Getting Started With an Integrated Marketing Strategy

Your brand’s marketing strategy is your overall plan for reaching prospective customers and enticing them to use your product or service. An integrated marketing strategy aligns your primary brand message delivered throughout the marketing channels you use.

What is an Integrated Marketing Strategy?

An integrated marketing strategy is an approach that aligns your marketing efforts across all the marketing channels your organization uses. Without an integrated marketing strategy to deliver a unified message, you run the risk of making your brand seem confusing or disconnected to your customers. With the complexity and variety of marketing channels today, delivering a consistent message can be challenging. While creating an integrated marketing strategy requires careful analysis, planning, and effort, the results are worth the effort.

Why Should You Develop an Integrated Marketing Strategy?

An integrated marketing strategy offers several benefits that can increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Consistent Message

Research has found that the average person is exposed to over 350 ads every day. However, only a few of these ads capture the viewer’s attention for more than a few seconds. Which rarely are they remembered the next day.

Consider integrating your ads and other marketing efforts into a consistent message. By implementing a marketing strategy that encompasses multiple delivery channels you can ensure that your marketing makes a lasting impression. In addition, your prospective customers are more likely to recall an ad when the content is consistent with other marketing. This increases their chance of engaging and interacting with your brand.

Improved Marketing Execution

Increased consistency of your brand’s message resulting from an integrated marketing strategy improves marketing performance. An integrated marketing strategy helps you convey the same narrative and keeps your brand fresh in consumers’ minds. According to data compiled by Google, marketing leaders are 1.5 times more likely to develop and execute an integrated marketing strategy.

Reduced Costs and Increased Value

Integrating your marketing efforts reduces the cost of creating content. This enables you to utilize the same content across different channels. As a result, an integrated marketing strategy helps reduce your overhead while creating a consistent and compelling message.

Consistent Customer Experience

An integrated marketing strategy benefits your organization as well as your customers. Customers respond to the consistency and predictability that a harmonious brand voice creates. Plus the familiarity makes it easier to understand what you do and how your product or service can help them.

Tips on Creating an Effective Integrated Marketing Strategy

Crafting a marketing strategy that is integrated sounds simple in theory but there are many layers involved. Below are a few key tips to keep top of mind when developing your integrated marketing strategy:

Content & Channels

Creating an effective marketing strategy starts with developing compelling and engaging content to deliver your message. The marketing focus of each channel you use should build upon the other. Thus, progressively educating customers as they continue to connect with your brand.

Your story may revolve around the history of your organization, customer success stories, or a fictional narrative built around your brand. Whatever your approach, the goal is to convey a message encouraging customers to keep following and learn more by engaging with your brand across various channels.

You can combine marketing channels in a variety of ways. One approach is to use the same elements in different media and ensure language consistency when you talk about or portray your brand. Choose strategies based on your marketing needs and resources. For example, if you utilize interactive marketing channels and other outbound-only channels, you should choose marketing content and strategies that perform well for both.

Aligning Content with the Buyer’s Journey

Your marketing strategy should also consider what stage of the buying cycle you are trying to reinforce. For example, if your marketing efforts focus on new lead generation, a uniform message about your brand’s value and the solutions you offer is vital. In contrast, if you are attempting to convert existing leads into sales, you may want to focus your marketing resources on addressing sales objections. Simply, the goals is to move audiences familiar with your brand towards conversion.

Measure & Improve

Collecting and analyzing data concerning customer behavior should drive your integrated marketing strategy. Collected data allows you to update your marketing strategy and improve its effectiveness. In addition, collecting and analyzing the data from all marketing channels enables you to determine which channels are performing well. In turn, this helps you determine where to invest more resources to improve your message. For instance, if data shows that one channel is underperforming, it may signify that it lacks the message consistency present in other channels.

Because an integrated marketing strategy encompasses numerous channels, resources, and platforms, it requires the engagement of various teams throughout your organization. In addition to your marketing and sales team, you should draw on the expertise of your software development team. They can provide valuable input on the types of digital marketing tools that can be developed in the future. Working with multiple teams provides a more comprehensive view of how you can better meet customer needs and plays a crucial role in executing your marketing strategy.

Unfortunately, managing the many variables involved in an integrated marketing strategy manually can be difficult and time-consuming, if not impossible. A marketing automation platform simplifies this by helping you track key performance indicators across channels, measure customer engagement, and return on investment, identify your best leads, and more.

Partner with an Expert

Developing an effective integrated marketing strategy is challenging, but it offers improved results at a lower cost. Unfortunately, if you’re trying to manage integrated marketing operations manually, you can easily get discouraged. Partnering with an expert can streamline your integrated marketing strategy and scale it to function across as many channels as you need.

At BrandCraft, we help our clients build and execute marketing strategies that drive growth in their organizations. Our team of experts makes it easy to centralize marketing analytics, manage multiple lead types, and quickly and automatically use marketing content across various channels. Contact us today and schedule a free consultation with our brand growth strategist to learn more about getting started with an integrated marketing strategy.