Tips for building a successful integrated marketing strategy for your brand

There is no shortage of techniques and tools on the market to distribute your brand’s marketing messages. Social networks, ad networks,email marketing , SMS, WhatsApp… the possibilities are endless.

But which one is the best way to reach your audience? How to deliver messages that work?

Not all companies and agencies have the resources to carry out various tests and check the best way to communicate with their customers, but it is possible to develop an integrated marketing strategy with enough reach to reach the majority of your contacts.

What is an integrated marketing campaign?

Integrated marketing is the process of organizing your different channels to work together to promote your products or services, typically through a strategic campaign. Integrated marketing also works to align the core brand message being delivered through your marketing channels and assets.

The main goal of most integrated campaigns is to convert leads into customers.

Each industry is different and integrated campaigns can also include a sales strategy. An integrated campaign can be more successful than using just a single advertising channel to a limited audience.

However, before venturing into the steps involved in creating a high-performing integrated campaign, marketers must first understand the ground rules. You need to be prepared to create passionate, empathetic communications filled with valuable content .

The basic rules for creating messages for an integrated campaign are:

• Persistence – create messages that are connected;
• Link – connect information across all channels;
• Unity – create messages that support and reinforce the ongoing idea;
• Usefulness – Distribute messages that are useful and contribute to the bigger picture.

Why are integrated marketing campaigns effective?

While integrated marketing campaigns may have different goals (e.g. converting views, building brand awareness, among others), they should all have one component in common: aligning your channels to present a united marketing front.

If marketing channels are players, consider your integrated marketing campaign as the coach in charge of driving the plays and helping your channels function as a unified—not disparate—system.

It is also more effective to run integrated marketing campaigns compared to campaigns on individual channels. They are impactful for a few reasons:

– They have a greater chance of being seen on multiple channels, thus keeping your brand top of mind and bringing visitors closer to conversion;

– They build trust with visitors as they see a consistent message across multiple channels;

– They save money, as resources and content can be shared and reused across different marketing channels. And depending on your campaign, customers can help you market your product or service.

Check out our tips and learn how to develop an integrated marketing strategy for your brand!

How to build an integrated marketing campaign from scratch

It can be difficult to design an integrated marketing campaign from scratch. But don’t worry, we’re here to help. Follow these steps to get started:

1. Set objectives for your campaign

Before considering which channels will be part of your integrated marketing campaign, you must consider the objective.

Maybe you’ve launched a new product, service or initiative and want to show it to customers. Maybe you’ve completely changed your brand positioning and want to convey your new message. Maybe you simply have a new slogan and want your audience to start associating your company with it.

Whatever the goal of your campaign, it’s important to always keep it in mind. This will help you stay focused, track results, and learn how to improve next time.

These goals should also relate to at least one of the following key performance indicators ( KPIs ) and their metrics, which you can track when launching your campaign:

– Conversions and backlinks;

– Sentiment comments and social shares;

– Lead generation and session-to-lead conversion rate.

Additionally, while increased engagement and new leads are always welcome, a multichannel campaign must also consider the bigger picture and how your campaign impacts sales opportunities and business revenue. Take a moment to map out how you want your campaign to impact your bottom line, too.

2. Choose marketing channels and set goals for each one

Now that you know what the overall goal of your integrated marketing campaign is, you probably have a better idea of ​​which channels can help you achieve that goal.

When choosing your channels, it all comes down to what you are trying to achieve with your integrated marketing campaign. There are several marketing channels that you can use to distribute your campaign content: email marketing, print and digital advertising, press relations and public relations, content marketing and SEO, social networks, events and sponsorships and even packaging, among others . others.

Your integrated marketing campaign should include a variety of channels to reach the largest audience and convey your campaign message. If you notice that you are not getting the expected results from one or more channels, don’t hesitate to add, remove or test new ones.

3. Define your buyer personas by channel

Each marketing channel targets its specific buyer persona. Therefore, instead of defining a broad persona for your campaign, you should define your audience by channel.

There will inevitably be some overlap, but it’s wise to understand exactly who you’re talking to in each medium and how you can adapt those specific assets to be most successful.

4. Create adaptive marketing messages and assets

At this point, you have already defined the campaign objective, target audience and marketing channels. Now it’s time to create the content for your integrated marketing campaign. This stage is where copywriting, design and other creative processes come into play.

An important component of integrated marketing content is adaptability. To keep your campaign consistent (and make your job easier), you should be able to repurpose any content to be used on different channels.

5. Establish a plan to capture leads

Whether or not you intend for your campaign to capture leads, you must always be prepared to receive them. Don’t leave this until after you launch your campaign. Even if you’re managing a campaign to increase your brand awareness, consider how your visitors can convert into leads – and, eventually, customers.

First, consider how a visitor can convert into a lead. Would they subscribe to your newsletter? Would you share your information to download content? Would they create an account on your website?

Then consider how your leads will be nurtured once they convert. Would they enter an automated email flow? Would you pass them on to the sales department?

Regardless of how you go about this step, make sure your leads don’t fall through the cracks since they’ve voluntarily provided their information – and it’s precious.

6. Launch and measure your campaign

Ready to launch your integrated marketing campaign? It may be time to put your campaign to work… but it’s not time to rest yet.

Remember those KPIs and metrics from the first stage? Whatever KPIs are related to your campaign’s overall goal (e.g., increasing brand awareness, rebranding, new product, etc.), start tracking these subsequent metrics each week, month, and quarter to see how successful it is in achieve your goal.

6 Tips for Creating an Effective Integrated Marketing Campaign

Understand channels

Whether email, SMS or push notification , there are several ways to get the message across. Marketers must know and understand their customer base’s preferred method of communication – and focus on those that have the most reach and engagement.

Come up with killer ideas

For many professionals, the birth of an idea can begin with a title or a brainstorming session where a concept takes shape. A good start is to define the campaign objective. Once you know where you want to go, it becomes easier to plot a route to follow.

Create a message structure

As it is an integrated campaign, there is no point saying exactly the same thing on each channel – this will make customers leave immediately. Nobody has time to check the same message twice!

This is where the campaign really starts to take shape: each message is important to develop a following that nurtures the customer all the way to conversion.

A recommendation here would be to apply a six-phase process, starting with the first email, which should be the introduction to the product, service or offer. It’s a chance to instantly engage the recipient and create a level of interest.

Next comes social proof – which highlights why the customer should remain interested in what the company is trying to sell. The third activity is all about gain – simply answering the customer’s question, “What will I get if I buy this?”

The fourth stage of the sequence focuses on fear, playing with the consequences of what happens if the recipient doesn’t accept the offer. This email should be guided by logic – that is, how it makes sense to buy – before finally revealing what the loss will be for the consumer if the conversion is not carried out immediately.

Effectively utilize messaging across each channel

It is important for marketers to be efficient with the budget and time invested. It doesn’t make sense to spend money and energy on a campaign that doesn’t bring the expected return.

Sending too many messages can send your emails straight to the SPAM folder , but sending too few messages can make potential customers forget about your brand.

We recommend blocking certain pieces of content – ​​such as low- and high-value downloadable e-books – to keep engagement high, but also to find out when this content can be used on social media or in email marketing to create a conversion. Understanding your customers’ interests is key!

Deliver the message

Where is the campaign running and where is the traffic being directed? If your customer can be redirected to a landing page or similar, for example, this allows you to analyze their level of interest in your content.

Additionally, statistics show that dynamic landing pages can convert up to 20% more customers. And don’t forget to automate the flow when possible!

Analyze the results

Finally, by evaluating the results of your integrated campaign you can analyze what worked — and what didn’t. There’s a problem here: each channel has its own set of metrics, but there are ways to unify this data, like using Google Analytics .

A good tip is to monitor audience segmentation – and also lead scoring. This allows you to understand how each group is progressing and rank the most engaged leads, allowing this information to be fed to the sales team for conversion.

It is also important to analyze each message and its results to see what can be improved. For example: you should immediately eliminate any complexity and simplify your message, create good quality designs, and always think about your audience’s needs.

Once these areas are mastered, messages can be turned into high-performing integrated campaigns – it works!