Today’s marketers have a plethora of advertising channels at their disposal. In addition to traditional outlets, such as print advertising and direct marketing, today’s CMOs can also utilize digital channels like email, social media, mobile and search engine marketing.
What tends to happen, though, is that marketers focus solely on one type of marketing, either online or offline. While both present major opportunities for business owners to get their message in front of a hungry audience, taking a one OR the other approach to channels leaves a lot of lost opportunity on the table.
Integrated marketing allows business owners to leverage the absolute best channels for their particular prospects. By combining traditional and digital channels, you have a much better chance at boosting sales and leads while at the same time saving money and increasing brand loyalty.
Having said that, integrated campaigns can be a bit tricky to pull off. Here is how to do integrated campaigns the right way.
Know Your Target Audience
This first step seems so logical, so “Well, duh,” yet when we meet with a client to discuss their customer base, a surprising number don’t really know who they should be targeting.
It’s important that you know exactly who you are targeting, both in a demographic way and a psychographic way (behaviors, interests, attitudes). Only until you fully understand the people who need your product or service the most can you deliver relevant messaging.
To help you get started learning who your ideal prospect is, ask yourself the following questions:
- What motivates your customers?
- How do they like being communicated to?
- Which websites do they visit regularly?
- Which magazines or newspapers do they read?
- Do they use social media? If so, which channels?
- What are their pain points?
- What keeps them up at night?
All of these questions and more need to be answered before you can begin to develop your integrated marketing strategy.
Choose Your Channels Wisely
When we say the words “integrated campaign,” some clients assume they must be on every channel, all the time. This just isn’t the case.
One of the reasons it’s important to go through step one and define exactly who your target market is is so you can easily choose which advertising channels will benefit you. There is absolutely no reason to be on Instagram if your ideal customer does not use that channel.
Your ideal customers may also not be exposed to billboards, so why spend marketing dollars on OOH.
Never choose a marketing channel because other people do or because it is the hot, new trend. Base every decision you make on whether or not your ideal customers interact with that channel.
Be Consistent
Consistency is key with integrated campaigns. This goes for look as well as consistency of messaging.
Visual identity is more than just your brand’s logo. It is about having an overall design; one that, when consumers see it, they know immediately it is you. Your look will include colors, font, style of photos and graphics. No matter if your ad is in a magazine or on Facebook, it should be recognizable as coming from you.
The same should be said for your messaging. What is the personality and voice of your brand? Are you all business or do you have some fun with your content? Your audience will come to rely on a specific kind of interaction with you, so don’t disappoint, stay consistent.
Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose
One of the first things you’ll notice about launching integrated campaigns is that you will need to come up with more content for the added channels. Don’t be overwhelmed at the prospect of creating more content each month, because when you repurpose content, you need do only about the same amount of work.
What do I mean by repurposing content?
I mean, for every piece of content you create… a blog post, an ebook, a video… you should take that content and repackage it. So, for instance, you’ve written a 1000-word post for your blog. Now you can take that post and turn it into multiple social media snippets. Take your video highlights and turn them into an infographic for your LinkedIn account. Take your latest case study and use it in your weekly newsletter.
When you repurpose your content, you ensure you never run out of things to share.
Get Everyone on the Same page
If you have different departments working on the same campaign, make sure everyone is talking to each other and on the same page. Facilitate meetings to make sure everyone is working cohesively toward the same goal.
By the same token, if you are using outside agencies to help you with your campaigns, make sure someone in-house coordinates and monitor all efforts to ensure your branding has a consistent look and feel across all channels.
While it may take a bit of time and effort to get up to speed, you should experience immediate benefits from a well-executed integrated campaign. Should you have any other questions or would like some help getting started, get in touch with us.
