Marketing has evolved dramatically in the last decade and a rapidly changing, tech-empowered society is the main driver for change. However, silo marketing keeps traditional and digital marketing separate, each with its own message and strategy for message delivery. With every channel competing for consumer’s attention, it is very likely that the collective roar of brand message might drown a particular channel’s message.
Integrated Marketing Media Mix: Brand Success
Has digital marketing eclipsed traditional marketing altogether? Are traditional strategies irrelevant? Because different audiences exist on different channels, it is not entirely right to say that your audience has gone digital. For the number of people glued to their smartphones, there is an equal number of people who remain passionate about the newspaper and television. To stay connected with traditional and new gen customers, it is vital to balance your marketing efforts and spend. And that’s exactly what Starbucks did. During 2008, the financial crisis in US and the world, together with emergence of competitors, brought sales down 3% for the coffee major, another 7.6%, in the quarter ending March 30. The brand went ahead and acted, created an impactful and innovative solution to weather this storm and launched a print and television advertising campaign to create mass awareness while it also supported social media efforts. The result – they emerged as one of the most iconic brands of the 21st century. Today, they are one of the most popular brands on Facebook and tapping a former barista, Brad Nelson as their official Twitter voice helped them get ahead on the micro blogging platform as well. End of 2009, Starbucks had reported record earnings, which they could not have managed without the well planned, researched and executed integrated marketing approach.
Unified Marketing Approach: Top Tips
Companies no longer choose terms of persuasion to win customers in the b2b world. Integrated marketing is gaining importance, but it has been used to loosely describe actions such as inclusion of a website URL to a TV ad or including a QR code to a print ad. But diverse and siloed disciplines of marketing still stand in the way of unified marketing, but here are some means to tackle that. Marketers should move ahead from thinking that “digital” is a channel, they should think of it as the habits or expectations of the modern day consumer. Similarly, their actions on digital should impact the content created for the marketing message (search patterns and social network conversations can help a marketer find intelligent insights). Hence, the focus is on the customer and his or her informational needs as opposed to promotion of the product or brand message. Here’s a great example of usage of integrated communication: imagine your customer is walking down a street and finds details of a new movie advertised on a billboard. S/he can use the QR code on the billboard and visit a web page (using their smartphone) to buy tickets instantly!
Integrating offline and online campaigns is crucial too, for example, if you are running a contest or promoting a product, advertise it in store and online. Same with the case of complaints, just as how you would deal with an in-store upset customer with an apology, if someone attacks your business through a social media channel, don’t delete ignore the comment. Basically, your marketing program should be designed and integrated (across traditional and digital platforms) to ensure that your companies’ message is clear, coherent and powerful. It should support your brand, and ultimately increases your sales.
Measuring the Success of Integrated Marketing Programs
Measuring success is never an easy task, and in the case of integrated marketing programs, it takes a lot of honest evaluation. The obvious key to measuring ROI from these programs is tracking and measuring them. It will also depend on clear goals, target audience, a solid strategy and setting up measurement tools to track how each channel is working for your campaign. Analysis of the data can help you find trends, successes, and failures. Go ahead and share the results with various departments in your organization so you do not miss out on opportunities for follow-ups or for quick transitions if any aspect of your integrated marketing program needs to be adjusted.
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