As usual, you find yourself on Instagram, scrolling through the sea of images that all seem to look the same. Then BAM! Something catches your eye. It's an ad for brilliant white sneakers made entirely from recycled water bottles. They will never discolour, offer excellent arch support, and are super stylish. Despite you needing new sneakers (badly!) you keep scrolling, shortly forgetting about your recent find.
Later that afternoon you hop in the car; windows down, radio on full blast. What do you hear on the radio? An ad for those same sneakers. Hmmm, those shoes are sounding pretty good! The ad ends, the music starts up again and the sneakers fade into your memory as focus on the traffic ahead.
You come to a stop at a red light. The city bus pulls up beside you. Plastered across the side of the bus are, you guessed it, those brilliant white sneakers. Wow! They are starting to look pretty good right about now. You make a mental note to check out their website once you get to your destination. Once home, you pull out your mobile phone and search Google for "brilliant white sneakers." The first result, an ad for the brand you were looking for, pops up in the search results. You click it and after a quick browse of their website purchase the shoes that have been following you around all day!
That sneaker brand was seemingly everywhere you were that day, knowing that if exposed to their brand several times, via a range of mediums, you'd eventually buy them. This cohesive marketing effort where all forms of advertising work together to push the same image and message is called integrated marketing. And it works! (And happens to be what we do!)
Any and all interactions with your brand, via any type of advertising mechanism, should work to reinforce your image and message consistently and positively. It's with each of these interactions that recognition is gained and trust is built. And we know that once a consumer trusts you, they will often make a purchase.
Take these 5 tips into consideration:
1. Set Goals + Objectives
Set a goal and have all your teams work towards achieving that goal. We've seen some seriously disjointed and wasteful marketing campaigns over the years all because every channel involved in marketing was not consistently and frequently implementing integrated strategies and sharing the same message. Are you looking to grow revenue, build brand awareness, develop customer rapport, or expand your reach? Always make sure your goals are SMART and all your marketing teams are on board. This will help you when it comes time to determine your campaign focal point and execute the campaign.
2. Define Your Audience
If you don't already have this audience profiled out as part of your business plan, then you have some work to do. It's important when building an integrated marketing strategy that you know who your audience is. That profile will help you building your campaigns, identifying where you should advertise, what your message should be, potential customer pain points, etc. We often see businesses doing this backward by broadly defining the target that uses a medium (like Instagram) and building their campaign to target "people on Instagram" rather than understanding a portion of their target audience exists on Instagram and they should use the integrated campaign messaging to communicate with them.
3. Choose Your Channels + Allocate Budget
Part of ensuring your marketing is integrated is selecting and focusing on delivering your messages via the correct channels. When planning a campaign it's important to identify and focus on the channels that are going to give you the best results, and budgets should be allocated accordingly. If you are targeting millennials in an urban setting you might focus your efforts on digital media with support from print or experiential marketing. If you are targeting older consumers who might live in a rural area you might focus your efforts on print and television.
4. Create Adaptive Assets
Asset creation takes time, thought, energy, and investment. You always want to make sure any assets you are developing can be used in multiple ways, across multiple channels. If the assets created are unified and consistent they can be shared between and repurposed for different marketing channels.
5. Communicate + Share
It doesn't matter if your marketing team is big or small, if the channel leaders are not communicating with one another, your integrated approach will never be truly integrated! It's crucial to your campaign's success to have all teams sharing their experience, knowledge, and results so you can evaluate and adjust accordingly. If you are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a billboard campaign your social media team needs to know to ensure the same message and imagery are being shared. If you are only spending a few hundred on Facebook ads each month, you still want to make sure your content team knows which messages are resonating, so that they can repeat on your website, blogs etc. With many of our clients, we've taken on the role of "marketing hub" where we ensure branding and messaging are consistently being communicated and shared across teams.
We hope that your next campaign will run even more smoothly and most of all, garner you some great results! If you need any help with strategy, design or implementation, do let us know. Always happy to be a part of your marcom team!
