Integrated marketing campaigns refer to the act of consistent messaging across both traditional (i.e. offline tactics) and non-traditional marketing channels (i.e. digital marketing tactics). Creating a single marketing strategy that intentionally blends online and offline tools presents many benefits, one of which is that it helps you attract your ideal clients. Consumers respond to marketing messages differently. By ensuring you have a voice across various platforms, you’ll be able to reach your potential clients in ways they respond to the most.
Integration is only effective when centered around a solid marketing strategy. This strategy should have the end goals in mind of what you’d like to achieve with your marketing efforts, as well as the types of customers you want to attract. Without having an understanding of who your audience is, an integrated marketing strategy won’t be very effective. Once a targeted strategy is in place, the integrated marketing tactics should just serve as a means to implement the strategy.
Here are a few reasons marketing integration is key to attracting your ideal client.
Integration Moves Potential Clients Through the Customer Journey
The customer journey is the thought process buyers go through leading up to their decision to buy your product or service.
In order to effectively reach your ideal client, you need to attract them in the first three phases of the customer journey:
- Know. This is the start of the journey. It’s when an individual comes into contact with your brand for the first time. Make sure your business explains what makes you unique and separates you from the competition. It’s important that your brand’s messaging and imagery are consistent across all channels.to promote brand recognition. Additionally, be sure to develop a strategy to get your brand seen through advertising and content marketing efforts.
- Like In this stage, the individual has noticed your brand and is deciding whether they want to learn more. It’s your job to give them a good first impression as they come across your business through various channels. Create a unique brand personality that people can relate to and stand behind, and provide information and resources that help them along their path to purchase. By allowing potential customers to understand your company culture, and giving them information and resources that address their pain points, you’ll be more likely to create a personalized experience, which will make them more likely to continue through the customer journey with you.
- Trust. In this stage, people are trying to figure out if you’re trustworthy or not. You must build up your online reputation for consumers to feel assured to make a purchase. To do this, you need to ensure you have reviews, testimonials, and case studies available to your prospects in the marketing channels they’ll come into contact with.
These stages of the customer journey often occur without the company’s direct interaction at all. It’s the part of the process where people are just becoming familiar with your business and brand. Because of this, it’s important you have a presence in multiple places where your audience is likely to either learn more about your company or see your messaging. These include directories like Google Local, YP, Yelp, your local chamber of commerce directory, as well as a presence in social media channels where your customers are likely to be.
Integration Builds Trust With Clients
The seemingly never-ending amount of marketing messages consumers receive can be both exhausting and annoying for them. Often these messages don’t have any strategy behind them at all—they are just blasted out to reach as many people as possible.
An integrated marketing strategy reinforces a brand’s messaging and identity by presenting your ideal audience with the right message at the right time, in the right channel. By reaching out to your ideal clients at relevant times and on relevant channels, you’ll be able to build trust with these consumers. The more a person trusts your company, the more of a relationship and a connection they feel with your business, the more likely they’ll be to buy from you.
Integration Provides a Clear Message of What Your Company Represents
As mentioned, in order to attract your ideal clients, you need a single, consistent message and strategy that resonates with your audience. Often companies make the mistake of using different tones and messages to attract different types of people, but this just leads to confusion about what the brand represents.
Integrated marketing ties everything together so that there isn’t any room for doubt or misinterpretation of what your company offers. Messaging needs to be clear, consistent, and show both value and character in order to be successful. Concise messaging makes it easier for people to relate to your brand. This will help to establish emotional connections with your ideal clients.
Integration Increases Brand Awareness and Brand Loyalty
Marketing integration helps to increase brand awareness. This will put you top of mind when potential clients are looking for a solution or service that you provide, and will set you apart from the competition. To move a potential customer from being aware of your brand to being a loyal customer, consider using a CRM system that allows you to track both current and prospective customers that you can engage with and nurture on a regular basis. A CRM can also go a long way for existing customers to drive loyalty and repeat business.
The way consumers respond to marketing is constantly changing. Integration will prepare you to shift along with the buyer behaviors because you don’t have all of your marketing eggs in one basket. By spreading out your marketing efforts, you’ll be able to attract your ideal clients at a time that will resonate with them the most, making them more likely to choose your business over the competition.
This post was first published on Digital SAP.
John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and best selling author of Duct Tape Marketing, Duct Tape Selling, The Commitment Engine The Referral Engine, and SEO for Growth. He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing System and Duct Tape Marketing Consulting Network that trains and licenses small business marketing consultants around the world. Follow him on Twitter and connect on LinkedIn.
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