and measure performance.
Define your customer personas
Audience segmentation and targeting make a big difference in how well your marketing resonates with customers. That’s why defining customer personas is extremely useful for crafting messaging that makes your audience feel like you’re talking right to them.
Establish a process for leads
Make sure that you have a process for leads so they don’t end up falling through the cracks. Think about how you’ll receive leads and the steps involved in converting them into customers. Use marketing automation software to make it easier to collect and nurture leads.
Create marketing assets
A marketing asset is any visual, audio, written or interactive piece of content. Each channel requires content to effectively reach and engage your audience. Keep in mind, however, that the process involves multiple steps such as research, brainstorming, design, production, and distribution.
Review and refine your strategy
Your integrated marketing strategy isn’t set in stone and will evolve over time depending on what does and doesn’t work. Although your strategy will adapt, the ultimate goal of unifying your marketing communications will remain unchanged.
By following these tips, you should be able to develop a holistic strategy that will bring together all of your marketing channels into harmony. Plus, your team will have a clearer idea of what they need to do as well as improve communication between them to achieve the vision.
Integrate Your Marketing to Fuel Growth
Whether you have many or a handful of marketing channels, it’s crucial to integrate them all into a cohesive strategy. Doing this gives your marketing greater consistency, clarity, and focus, which will lead to better results. Furthermore, your branding and messaging will be stronger across all touchpoints with customers, enhancing their experience and perceptions of your product or service.
Schedule a call with Mavericks Marketing to explore integrated marketing solutions to fuel your brand’s growth!
