This
is the second of three articles excerpted from the paper “Integrated
Marketing: What It Is and Why You Should Embrace It”
Part
2
WHY
USE INTEGRATED MARKETING
Now
that you have a basic understanding of what integrated marketing is, you need
to understand why you should use it.
First,
let's discuss the fundamental purpose of marketing. In its simplest, most basic form, marketing
is about providing someone with enough information so that it will cause them
to make a purchase decision. Whether
that is done through providing data or information, providing an incentive of
some sort, comparing one product to another, emotional manipulation, or some
combination of all of those tactics, marketing is about helping to move the
target audience along the purchase path.
Deciding exactly how you will accomplish that is a function not just of
data and analysis, but also of knowing and understanding your target audience:
what drives them, what motivates them, what excites them.
Wouldn't
you like to make your marketing more effective and reach more of your target
audience? Be able to interact with your
target audience more easily? Help
increase their access to information so that they would move along the purchase
path faster? If you could do those
things, wouldn't that increase the effectiveness of your marketing? If so, then that is why you need to
understand integrated marketing.
Integrated
marketing is often referred to as the underlying strategic component of the
marketing planning process. This means
that in addition to the basics of creating and developing the marketing
activity (the 'who, what, when, where, how'), you need to take those actions
one step further to determine how they will work together to support the
overall campaign. By doing this, you are
taking your marketing to the next level and putting in place the necessary
infrastructure to build upon, thereby helping to ensure the overall success of
your marketing activity. Integrated
marketing not only helps you to optimize your overall marketing activity, but
also helps enhance its effectiveness.
Integrated
marketing provides you with the flexibility that a more 'traditional' marketing
approach does not in that it offers you the opportunity to do more than might
otherwise be expected. It allows you to
determine exactly what should and should not be included in the marketing mix
for any given situation. Integrated
marketing allows you to not only develop your own strategy and tactics and
choose what will be included in that mix, it requires you to take a more active
role in the marketing mix development process.
No
longer will your marketing be dull and boring.
No longer will you pull the marketing playbook from the shelf and select
'one marketing activity from column A, one from column B, one from column C',
etc. to create the marketing campaign.
Instead, you must actively take the time to determine your goal(s),
evaluate the different options and then determine what will work most
effectively for your specific situation.
As
with any other marketing activity though, the devil is in the details and the
full marketing planning process must still be completed. This level of detailed planning is a time
consuming process that will now require this additional analysis to be
performed at the beginning of the development process. However, the payoff for this level of due
diligence will be recognized when the marketing delivers the desired results.
All
of the items that are taken into consideration when developing any marketing
activity must still be reviewed and evaluated.
Then in addition to all of those steps, you must now also consider and
evaluate items such as:
- Which
marketing channel(s) will you use
- How
will the various marketing channels that you have chosen work together
- How
will the marketing message be leveraged and stay consistent across those
channels
- How
will your value proposition be conveyed
- How
will you engage with your target demographic at the various touch points
- How
will you drive traffic from one type of media to another
- How
will you drive traffic from one location to another
- How
will you capture demographic (or other) information from your target audience
- How
will you integrate and leverage your AR/PR activities
- How
will you integrate demand generation activities
- Will
you use SEO, SEM or both
- Which
social media platforms will you choose
- When/where/how
will you use those social media platforms to interact with your target audience
- What
are you providing to your audience (incentives, promotions, information, etc.)
and in what type of format(s)
- What
your time frame will be to respond to real-time questions, feedback, requests
for information, etc. that come from social media channels
- How
to respond to potential problems
By
considering questions such as the above, you now begin to evaluate how these
aspects of your marketing activity will work together and to what purpose. In other words, you must now take control. This approach puts you, the marketer, back in
charge and gives you back some of the creative control that many B2B marketers
have lost today.
HOW
TO USE INTEGRATED MARKETING
Integrated
marketing requires a mind-shift that in some ways takes you back to the earlier
days of marketing, when every activity was not quite as data-driven as it is
today. Rather than just studying
demographic profiles and making a decision based on the data contained therein,
integrated marketing requires a more hands-on approach, as you must first truly
understand your target audience and what your objective is with your
marketing. This will then enable you to
effectively choose what type of marketing tactic will work, which channel(s)
you should use to most effectively position your marketing message and reach
your audience, what tactic(s) will be most effective, etc. In other words, integrated marketing requires
careful consideration and evaluation of all the factors affecting which medium
you will choose.
Integrated
marketing ensures that all marketing channels, media and activities that are
related to a specific marketing campaign will support and contribute to that
campaign. How? Through what I call 'marketing
cross-pollination' (MCP™). MCP ensures that all of the marketing
channels you have chosen for your specific marketing activity will support and
refer to each other, thereby increasing your reach, efficiency and
effectiveness.
How
does integrated marketing do this?
Simple. You now have to define exactly what each
marketing channel being utilized is going to be used for (exposure, reach,
influence, information, interaction, data gathering, etc.) and then define how
each of those channels will also support the other channels. How is this done? Here are a few examples to give you an idea
of how integrated marketing comes together:
- Are
you using a social media site to hold a contest? Great.
Tie it to a request for additional information that leads the prospect
to provide you with demographic information while giving them additional points
towards winning the contest and giving them a chance to provide feedback as an
early adopter. Have a link to your
corporate website where other free downloads are available.
- Do
you have a corporate website where a white paper or case study can be
downloaded? Perfect, insert a frame on
that page that will display your YouTube video commercial, that also tells them
how they can join an online discussion about the product or ask questions of
industry experts in an online forum.
- Did
you place an advertisement in a leading subscription publication? Embed a QR
code on the page that, when scanned with a smart phone, will take the person to
whom the publication was sent to a PURL (personalized URL) where they will
automatically be entered into a contest and also includes links to your YouTube
video and other free downloadable resources.
- On
your YouTube site, have a Call To Action (CTA) at the end of your video that
invites the viewer to click on an embedded link that will take them to a
landing page where they can get more information on your product, download
resources and enter the contest.
- Provide
a link where a potential user of your product can download a fully functional
demo after providing their contact information.
Once the download starts, have another CTA that offers them additional
resources (white papers, case studies, best practices, etc.) that can be
downloaded from your corporate website, have your YouTube video embedded on
that landing page and include links to your social media sites.
As
you can see, all of the above marketing scenarios are no longer single,
stand-alone activities, but rather, are linked to and support other marketing
actions that provide more interaction with and more information, entertainment,
or value to the prospect. This is the
MCP process in action.
When
a prospect goes to one location or activity they are either exposed to other
marketing activities from within that same location, or are invited to interact
or engage further in some manner.
Through this type of integrated marketing, your target audience now has
the opportunity to be exposed to or interact with your product or service
numerous times. In each location,
whether it is online or offline, they are continuously exposed to additional
opportunities to experience your product or service, while continuing to be
exposed to the underlying consistent messaging that has been developed for this
marketing activity.
Not
only does your marketing now provide more opportunities to engage and interact
with your target audience at every customer touch point, but you have now
drastically increased the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing.
A
good example of integrated marketing is HP's 'The Computer Is Personal Again'
campaign11,12, which debuted in May 2006. Created by HP's agency Goodby, Silverstein
& Partners (GSP), this global campaign focused on the highly individual,
highly unique and personal relationship that people have with their
computers. The GSP campaign also changed
the focus from mainly discussing the technology inside the computers (i.e.,
'feeds and speeds') to more focus on how the computers help to empower
users. This switch from a 'product
superiority' to 'experience superiority' perspective was done to help focus
more on the user experience and to enhance HP's brand. As Mike Winkler (HP Chief Marketing Officer)
explained, "what we wanted to do was address the emotional connections
that customer had to the brand. HP wasn't loved".13
A
graphic logo of two hands overlaid was developed for use as a unifying element
across all of the various properties chosen for this campaign, which helped to
reinforce the theme. From each point of
contact potential customers were able to find out information about the
computers as well as read stories on how other people used them. The campaign was launched online, on websites
such as MySpace, MTV, MSN and people were encouraged to write blogs, play
games, give feedback and reviews, tag videos, etc., all contributing to
building the buzz around the campaign.
HP even created a Facebook page that is still in use today, where they
could interact with people, post comments and feedback, participate in
contests, etc.
Thanks
in part to this integrated marketing approach, HP beat Dell in PC sales in the
second half of 2006, as well as in 2007.
'The Computer is Personal Again' campaign helped the HP brand gain 9
percent in brand value, (measured by Interbrand), in 2007 (compared to the
previous year) and 18 percent since 2005, compared to a drop of 10 percent from
2004 to 2005. According to Roger L. Kay, president of consultancy Endpoint
Technologies Associates, "It's been a very effective campaign. It's been
good at drawing attention to HP's products."14
Although
you will find this example often referred to as an example of IMC, due to the
consistency of messaging and logo across all of the channels in use, as well as
the interaction between and support of the various customer touch points, I
consider this campaign to actually be an early example of integrated marketing,
albeit one that does incorporate IMC as well.
WHAT
TO INCLUDE IN INTEGRATED MARKETING
While
this sounds complicated, this is actually the easiest question to answer, at
least from a marketing perspective. The
answer is, 'Use what works'. While this
sounds too simple to be helpful, in reality this is the only answer that you
need.
As
defined previously, integrated marketing is the process of choosing the
appropriate strategy and tactics for a given situation. Just as a carpenter brings the same set of
tools to each work site and then chooses which specific ones that he needs for
the job at hand, as a professional marketer you have a similar choice to
make. Every marketing scenario and
situation is different and every one will require a different strategy, a
different set of tactics, a different set of channels to be used to accomplish
your specified goals. Because of this,
there is no single approach to integrated marketing. Your 'tools of the trade' may be the same,
but the way in which you will use and combine them will vary from job to job,
in the same manner as the carpenter.
Remember,
integrated marketing allows you to simplify what could otherwise be an
overwhelming, daunting process by helping you to realize that what is important
is not the number of marketing actions and activities that take place, but
determining which are the most appropriate and effective ones to achieve what
you need to accomplish. With the
appropriate mix of media, channels, etc., you will maximize the impact and
consistency of your marketing.
When
using integrated marketing, in addition to choosing the appropriate marketing
strategy and mix, keep the concept of simplicity in mind as well. Choosing appropriately helps you to eliminate
other, less optimal tactics, channels, media, etc., helping to reduce the
required components to the least required to deliver the desired end
results. The KISS rule15
should always apply, as more does not always equal better. As world-renowned architect Ludwig Mies van
der Rohe said “Less is more”16 (when referring to restraint and
simplicity in architectural design). The
same holds true for integrated marketing.
Remember, integrated marketing is about results, not about how many
different components can be combined to support one marketing activity.
One
final comment. There is a thin line
between integrated marketing and IMC, as well as areas of commonality, but to
be successful and effective, you need to incorporate both IM and IMC into your
marketing activities.
©
Richard Hatheway – 2013
All rights reserved.
BIBLIOGRAPHY