This term consists of two words- “integrated” and “marketing”.  In other words, when all advertising channels or media convey a consistent message about the brand/ad campaigns to your target audience.

“Integrated marketing offers opportunities to break through to consumers in new markets.”

Betsy Holden, Senior Advisor, Mckinsey & Co.

Every brand knows the importance of marketing. Therefore, marketers believe that Integration of all your marketing efforts from different channels maximizes the result. In this instance, the combined effort is more than the sum of effort in separate channels.

According to a survey by Google, it shows that Marketing leaders are 1.5X as likely as mainstream marketers to have an integrated marketing and advertising technology stack.

How does Integrated Marketing work? 

1. If you want to be better at marketing, use all the possible channels and mediums. It will help you to get your potential customers.
2. Being in the customer’s mind is not an easy task. Here, the importance of advertisement came into play. Advertise in such a way that it does not irritate your customer but at the same time helps them to remember you from time to time. Customers make a purchase when the brand has successfully cleared all touchpoints.
3. Concurrently follow both traditional and modern marketing strategies to grab the viewer’s attention. A big established brand can be seen everywhere, from popular magazines and television ads to social media, newsletters, websites, billboards, etc.
4. Try to keep constant messages on every channel. An audio ad on Spotify or a video ad on Youtube should represent the same.
5. Your marketing may involve storytelling about the campaign and its audience.

A brief about Touchpoints-

Identify the touchpoints and try to interact with your consumer on every level. Firstly, inconvenience at any point from pre-purchase to post-purchase level will discourage them to purchase the product further. You can understand it through this infographic below.

What are the components of Integrated Marketing?

1. Customer is God

Do you know how the advertising and marketing teams get their successful campaign ideas?

The answer is by directly asking their customers.

Never ignore your customer feedbacks because they are important for the growth of your company. Marketers represent their product as the new and unique solution to their buyer’s problem. Thus, convincing customers to buy your product becomes easier.

People follow trends, so make sure to keep up with the needs and expectations of your customer from time to time. With time, the need for user changes because we all thrive on upgradation. Thus, bringing up-gradation in your marketing strategies each time is essential. Maybe the strategy that worked previously will work at the present.  

Maintaining your customers is the second step after gaining a better customer base. Identify the common traits and needs of your loyal customers. This will allow your customer to feel satisfied with your product.

2. Better Inter-department relations

If you purchase any Apple product, the first step is unboxing and that gives immense pleasure to buyers and ensure them that they invested in a quality product.

Apple marketers knew it and thus they work closely with other departments like customer care, delivery, and sales department to provide better results. Marketing leaders should work with interrelated departments to ensure the satisfaction of the customer with the end product.

3. Data-driven Culture

Data Insights are necessary and access to data to other team members or employees helps them to understand the market. As a result, they feel motivated to share their views to improve the stats.

Analyzing data is done after accessing the data. About 75% of marketers believe lack of data and analytics is the reason for the downfall of one business. Firstly, one should get trained to understand the data and stats that will help them to analyze the performance of their campaigns. It is a basic and a necessary skill yet many people lack it here.

4. Organizational goals

The organizational goals include maximizing profits, increasing growth rates, optimizing productivity, bringing innovative ideas with time to survive in the market, and many more. The main idea is to focus particularly on every department because the goal is customer-oriented for each of them.

The increased growth rates of your products are only possible if you cleared all the touchpoints. Graph of Repetitive customers shows that your brand starts getting recognized by people. These customers can advertise your product through word of mouth.

Data-Insights will help to evaluate your organizational goals and the working of your marketing team.

What are the factors that influence marketing?

Now, after knowing the components of marketing, you should know that marketing needs to be done differently if the situation is different. Components remain the same but factors of marketing change!

Sometimes you don’t need to market your product. Because it has gained recognition from word of mouth. For instance, Lamborghini limits its advertising only to high-income people. Obviously, they know their target audience very well.

Factors are-

1. Population

Population increase is not good for the climate but good for your business. More people mean more demand for the product.

A large population may act as a white canvas where implementing correct marketing strategies can help you to increase the demand for your product.

2. Income sources

Millennials believe in multiple sources of income and hence they promote doing extra part-time or investment. People have some income apart from their profession that gives them the freedom to spend on their desires.

3. Technology

Technology had made advertising easy and now you can see them everywhere. Earlier, televisions became a source and now it is phones. Presently, a new concept of 3d stores is evolving, where H & M is about to open 3d stores in the metaverse.

“Virtual goods have seen stellar growth last year, and clothing    companies will not miss a beat to participate in additional revenue generation opportunities,”

-Hitesh Malviya, Founder, Itsblockchain

4. Social-media buzz

The Influencer era has begun after 2019. Now even small businesses run well with the help of digital marketing and influencers. People purchase stuff that they see on social media a lot of times. You can see many Instagram brands that advertise through the help of influencers.

A study by Google, showed there are 900 digital touchpoints of an automotive brand before purchasing. Firstly, you have to bring the audience to your site. Secondly, you have to make them visit your profile frequently. At the last, after crossing all touchpoints, the purchase is made. About 71% of the touchpoints were over on mobile.

5. Credit facility

Credit cards give the opportunity to consumers to purchase expensive products and pay later. In addition, this helped marketers to target these audiences and increase sales. Credit card companies collab with different product/service businesses to increase the usage of their credit cards. Attractive schemes like a zero % interest rate on credits trigger an increase in sales.

Overall, this system helps businesses as well as consumers.

CONCLUSION-

Integrated marketing is the present and future of business. Hence, big brands will never compromise on marketing. Business people always use multiple channels for that reason.

It must be remembered that analyzing the market is important before making any strategy.