Create An Integrated Marketing Campaign

By Justin Maas


Every company wants to get included in the marketing world. Marketing your company is the best way to increase the amount of profit your company generates, get more visitors to the website, and increase your customer base. The issue is that too often companies send out so many marketing messages that sometimes the messages and branding conflict with each other and consumers are left puzzled about what the company stands for and can do for them.

It is vital to have an integrated marketing campaign that pushes the same message across several different media formats. Using just one medium to convey your company's message might work, but you will be missing a large segment of the available audience. You want your brand to be seen by buyers no matter what medium they are using. If they are online you want them to see a banner ad for your company, when watching television they should see a commercial, and when flipping through a newspaper they should see your company's print ad. All of these ads should have the same look and feel and express the same message. You need to remember that the initial goal of the different advertising mediums as well. For example, if you use Twitter for business, your goal is to get more visitors to your website.

An important part of an integrated marketing campaign (IMC) that often gets neglected is training and teaching your employees. If you are trying to convey a particular image with your company you need to make sure your staff is informed and knows how they should be interacting with customers. When a company rolls out a new IMC and forgets to tell their employees ahead of time, it leads to confusion and frustrated customers because they feel they aren't being adequately served. If you place importance on customer service in your marketing, it is critical that your employees understand what you consider good and bad customer service.

The appearance of your stores should factor in to your integrated marketing campaign. Apple is a prime example of this mindset, with their white, minimalist, clean stores. The look of their stores gels with their overall brand and conveys the core simplicity of Apple's marketing.

For an integrated marketing campaign to truly perform, it takes a lot of cooperation between many different levels of the company. It is crucial to communicate with all of the various segments so they know exactly what the plan is and how they can help. The primary cause of the breakdown of an integrated marketing campaign is lack of communication.

Integrated marketing campaigns are tricky to implement, but the rewards are worth it. Consumers will know specifically what to expect from your company and will come to understand your brand more than the brand of your competitor. Every company should work on integrating all of their marketing communications.




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