In a team, every member brings their unique strength to help achieve a shared goal.
Integrated marketing could be seen in a similar light: In business, your shared goal is to help sell your product/ service to a specific audience. You have the option to use a number of sales channels to do this. Think of each individual sales channel as a member of your integrated marketing ‘team’. In my experience, the most successful brands make use of as many relevant communication channels as possible.
So, why am I telling you this? The reason is that as a marketing consultant, I often see organisations only making use of a small number of communication channels to get themselves in front of their target audience. In a team scenario, the more people you have with different skills, the stronger and more successful your team will be. In the same way, the more relevant marketing channels you use, the faster you will get your brand name in front of more of your buyers.
Here are a few examples of communication/ sales channels you can use as part of your integrated marketing strategy:
- E-shots/ e-zines
- Direct mail
- Search engine optimisation
- Cost per click advertising
- Social media
- Press releases/ news stories
- Advertising in local newspapers/ trade magazines/ radio
- Cross-selling
- Point of sale promotions
- Sales agents
- 3rd party distributors
- Referrals
- Cold calling
How many of these are you using in your regular marketing. How many are you not using? Some channels may not necessarily be suitable for your business but others that you haven’t considered in the past may be extremely lucrative.
The key to successful marketing is to constantly review what is working and what isn’t as part of your integrated strategy. The more relevant channels you use, the higher your success rate is likely to be!
It can be difficult to know where to start when writing your marketing strategy. Our free marketing strategy template on creating a plan that gets results can help. Download now.
