Emails, flyers, social media, and direct mail are just a few of the ways that businesses are reaching their customers. With so many marketing platforms available, the majority of buyers use three or more channels when researching a purchase. For businesses, that means buyers no longer follow a defined path through the sales funnel. Buyer behavior dictates that it is more important than ever for a business to develop an integrated approach to marketing.
Integrated marketing involves combining multiple marketing channels to communicate a single and consistent brand message, allowing a company to speak with a unified voice regardless of channel or device. The integration of marketing channels creates a surround-sound effect that amplifies your brand in a chaotic marketplace. The integration of marketing channels has never been more important to your business to ensure that various tactics are all working together toward a common goal and telling the same brand story. Here are three reasons why your business needs an integrated marketing campaign.
Why your business needs an Integrated Marketing Campaign
Cross-Channel
There are dozens of ways for customers to land on your website, including organic searches, social media links, QR codes, email, and blog content, just to name a few. If you are only using one or two of these platforms for directing customers to your website, then you are limiting the number of customers you could be reaching. The more channels you are on, the more customers you are reaching, because as a business you want to optimize all the tools that are available. You don’t want to leave any stone unturned.
Don’t think of marketing as either one channel or another, instead focus on optimizing across all available channels using all the tactics you can. Bringing all of your marketing efforts together means that you won’t be duplicating any messages and potentially wasting resources. One consistent message is easier and more cost-effective to implement in your marketing programs.
Customer Focused
It’s likely that your competitors are already utilizing integrated marketing. Many businesses are ramping up their multi-channel marketing, and that means that customers are coming to expect it. If your business isn’t utilizing multiple marketing channels, it could be getting left behind. Research shows that having one constant message across multiple channels can improve a consumer’s purchase intent by as much as 90%. Not only that, but that consistent message can also improve brand perception by nearly 70%.
On average, a prospect needs to hear your message seven times before they will act on it, and that means that one marketing channel simply isn’t enough. Prospects that continue to hear your message are more likely to recall it, and hearing a consistent theme from your business establishes trust. Integrated marketing allows you to spread your message out over several mediums, increasing your chances of having it heard and acted upon. As an added bonus, customers engaged through multiple channels tend to spend more than other customers. Spreading your marketing message could be a way to increase your return on investment.
Checks and Balances
The digital world is constantly changing, and that means that the digital marketing strategies your company uses need to be constantly adapting to change. Being present across multiple channels allows your marketing to be adaptable to any changes that come your way. If your strategy for one channel needs to be adjusted, you can rely on your other marketing channels in the meantime, and you won’t worry about losing contact with your customers. Each channel has its own strengths and weaknesses, and when you can leverage the strengths of one to offset another’s weakness, overall effectiveness is improved.
Integrated marketing strategies take advantage of a combination of communication tools and media to spread their message. By combining these tools, marketers can determine the best way to provide the marketing and service their customers expect. While it is essential that digital marketing is a part of your integrated marketing strategy, it shouldn’t be the only part. In fact, no piece of the puzzle can provide a business with all of the exposure that it needs.
Integrated marketing is a strategy that works well for everyone. While researching your target market and industry will help pinpoint best practices, this strategy works right across the small business board. Customers want and expect a consistent experience across all of their touch points with a company’s products and services.
When you utilize an effective integrated marketing strategy your business can deliver that experience to customers and prospects. Safeguard can help you every step of the way with an array of marketing services, advice, and ideas. Your Safeguard consultant can show you how an integrated marketing campaign produces better results and with a greater return on investment of your marketing dollars. Contact us today to see how integrated marketing can make a real impact on your bottom line.