What is Integrated Marketing?

Author: Kaitlyn Wilcoxson Category: Marketing, Social Media & Digital Date: October 14, 2021

Marketing professionals now have more opportunities than ever before to connect with their target audiences and influence consumers. But the more channels you use, the more difficult it can be to ensure your message and branding is consistent and solvent. The best way to maintain that consistency is through strategic planning and a focused effort on integrated marketing.

What is integrated marketing? It is a process and strategy to protect your brand identity and deliver a cohesive message and narrative across multiple platforms and channels. It requires time and investment, but without it, you risk sending mixed messages about who you are and what you do.

What is Integrated Marketing for Your Business?

Integrated marketing communication is a powerful tool for your business, offering advantages such as:

Cohesion

Consumers are inundated with ads every day and it can be difficult to break through. It takes an average of nine to 13 “touches,” or audience engagements, to make a lasting impression on your potential customer. Consistency provided by an integrated marketing strategy will help your audiences mentally connect each touch to each other and remember you.

Better performance

The more your target audiences remember your integrated marketing campaign, the more likely they are to engage with your brand and purchase your product or service.

Maximizing return on investment

Integrated marketing allows you to reuse content across multiple channels and helps you identify unnecessary duplication, ultimately reducing costs.

What is Integrated Marketing Strategy?

Incorporating integrated marketing into your business should include some key elements such as:

Developing your integrated marketing plan

The key to a successful strategy for any marketing effort is a strong plan. Set SMART (strategic, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timebound) goals. Identify your target audiences, then collect new and analyze existing data on them. Using that information, determine the most effective channels for reaching them and introducing them to your sales funnel, as well as how each channel can work together holistically.

Crafting content that can be adapted across channels

Create compelling copy, visuals, and other marketing assets that support your overall strategy and integrate them into your platforms.

Building capacity in your team

Your integrated marketing strategy will likely span over multiple departments within your company, so it is imperative to share it across your teams and ensure they can collaborate and monitor progress on it.

Establishing your integrated marketing systems

You may need to use a marketing automation platform to manage data and workflows, track metrics, collect leads, and monitor conversions.

What is an Integrated Marketing Model?

You have likely seen many integrated marketing communications examples without even realizing it.  Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign makes light of the common feeling of crankiness consumers experience when they are hungry. Coke encourages us to “Share a Coke” with our loved ones, and Geico sells us insurance through an adorable gecko with an accent. These concepts were shared across social media, television, print, and retail spaces. The fact that you remember them is testimony to integrated marketing.

Integrated marketing helps you work smarter, not harder. It also helps build brand awareness, supports your business goals, and maximizes your impact. So, what is integrated marketing in your overall business strategy? At Paradigm, creating and executing cohesive plans and campaigns that drive customer awareness is our specialty. We know how to utilize and integrate various marketing disciplines and leverage each to achieve business growth and profitability for our clients. If we can help you with your digital marketing strategy, please contact us today.