Today, with so many delivery channels available, how do you know which marketing channel works the best? The answer is simple – you don’t. Therefore, today, the best shot for success is to have a multichannel approach to marketing. This ensures that you are in the same space where your customers are. While planning your marketing strategy, you need to consider a plethora of campaigns and channels to find the best one that suits your business. But over the past few years, with the emergence of new digital marketing platforms, there has emerged a need to integrate different marketing channels into one unified approach to drive business success. In this article, we have defined what an integrated marketing plan is, why is it needed, and how to develop a successful integrated marketing strategy.
What is integrated marketing?
Many businesses keep looking for a single strategy for marketing that can drive the best ROI for their business. But, the fact is that there is no single approach that can work today as there are diverse platforms available and customers keep on switching one channel with another. This is why businesses have a better chance of success if they adopt a unified marketing approach across multiple channels. This is known as integrated marketing. It is a strategic approach to combine channels of communication and create unified and interactive user experiences. This helps in targeting specific audiences across all channels. It is aimed at creating a robust customer experience that can answer all customers’ needs and engages them with your business throughout their lifecycle.
Why is an integrated marketing plan needed?
An integrated marketing plan is needed for the following reasons:
- To offer user-centric and personalized experience to customers
- To gain detailed insights into customer interests and behavior
- To keep an eye on the strategy of your competitors
- To bring changes to your own marketing strategy in accordance with the ongoing trends
- To design an effective marketing campaign that can give a good ROI
Building an integrated marketing strategy
#1. Determine the correct metrics to track
To check whether your marketing campaign is yielding the desired outcome, the best way is to first determine your objective followed by the right metric. This helps you to understand what you need to accomplish. For example, if you are aiming at increasing brand awareness, start monitoring your web page and traffic that your website gets. You need to track how engaging your content is on social media and if at all your audience is showing their interest in it. You need to set a weekly or monthly target and achieve it.
#2. Back up your strategy with marketing automation
Marketing automation can help you put the right content at the right time at the right platform. This can further help you to position your brand better and, as a result, there will be an increase in conversions. The right technology helps you to simplify your marketing strategy, efforts, and prevents you from wasting time and resources on things that are not helpful for your business.
#3. Enhance your customer experience
An integrated marketing plan helps you to engage with your customers not only at specific touchpoints but right from the beginning of their journey till the end. Look out for every opportunity to connect with your customers before and after the sale.
To know more about the benefits of an integrated marketing strategy
