Posts Tagged ‘Stakeholders’
Yay! This month’s theme is one of my favorites: Marketing Integration! Even before I had heard the term “marketing integration” coined, I was preaching to co-workers on this topic. Afterall, everything you post sends a message, every message builds your brand, and if you want everyone to view your brand a particular way… well, it’s obvious that integration is key!
So this week I am going to talk about marketing integration overall, with the next few posts for this month really getting into the nitty-gritty of integrating your social media + marketing activities. But first, I’m nailing down the technical description of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC).
IMC is ” a process for managing the customer relationships that drive brand value” (IMC Using Advertising & Promotion to Build Brands)
Now, what does that REALLY mean?
According to Merriam Webster, integration is “to form, coordinate, or blend into a functioning or unified whole.”
It basically means instituting a strategy of internal and external marketing integration so that everyone understands the processes, methods, and goals for achieving brand success (how that is defined differs from company to company!). Without internal understanding, you certainly won’t have external understanding, and without that you’ll get nowhere.
5 Savvy Things to Know About Marketing Integration:
1. Integration is more than just visible blending. Match your website to your newsletter, your Twitter to your Facebook, your advertising to your sponsorship materials, etc. While all of that is extremely important, true integration is both broader and deeper than visible similarities.
2. Integration entails cross-functionality. This means that more than just your marketing team is involved. After all, if your branding is to carry throughout all elements of a business, it’s easier to achieve when you have representatives from customer service, sales, etc., all contributing to the team effort!
3. Integration means touching all of your stakeholders. After you have worked on your internal components, move to the external-vendors, customers, etc. Integration doesn’t stop just with the person who buys your product!
4. Integration can involve strong data mining. If you have ever needed to build a list for marketing outreach, you have probably done some data mining. And as you may have figured out, data mining can be critical in reaching the right folks with the right message to drive sales and awareness. So make sure you make time to data mine!
5. Integration means more than just posting matching messages. It means posting the right message(s) in the right place(s) at the right time(s). Think about the power of that! If you have to touch folks 7 times to drive action, strategic timing and location are essential to make it happen!
So that, my friends, is integrated marketing in a (very small) nutshell.
Want more sites to look at on this topic? Enjoy below!
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