Integrated marketing can help you send a unified message across all marketing channels. This consistency is a marker of professionalism and trust. But what exactly is integrated marketing?
Integrated marketing includes four segments: external, internal, horizontal, and vertical. External marketing refers to the marketing you deploy to promote your business to an external audience or customers. Internal marketing refers to the marketing you do for your employees so their satisfaction can lead to positive word-of-mouth about your business. Horizontal means streamlining the communication between departments of your business so they’re motivated to increase sales or revenue. Vertical is a top-down approach that makes sure all business activities are aligned with the business’s mission and vision.
Without proper brand infrastructure, you may not be able to provide valuable services or experiences for your customers. This is why integrated marketing is essential to your business. If you’re not sure where to start, consult a digital marketing agency in Bangladesh. You’ll find cost-effective solutions to help build a solid structure and guidelines for your brand.
Integrated marketing uses marketing channels to build strong relationships with customers, which improves public perception of your company. With improved perception and trust, you are bound to make more sales and generate more audience engagement. But how is an integrated marketing campaign created?
Creating an Integrated Marketing Campaign in 7 Steps
An integrated marketing campaign utilizes both traditional and digital marketing channels to cast a wider net and cover all customer touchpoints. Traditional ones include TV commercials, newspaper ads, radio commercials, posters, brochures, billboards, and transit advertising, etc. Digital ones include websites, Google ads, social media content and ads, SEO, etc. To execute a full integrated marketing campaign, here are some of the steps you must follow.
Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience
Without knowing where your target audience is located, what their age and gender are, and what they like and don’t like, it’s hard to market your products effectively. Develop a profile of your ideal audience based on their interests, attitudes, behaviors, education level, employment status, and more. This will help you to come up with marketing messages, designs, outlets, and strategies that will easily convert your leads.
Step 2: Build a Website
74% of customers say websites influence their purchases. A website is essentially the face of a company. It is sometimes the first point of contact between a business and a customer. So it’s crucial to build a website with a great UI and UX so customers feel drawn in. The website must also reflect the brand’s color, tone, and services as accurately as possible so customers can trust that they’ll get exactly what was shown on the website. If you don’t know how to create a website like that, hire a website development company in Bangladesh. You’ll get web solutions that fit all your needs without exceeding your budget.
Step 3: Invest in SEO
It can bring your website to the top search results so people can find your business organically. SEO is a broad category, but you can start with something simple. Make sure to research using Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Semrush for words with high search volumes and insert them in your website description, blogs, captions, and more. Backlinking on websites with high authority is also a great strategy to bring people to your business website.
Step 4: Do Social Media Marketing
With 5.24 billion people actively using social media in the world, only a fool would not tap into that market. If you have completed the first step and know who your target audience is, you can move on to selecting platforms that your audience is most active on. Then start creating content following that platform’s format, track performance, remove what’s not working, and recreate what is. These could be static content, short motion videos, or long descriptive videos. Create content that best showcases your products and services, engage with the audience, and start generating leads.
Step 5: Run Ads
Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn ads are a great way to highly target your audience. You can set the location, age, gender, and employment status of the people you want to reach and have your content show up on their feed. Through metrics like impressions, views, and clicks, you can tell which ad is doing well and which needs to be updated.
Google’s PPC ads are a cost-effective and quick way to bring your business to the top of search engine results pages. Google Ads puts your ad in high-traffic areas online. Since you only pay per click, this is a much better budget-friendly solution for small to medium-sized businesses.
Step 6: Try Out Influencer Marketing
Over the years, many social media content creators have built large, loyal followings. These audiences look to them for entertainment, advice, and support. Brands can access these audiences through these creators. Creators can influence their audience to buy products and services that they like or are paid to promote.
Additionally, since these influencers have become familiar faces, making them brand ambassadors has become a lucrative branding strategy. Whether it’s unboxing videos, honest product reviews, or going live from your business location, influencers have the power to sell your products and services to hundreds and thousands of their followers.
But not all influencers can bring you results. You have to be careful about who you collaborate with, as the influencer’s audience has to overlap with your target audience.
Step 7: Hire a PR team
PR marketing is an overlooked aspect of marketing. It involves both traditional and digital forms of marketing. A PR team can help you create a narrative of your brand in the media so your reputation is always maintained and protected. The team can send press releases to major media houses to showcase your latest developments, achievements, and charity work. It can also post on various reputable news websites, so when someone Googles you, they know about what your company is like outside of the products and services you sell. PR helps create an overall brand image that people can easily recognize and trust.
Step 8: Organize Events
Event management is more than just sitting for an hour and watching panelists on stage discuss a topic, it’s a great way to engage your employees as well as customers. Activation booth events help you engage with new customers in a high-traffic area, social events let your employees bond with one another so they feel motivated to keep doing a great job, and corporate events give you opportunities to network with industry professionals.
Conclusion
An integrated marketing approach lets your business enjoy the benefits of a full-service marketing package. It allows you to engage with people digitally and physically, so you leave a greater impact on them.
Creating a lasting impression and building trust with your audience is easier than ever if you follow the above seven steps. You cover all customer touchpoints so that anytime a customer interacts with your brand, they have a positive experience. The brand message is unified and clear on all fronts, which helps drive the message home every time with every customer.
