Are you familiar with integrated marketing? As a business owner, it’s essential that you use the latest marketing strategies to connect with their target audience. In recent years, integrated marketing has become a fundamental marketing technique used by countless businesses. Unfortunately, though, many small- and medium-sized businesses are unfamiliar with the term, let alone how to implement it in their respective operations.
Integrated Marketing Explained
Also known as an omni-channel marketing, integrated marketing is a multi-pronged approach to promoting a business and its products or services on multiple channels. The defining characteristic of this marketing strategy is that it involves multiple channels or platforms on which to promote. A commercial landscaping company, for example, may use a combination of direct mail flyers, cold calling and online ads to promote its landscaping services to other businesses. Rather than relying on a single marketing channel, the landscape company uses multiple marketing channels, thereby driving sales.
Benefits of Integrating Marketing
Using integrated marketing offers several benefits over a traditional, linear marketing strategy. First, it allows you to reach more prospects with your marketing messages. Different prospects use different mediums — Facebook, Twitter, Google, email, direct mail, etc. And if you only use one of these mediums to promote your products or services, you’ll reach fewer prospects.
Second, integrating marketing can help to reinforce your business’s brand messages. Even if a prospect doesn’t buy your product or service, he or she will still be exposed to brand elements associated with your business. With integrated marketing, your brand messages will reach a larger audience.
Third, integrated marketing on digital channels allows you to gather key data on prospects that you can use to further optimize your marketing campaigns. Email, for example, allows you to track KPIs like open rate, conversion rate and subscriber rate. Social media, on the other hand, allows you to track user engagement, follows, likes and other KPIs.
Start By Defining Your Target Audience
Before you can effectively use integrated marketing to promote your business, you must first identify and define your business’s target audience. This is arguably one of the most important steps to creating an effective integrated marketing strategy, as it allows you to choose marketing channels that are frequently used or seen by people who are interested in your products or services. Create buyer personas for your business’s target audience, and then identify marketing channels most used by these personas.
Even with the apparent benefits of integrated marketing, though, statistics show that more than half of all businesses use a linear marketing approach. If your business falls under this category, you should consider taking the plunge to implement an integrated marketing strategy.
