In the past, marketing messages were delivered in a silo, or with limited integration. Posters prompted customers to call their nearest branch, or a newspaper advert suggesting readers visit the showroom to take advantage of the specials on offer.
Nowadays, with the internet offering more and more avenues of business promotion, the need for integrated marketing campaigns is becoming more and more important to capture customers’ interest in as many channels as possible. Let’s take a look at what exactly marketing integration is, and how to easily integrate your marketing campaigns:
What is Marketing Integration?
Google ‘marketing integration definition’ and you’ll see a bunch of explanations come up. Our favourite definition comes from vAbout.com, and defines integrated marketing as:
“A management concept that is designed to make all aspects of marketing communication such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing work together as a unified force, rather than permitting each to work in isolation.”
In Layman’s terms, an integrated marketing campaign means that all promotional messages making up the campaign are connected somehow in terms of design, message and overall goals.
How to Integrate a Marketing Campaign
Let’s set up an example marketing campaign for the purposes of this example:
- Company: Sarah’s Cat Hat Emporium
- Website: cathatslikethat.co.za
- Facebook fans: 1,000
- Twitter followers: 500
- Email database: 700
- Campaign Objectives: Client would like to send more people to her e-commerce website where she’s running a special on cat hats.
So, how do we integrate a campaign for the above client? Here’s what an integrated approach could look like:
Step 1
Ask website development partner to develop a single website landing page called hats on special and add a banner to the HOME page promoting a special on hats (with a link to the new special page).
Step 2
Change the banner image on the Facebook page to promote the specials on cat hats. Set up a boosted Facebook post promoting the cat hat specials using relevant hashtags – link to the website.
Step 3
Change twitter banner image to promote the specials on cat hats. Create an organic twitter post, with relevant hashtags, and link to the website.
Step 4
Develop an email marketing promotional mailer announcing the specials on cat hats and link to the website. Remember to include links to social media accounts.
Step 5
Consider a print media element, like flyers promoting the cat hats special, and hand these out at traffic stops – prompting people to visit the website and browse the specials.
As you can see, the above campaign utilises digital and print media resources for promoting the specials. The social media content, email marketing content, and print media collateral are integrated in that they are promoting the same thing – across multiple channels – and the common objective is to get people to visit the website. Once they arrive there, they’ll be greeted with a relevant banner image – further integrating the marketing campaign.
Integrated Marketing Campaign in the United Kingdom
At Waverly Digital we absolutely LOVE planning, developing and executing integrated marketing campaign projects for our clients! This is the way the marketing world is going, and companies not integrating their marketing campaigns will unfortunately start to lose large amounts of market share to integrated competitors. Contact us today and let’s chat about integrating your next promotional marketing campaign!
