The importance of integrated marketing
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You know those brands that are instantly recognisable, no matter which touchpoint you come into contact with first?
Well, the brands that are doing this well are nailing the concept of integrated marketing—something that is often overlooked by businesses, especially in the early stages of brand development. But in essence, if a brand feels familiar no matter whether you’re using their product, reading their content, purchasing one of their services or coming into contact with their marketing material—when their look, feel, tone of voice and personality instantly provide a clear picture of who they are and what they stand for, you know they’ve considered their integrated marketing strategy.
So, why is this important?
As a business—no matter your industry—your goal should be to ensure that every one of your marketing channels is aligned in terms of messaging so that customers or clients are left with no question in their mind as to who you are and what your objectives are.
And with most businesses using a variety of digital—as well as more traditional—channels to communicate with their target audience, it’s essential that each platform performs not only in isolation, but in an integrated manner to make your message clear. Language, imagery, themes and campaigns should all be aligned.
How to use integrated marketing effectively
Without question, the first step is to establish your primary objective. Are you looking to boost brand awareness? Increase traffic to your website? Boost your conversion rate?
Once you’ve nailed your objective, you can then determine how to best align each marketing channel in the aim of achieving that goal. But before you bombard every channel and post on every platform at your disposal, you also need to consider which touchpoints are going to be the most impactful. Throwing a wide net in the hopes you’ll catch the most fish is simply ineffective.
Most importantly, you also need to consider your target market and take into consideration their preferred marketing mediums and adjust your approach to suit. If your customer isn’t spending time on social media, throwing your resources into this channel will never give you the return on your investment. Instead, choosing a more integrated approach which utilises the channels your target audience are most likely to engage with, will increase your likelihood of success.
As a consumer, seeing marketing that is aligned also helps to cultivate a sense of trust with your brand as you’re not confusing your messaging or trying to say too many things at once.