Integrated Marketing Campaigns: A Must for Marketing Today

Marketing campaigns today stretch far beyond traditional radio or print advertisements. With more than three quarters of North America regularly using the Internet, customers can be reached through e-mail, search engines, social media, and more. Combining marketing efforts on various different platforms into an integrated marketing campaign can help take marketing efforts to the next level and increase customer awareness and conversions.

Benefits of running integrated campaigns

Customers today are hit with marketing messages from all angles. In 2012, a Fast Company article quoted research that stated we see approximately 5,000 ad messages per day.  From the buses and billboards on our way to work to e-mail messages and online side-bar advertisements, companies are all vying for our attention. Given this extreme amount of choice, it can be difficult for customers to keep track of the various companies. Integrated campaigns allow business to show a uniform message and image across platforms, helping customers to relate to a company’s message in a variety of contexts.  From an internal standpoint, integrated marketing campaigns also help to use marketing budgets more effectively because of the unified use of resources.

Integrating a campaign

The focal point of running an integrated marketing campaign is sending a common message out across a variety of marketing channels. Like any marketing campaign, business should begin by identifying their target demographics and the behavior of those demographics. Are they commuters or young adults frequently on social media? Use this information to select the best ways to place marketing material. Design a clear campaign that works well on all the selected channels and can be used to drive traffic to a common location, such as a website. Have the entire marketing team work in sync to keep the message and goals of the campaign uniform.
 

Does it work?  Garnier Fructis developed an integrated marketing campaign combining some traditional marketing (free samples and a mobile brand experience) along with some inbound methodology (Tweeting with a landing page) and ended up with a brand interaction experience at the Bonaroo Music Festival that gave away over 90,000 samples and almost 6,000 premiums.  They had over 150 million relevant social media impressions over the course of the festival.  Almost 4,000 people had their hair styled and 20,000 took advantage of the Garnier sponsored shower. I’d say they got their point across.

So what? Designing an integrated marketing campaign will boost customer awareness of the brand and help improve the success of the overall campaign.  You spent a lot of energy coming up with that fabulous marketing campaign.  Now, give it wings.

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