Marketing is nowadays becoming a tough job. It was easy to convince others earlier but now people have become very smart and aware of every tactic out there. Still, companies generate their major revenue through marketing. How?
Did you ever visit “McDonald” and observe their Restaurant? How did you feel? Isn’t it happening place with the smell of their burger and makes you feel good? when you say about them through TV ads or someone talks about them to you. Did you quickly remember their logo, colour, and smell? How is this happening? Indeed, the brand has gone into your mind.
If you saw their ads ever, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook posts or billboards. You might be thinking about which type of marketing they are doing, and they are doing integrated marketing.
What’s in it for me
What is integrated marketing?
Integrated marketing is the process of promoting products and services by creating an interactive primary brand message through the strategic campaign and deliver it in an impactful way with the use of different marketing platforms to the targeted and new audience.
Integrated marketing works the same as a multi-channel but delivers a similar message across all the platform in a well-defined timeline. You can use any platform for integrated marketing like sales promotion, TV advertisement, direct marketing, giveaways, social media marketing(Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.), radio, billboards, print media, blogs and many more.
Why integrated marketing is so effective?
Suppose you come across a new brand on Instagram and like their products. So, you visit their website for purchase. You are more likely to purchase their product if the message or campaign promoted on their website is the same as you saw on their Instagram.
Integrated marketing is effective if rightly executed. It eliminates the risk of differences regarding how the customer will interact with your brand.
There are also so many reasons to praise integrated marketing:-
- You have a chance to reach various types of audience.
- It is easy to recognize you on multi-channels which keeps your brand in their mind and pushing them towards conversion.
- It helps to build trust through your constant message on various platform.
- This will save your money which helps you to redirect your campaign according to the platform.
Steps to building an integrated marketing campaign
Steps to building an integrated marketing campaign It is a step-by-step process to build your marketing campaign. If you skip a single step in between, you might fail to create a successful campaign.
- Define your campaign goal or purpose.
- Choose different marketing channels for a defined goal.
- Identify audience persona by channel
- Marketing content and their expert
- Launch, measure and collect leads.
- Define your campaign goal or purpose.
Before finalizing your marketing channel, you must decide the goal of your entire campaign. You should have something in your mind related to the campaign. On which basis you will execute your campaign successfully.
There are different types of goals you might have:-
- Maybe you want to launch your products, services and some new initiative to promote your brand. (Like Any ware campaign by domino)
- You want to change your tagline, logo or rebrand your company to position new tagline in the audience mind. (like Burger King and FB did)
- Or you wanted to do brand awareness uniquely as people should know about your brand. (like dollar shave club or any other brand).
All these goals will keep you reminding about your purpose of the integrated marketing campaign. They will stay you focused and will keep you track your campaign. You should know about some metrics for the campaign:-
- Unique traffic or page views
- Bounce rate
- Average page view time, top page views
- CTR (click-through-rate)
- Backlinks
- Comments
- Social shares
- Leads conversion rate.
When you will decide your goal and have a clear purpose in your mind. You will understand which metrics are necessary for your integrated marketing campaign.
- Choose different marketing channels for a defined goal – Now, you have decided the goal and write your plan for the paper. We will look upon the marketing channel. Here, choosing a perfect marketing channel for your campaign is necessary for reaching your goal.
Suppose you want to rebrand your logo, then it is unnecessary to leverage your radio ads.
Or, if your product is expensive for middle-class people. Then showing TV ads will not help as your buyers are on phone more than TV.
You got my point. Right!
Well, there are so majorly 10 marketing channels you will need for your campaign like:
- Advertisement (print, billboards, radio and TV)
- Public Relation
- Sales promotions
- Door to Door selling
- Direct marketing
- Digital marketing (Website, Blog, content marketing, Email marketing and affiliate marketing)
- Social media Marketing (FB, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp)
- Events, Sponsorships and Giveaways
- Packaging, offers and Coupons
- Influencer Marketing You should include a variety of marketing channels to test its potential for your integrated campaign goals. Always be open to try any channels, remove or try another.
- Identify Audience Persona by channel Audience persona means identifying your audience based on different metrics like Demographics, interest, Profession, etc.
Not every audience has a presence on every channel. So, you should target your different audience on different channels. It will help you to identify your audience presence on every channel.
For example, if your products are beauty product. Then, the main targeted audience is Women. So, female aged between 16 and 45 is mostly active on Instagram and Facebook. Female aged between 45-65 are most likely been on TV.
- Marketing content and their expert You have your marketing goals, targeted audience and audience persona. We will now decide our campaign content and create it by copywriting, graphics, illustrator, video making, etc. This phase is for creative processes.
But your content and message should be adaptable, simple and relatable. You can even try one channel’s content for another.
You have to make your content in such a way that can divide into different formats. If you make 2-minute video ads, then, it should be in
- 30 seconds trailer for TikTok and YouTube ads
- Creative posts and images
- Gif’s
- Typography
- Multi-lingual message
- Quotes
- Hashtags and many more.
In this process, you have to choose who is expert in any particular channel for an integrated marketing campaign. An SEO expert is not good for handling Facebook ads campaign. So, choose an expert for an entire campaign.
Try to choose someone who can handle two channels at a time and has expertise in it. So, he can track the progress of the campaign in a particular channel.
Even if the campaign fails, he can repurpose the content according to the targeted audience.
- Launch, measure and collect leadsNow, it is time to launch your integrated marketing campaign. Your long wait is coming to the end.
But wait…
You forgot something. What?
How will you collect the leads or information of interested candidates?
Is it necessary to collect the leads? YES Suppose you run a campaign for brand awareness and someone like your message or products. He might convert into leads and eventually become a customer. How will he/she convert into a lead? Or how will he/she connect with you?
There are many ways to collect and converts the leads:-
- Newsletter subscription (offer something free initially)
- Landing pages (for creating an account on your website)
- Fill the form (to download the free content)
- Purchasing link (he might purchase or Add to cart)
- Affiliates and influencers Remember all these conversion aspects can reduce the cost of your future campaign. You can retarget all these in your ways.
Try to nurture all these leads and communicate with your sales team for their awareness. You can use automated email flows to ensure your brand presence in their mind. Try not to forget all these leads and try to collect new leads.
Well, you are ready for launch. But it is not a time to rest yet. Keep an eye on the campaign. Check the different channels and their metrics to understand their progress. Take a good measure to ensure the successful running of the campaign, no matter how long you will keep the campaign (days, weeks, months and quarters).
Try to learn from the previous campaign and apply in the future. Take a good check on strategies, channel manager and marketing platform on a never-ending cycle of an integrated marketing campaign.
BONUS If you have read until here, then I have bonuses for you towards your dedication of reading this blog and commitment towards your learning.
Now, you have total step by step towards integrated marketing campaign and I know you will execute your campaign in a proper well-mannered way.
Still, I am here to provide you with some additional strategies, practices or tips for the campaign.
It is not necessary to be on every channel for an integrated marketing campaign if your brand is not suitable for that. You can study or check your competitors for that and try it in your way. (Mostly Tech companies are not on print)
Always keep the single, relatable and simple message all across the platforms. If someone who saw your billboard, attract towards your message and visit your website. But he did not find the same what is on a billboard, he will not convert into a customer. (Intel make these types of mistakes)
Always mention your respective channels on every channel. Forex:- put the links of your website, email address, video and blog post on your social media handles or vice versa. (everyone is doing on YouTube)
Your interactive and innovative landing page can bring more leads. So, always do SEO on every page of your website and write good copy to attract visitors (visit the Apple website to check out their pages and copy)
Keep the Bios and message of your brand on every marketing channel clean, short and crispy. (Nike is a good example)
Colours and typography of your pages, images and posts should be according to your logo or brand colour and tagline font. So that the consumer can recall your brand through colors and images. You can do that for your stores (check the McDonald Instagram page and restaurant for that)
Always follow the viral trends and keep an eye on upcoming events and festivals to become relatable with your audience. (Memes and festival post) 
Examples of Successful Integrated Marketing Campaign
- The Dark Knight Rises This is one of the best examples of integrated marketing. The third movie in the Batman series is one of that movie who created hype due to its marketing strategies.In
An arrest warrant was issued on“The Batman” on Warner Bros. Website. In the press, Filmmaker explained that batman has left graffiti all over the world. The team put exact addresses of 300 sites including China, Australia and the U.K. on their sites. On the exchange of pieces of bat graffiti, they put corresponding frames of the trailer on the TDKR website.
Director Nolan informed the fans that they have to work to see the long-awaited trailer. This creates a call to action. Everyone tracked down hundreds of graffiti pieces and send them via social media and email, a new frame of trailer was unlocked.
- Old Spice (Smell like a man, Man)
Well, this is of the most successful rebranding integrated marketing campaign. This company is known for Aftershave products but degrading with the time until 2010. They come up with their products in a more youthful and playful way that it attracts a young audience.
Not they change their packaging design but also change their products name and tagline (“Smell like a Man, Man”).
Their 30-second TV ads become so much hit that change their website, landing pages and created social handles in their campaign. They didn’t feature the same tagline but keep the same colour, tone and theme to give their customers a constant experience across all platforms.
Some stats:-
- 6 million views on day 1 and 20 million campaign reach on day 3.
- 40 million views in a week and all-time most-viewed YouTube channel.
- The campaign got 1.4 billion impressions in the first 6 months.
- 4. Twitter following increased by 2700% and FB interaction by 800%.
These are two examples which create the best successful integrated marketing campaigns which pay them in the long term. If you know about other integrated marketing stories, comment in the below section.
Conclusion
Now, you have the whole idea about integrated marketing, its campaign and their execution. You are now fully prepared to run a best-integrated marketing campaign.
See, At last, I wanted to say that all the above steps will only able to help you during running a campaign and writing the examination.
Integrated marketing is one part of Holistic Marketing and even it has its pros and cons.
We will not discuss the pros and cons because, in marketing, only your trial and errors will tell the effectiveness of any marketing practices and strategies.
I hope that I can solve your problems, every doubt and every confusion related to integrated marketing simply and effectively with examples.
Still, you have any doubts and queries,
We have a comment section and a YouTube channel for the solution to your problem. Write it down and let us know.
Digital marketing, mobile marketing, email marketing, sales promotion and public relations are the major tools.
IMC helps you to do marketing using multiple channels, so your message can be heard more easily and frequently.
Creating brand awareness, generating leads, and increase in sales are some of the objectives of IMC.
It is a marketing approach that achieves the objective of marketing campaigns by well-coordinated use of different marketing channels. These channels tend to support each other and helps in sales growth.
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