Integrated marketing is the process of combining all marketing communication channels — advertising, PR, and social media — to create a seamless and customer-centric experience. In practice, that means maintaining a consistent look, feel, and tone across all channels. Let us compare integrated marketing to omnichannel, this will give us a better understanding of what integrated marketing entails.

Contents

• Omnichannel vs. Integrated Marketing
• Why Use Integrated Marketing?
• How to Start an Integrated Marketing Strategy

Omnichannel vs. Integrated Marketing

“What’s the difference between integrated and omnichannel marketing?” you may wonder. Not used to delivering consistency?” Yes, but in different ways.

Omnichannel marketing focuses on the customer experience by combining various communication channels to create a seamless brand interaction. This can include using an app to pay for your morning coffee or attending Sephora’s in-store beauty workshops.

Integrated marketing focuses on the message, integrating ads, sales promotions, PR, and social media to target customers. Snickers, for example, launched a social, television, retail, and print campaign in 2010 called “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.” The central theme (that being hungry literally changes your mood) remains consistent across media and markets.

While they are distinct marketing strategies, omnichannel and integrated marketing should complement each other. This is a missed opportunity to focus on a customer’s multi-dimensional brand experience rather than shopping experience.

Why Use Integrated Marketing?

Integrated marketing is unrivaled. Research shows that multi-channel campaigns outperform single or dual-channel campaigns by 300 percent. Voici a few reasons:

• You save unnecessary spending: Focusing on a single message not only saves money on campaign creation, but also prevents budget-wasting with inconsistent campaigns.
• You make a mark: Building brand awareness requires consistency across media and platforms in terms of graphics, headlines, and keywords. Consistency in creative helps reinforce campaign themes by exposing prospects to the same message more often.
• Better results: Combining communication tools and messaging improves marketing efficiency. The more unified, deliberate, and focused a customer’s journey, the more likely a sale and brand loyalty.

How to Start an Integrated Marketing Strategy

Integrated marketing isn’t just repeating ads across channels. To succeed, you must connect with your audience and adapt your message to each marketing platform. To evoke emotions in your customers, tell a consistent story.

So, how do you start an integrated marketing campaign? How do you maintain consistency while preventing customer boredom? Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Imagine yourself as your clients. In business, EQ trumps IQ. Before creating any campaigns, ask yourself, “What matters to my customers?” Consider how you can help them and make their lives easier.
• Generate a compelling idea. Integrated marketing campaigns that work revolve around interesting concepts. Begin by identifying your competitive advantages. From there, you can start thinking of ways to weave a story around your key differentiators.
• Adhere to your brand values. What is your ultimate mission? Is it to offer fair prices? Excellent design? Is it a mix of both?
• Use the benefits of various platforms. Use content that combines the strengths of multiple channels around a central idea.