What is integrated marketing?
Integrated marketing is the coordination of marketing channels, messages, and tactics to create a unified experience for the target audience. Also known as integrated marketing communications (IMC), it involves cohesively integrating all aspects of marketing, like advertising, public relations (PR), and social media.
In addition to these areas, the integrated marketing approach ensures consistency in messaging, design, and tone, creating a seamless customer journey across multiple touchpoints. Since a plethora of channels exists, integrated marketing requires strategic planning and intentional collaboration by employees. Because of this, lots of teams use marketing automation software to reduce the effort needed to create a personalized, integrated customer experience.
Basic elements of integrated marketing
The idea behind integrated marketing is to produce a single, unified approach across all teams and channels to improve the customer experience.
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This means that customers should see similar branding, images, messages, and content in the following types of communication:
- Advertising. Companies create paid advertising campaigns for print media, radio, television, websites, and apps. Sometimes in-house teams design these campaigns; other times, external ad agencies do. Either way, these campaigns should carry the same tone and feel as other marketing messages.
- Direct marketing. This form of communication sees companies making targeted messages to send directly to specific segments of consumers. These teams send coupons, special offers, or announcements via email, text, direct mail, catalogs, flyers, or door-to-door sales. All direct marketing communications align in their messaging and design.
- Public relations. PR is how companies engage with people to manage perception of their brand. This includes managing crises and making announcements about new products.
- Landing pages. When consumers click on an ad, they’re often directed to a dedicated landing page to convince them to buy the product or service. This page should look and feel similar to the ad so that consumers instantly know they’ve arrived at the right place, creating a seamless experience.
- Social media. Technically a form of direct marketing, social media builds a strong community, generates brand recognition, and attracts new customers. Social media managers must coordinate with the marketing and advertising teams to ensure they post images and content that match the rest of the campaign.
Benefits of integrated marketing
Companies implementing integrated marketing create a consistent brand experience, which often leads to exceptional campaign results. Specific benefits include:
- Increased brand awareness. Integrated marketing creates an omnichannel presence that gets a company in front of more prospects, increasing its brand awareness and visibility. By reinforcing their messaging across multiple channels, companies build a rapport with leads and customers.
- Improved customer engagement. Companies can offer meaningful communication opportunities across platforms with integrated marketing. Customers appreciate the consistent messaging and cohesion between platforms, driving higher customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
- Greater efficiency. Companies can optimize their blog posts by including keywords, adding backlinks, linking internally, and strategically writing meta descriptions. This process, called search engine optimization (SEO), helps a site rank higher on search engines and direct more users to their site.
- More cost savings. Integrated marketing drives more efficient processes, allowing teams to optimize their budget. Instead of working on random, disparate campaigns, teams collaborate on distribution schedules, repurpose content, and work toward shared goals.
Integrated marketing best practices
While an integrated marketing campaign takes time and effort, companies often see a considerable return on their investment. For maximum success, follow these best practices:
- Create a customer-centric mentality. An integrated marketing campaign starts with a thorough understanding of the customer and the customer journey. With this in mind, marketers can thoughtfully formulate segments, messaging, and creative direction. They can also choose which channels to focus their efforts on for the best results.
- Foster a collaborative environment. Integrated marketing involves the efforts of multiple departments. These groups must communicate and meet regularly in person or virtually to plan and evaluate campaigns.
- Cross-promote content. Teams should make it easy for customers to navigate between channels. For example, they can include social sharing buttons at the end of blog posts and plug their website address on social media and in emails. Customers can jump from one platform to another in a smooth, uninterrupted experience.
- Use data to evaluate progress. Teams should keep a close eye on key performance indicators (KPIs) across different channels, like customer acquisition cost (CAC), conversion rates, and cost per lead (CPL). Then, they can use this data to refine their strategies and optimize campaigns.
Find the best marketing analytics software to track and analyze campaign data.
Kelly Fiorini
Kelly Fiorini is a freelance writer for G2. After ten years as a teacher, Kelly now creates content for mostly B2B SaaS clients. In her free time, she’s usually reading, spilling coffee, walking her dogs, and trying to keep her plants alive. Kelly received her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Notre Dame and her Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of Louisville.
