Today’s marketers have several opportunities and channels to reach any target audience. However, this wasn’t always the case. In the past, if a financially strong brand discovered a marketing channel or medium, small businesses weren’t invited. They either had to stick to other traditional means like megaphone announcements, and posters.
Nowadays, the internet has democratized the entire marketing space. Marketing teams of all sizes have unlimited access to a wide range of tools, different channels, and methodologies to increase brand awareness significantly. As the number of customers increases, integrated marketing communications have grown in adoption for teams to blend multiple marketing forms to produce efficient marketing results. Here’s a detailed look at this marketing approach and its relevance for businesses of all types.
Integrated Marketing Defined
Integrated marketing can include several types of marketing, from business cards to creating beautiful content on social media.
It involves combining multiple marketing solutions like sales promotion and customer relationship management (CRM). It also allows organizations to be flexible with their marketing efforts. The integrated marketing approach spans multiple disciplines, including advertising and public relations. Using this marketing strategy harmonizes activities from across these disciplines rather than fielding them in silos.
Benefits
There are many benefits of this marketing approach. Some specific examples include the following:
Increased Brand Visibility
Marketing can increase in complexity as businesses increase in size and revenue. But at the core of every marketing professional’s work is to create a personal connection with existing and potential customers by increasing visibility. Visibility has evolved significantly over the years. There has been a paradigm shift from newspaper ad buys to modern media platforms. Such changes translate into more work to do for less traction.
Gaining visibility in today’s age of increased mobile phone proliferation and digital content creation can be a tough nut to crack. Luckily, integrated marketing allows businesses to have eyes and ears everywhere, leaving no consumer unattended. What’s more, with integrated marketing platforms like LucidPress, you can create content that includes stunning graphics and pie charts that’ll grab the attention of potential customers. They have hundreds of professional, customizable pie chart templates, along with a drag and drop editor.
Brand Consistency
The average attention span of today’s customers keeps growing as billions of digital content pour in daily. Brands need more clarity and consistency with messaging to achieve campaign KPIs. A typical example is how Coca-Cola keeps to specific messaging, design, and customer fonts. Whether it’s a flyer on social media or a menu bar on its website, the brand focuses on happiness and the feel of coke consumption rather than the beverage’s ingredients.
Integrated marketing can significantly help marketing professionals reduce the limitation of marketing channels and messaging fragmentation. Its tools allow brands to seamlessly tailor messaging to the specific platform requirements while keeping to the core brand message. This is a great way to churn positive results from marketing efforts and return on investments ROI.
Output Diversification
The world currently has about four billion internet users from diverse backgrounds. It pays to begin all marketing efforts with extensive knowledge of ideal customers. Data occupies a prominent position in modern marketing. Many companies leverage huge volumes of customer data to provide to improve customer experience.
Integrated marketing platforms generate data from all channels to measure the impact of their campaigns on specific audiences, including marginalized groups. These data results enable digital marketers to create rich content that resonates best with their audiences.
Cost Efficiency
A lot of time, many marketers test the system one message and platform at a time. Even though this approach allows for experimentation, using ad-hoc processes can increase expenses. Integration marketing favors critical planning. Before businesses deploy marketing strategies, they know what to hit and where to play to maximize results. Streamlining messaging and integrating marketing efforts is a great way to save money off your marketing spend.