Integrating Marketing includes branding, advertising, digital marketing, and design. It’s all aspects of your marketing campaign integrated together into one cohesive unit. This strategy focuses on making your branding message consistent across all platforms. The three main components of integrated marketing are branding, relevancy/personalization, and the customer experience.
Imagine discovering a new brand on Instagram and visiting the company’s website to purchase one of their products. If their website promoted a different message or campaign than the one you found on their Instagram account, you’d have a hard time understanding the gist of the brand, right?
Integrated marketing exists to eliminate these disparities and differences regardless of how or when a customer interacts with your brand. It’s similar to multi-channel marketing except integrated marketing is what aligns the message you’re sharing on all of those channels.
Speaking of channels, integrated marketing doesn’t apply to just your inbound or digital marketing channels; traditional media channels are also included. Many of the integrated marketing examples we will review incorporate traditional marketing channels such as print, radio, and TV commercials.
Why are integrated marketing campaigns effective?
While integrated marketing campaigns can differ in their goals, for example converting views, building brand awareness, etc., they should all have one component in common: to align your marketing channels to present a united marketing “front”.
- If your marketing channels are players, consider your integrated marketing campaign the coach in charge of running plays and helping your channels work as a unified system — not disparate ones.
- It’s also more effective to run integrated marketing campaigns as compared to campaigns on individual channels. Integrated marketing campaigns are impactful for a few reasons:
- They reach a wider audience than a single marketing channel.
- They have a greater chance of being seen on multiple channels, thus keeping your brand top-of-mind and pushing visitors closer to conversion.
- They build trust with visitors as they see a consistent message on multiple channels.
They save you money since assets (ads, radio spots, TV commercials), can be shared between and repurposed for different marketing channels and, depending on your campaign, customers can help you market your product or service for you.
How to Build an Integrated Marketing Campaign?
Establish Your Overarching Campaign Goals
Before you consider what channels will be part of your integrated marketing campaign, you must consider the goal of the entire campaign. Maybe you’ve launched a new product, service, or initiative and want to get it in front of customers. Perhaps you’ve simply chosen a new positioning tagline and want your audience to start associating your brand with it. This begins with a fully researched media plan which then needs to be put into place.
Choose Marketing Channels and Set Goals For Each
Now that you know your overarching integrated marketing campaign goal, you probably have a better idea of what channels (if not all of them) can help you reach that goal. For example, if your goal is to roll out a new logo and branding identity, you don’t necessarily need to leverage radio ads. On the other hand, if you’re extending your audience to target a new geographic region or city, digital ads, radio ads, billboard ads, TV ads, and other local channels may come in handy.
When choosing your channel(s), it all boils down to what you’re trying to achieve through your integrated marketing campaign. There are multiple major marketing “channels” that you can use to distribute your campaign message or content.
- Advertising Campaigns ( print, digital PPC)
- Digital Marketing (e.g., website, content marketing and SEO)
- Email Marketing
- Public Relations
- Social Media
- Events & Sponsorships
- Personal Selling
- Sales promotions
- Packaging
Define Your Buyer Persona or Build An Avatar of Your Best Customer
Every marketing channel targets its own specific targeted buyer. For this reason, instead of defining a broad persona for your campaign, you must define your audience by channel. There will inevitably be some overlap, but it’s wise to understand exactly who you’re talking to on each medium and how you can tailor those specific assets to be the most successful.
Create Adaptable Marketing Assets and Messaging
At this point, you have your campaign goal, target audience(s), and marketing channels. It’s now time to create your integrated marketing campaign content. This stage is where brand strategy, copywriting, graphic design, videography and other creative processes come into play.