Essential Strategies for Successful Integrated Marketing
The key to success for integrated marketing is by harnessing the power of multiple, integrated marketing channels. Organizations can produce a more personalized communication plan that also effectively builds brand awareness.
English (United States) | Written 5/26/2010 read 867 times since then
Marketing is an art by virtue of which you let people know about the great business you've formed. The core purpose of the marketing is to create and construct the product or service that stand out amongst competitors so as to augment returns by increase in sales, as a result of the effectual and successful execution of the marketing role. In other words, it is persuasive communication skills to convince the customers through innovative means that the idea or the product you intend to sell is the best. The crucial strategies for successful integrated marketing require:
1. Envision and plan
Poor or lack of planning of marcom, brand and research activities can raise your expenses, thereby increasing the customer acquisition cost and cutting your return on investment (ROI). There have been instances wherein in certain companies the brand team and CEO in their urge to become celebrity themselves, provided an opportunity to media agencies to befool them.
Objectives should be defined clearly with regard to purpose for which the given activity is being undertaken; the scope and what you intend to achieve; and whether it will contribute towards accomplishing company's vision and mission.
The plan must be conceptualized in its entirety so as to able to work out your budget as well as the timeline. Formulate a market communication strategy together with the brand strategy, and accordingly plan the media buying strategy.
Calculate the lead generation from each media with the spending. Careful planning will produce better results and reduce unnecessary expenses from rush printing and shipping charges. Have a focused and mission oriented approach in which cost effectiveness of the project must figure out prominently.
Research is the backbone of all the other activities; it supports your actions and guides you in preparing your work plan in a systematic manner. Research provides you the details regarding customer's preferences, needs & wants, and insights of the competitors through secondary or primary research. However, purpose for which the research is undertaken must be spelt out very clearly, as to why you want to conduct this research and what will be the benefits to the organization.
2. Know Thy Customer
Unless you are a new business without a customer base at all, your market research should begin with learning as much as possible about your present customers. To develop an effective plan based on your customers' needs and nature, you should be able to answer these questions:
# Who are they?
# Where are they?
# What do they need?
# How did they find you?
# What do they like about you?
# What don't they like?
# How do they make their buying decisions?
# Where do they buy?
# How do you reach them with your marketing and sales messages?
All activities revolve around the customer, an average campaign generates a 1-3% response rate (depend on many things), so to increase the total number of leads generated, you can either increase your list size or improve your response rate through better segmentation. Identify who your best customers are and target people or businesses just like them.
Just as an oil company would not blindly drill small holes in the earth in search of oil, your organization shouldn't contact millions of consumers blindly, banking on a very small portion accepting your offer. Rather, seek out or build a repository that identifies which consumers are more likely to find your offer compellingly attractive.
The specific research related to the market analysis begins with statistics that provide total numbers of households, classrooms, businesses, and workers in a market. These are your basic demographics.
What you need depends on whether you're looking at businesses, households, or individuals as your main target groups. When possible, you should be able to segment households by income level, businesses by size, and workers by job type, education, and other factors. Employment statistics can add information about types of workers and their education and background.
You may also divide your target customers into groups according to psychographics. This is your strategic market segmentation, a core element of your marketing strategy.
3. Invest in Personalizing Communications
The overwhelming response to the "do not call" registry underscores consumer frustration with intrusive, irrelevant communications. Research shows that by a ratio of over 3:1, recipients prefer personalized communications.
Research also shows that the more personalized an offer is, the higher likelihood of response. It will require an increased investment in creating content and designing campaigns, but you can expect double-digit response rates.
I try to live by the phrase "attraction rather than promotion" which to me means that I want to attract clients, associates, partners and vendors to me by marketing myself and my business authentically and from a place of helping, gratitude and kindness.
The idea of Swarm Marketing has been taken from animals, as groups of animal move together as one without ever being told what to do. For decades we marketed to people as a herd: sending advertising messages to individuals in front of their televisions and magazines hoping to reach a percentage of them.
Later we added viral marketing, where messages spread from person to person like the outbreak of an epidemic. Today, we are dealing with a swarm where people gather and deposit information with the collective intelligence of an entire social network.
4. Leverage More Effective Customer Channels & Follow up with prospects
Design and execute new marketing campaigns that leverage the full spectrum of marketing channels. Personalized direct mail, permission-based e-mail and Internet technologies can be employed to dramatically increase the returns on the marketing dollar.
Coordinate marketing campaigns using multiple channels and take advantage of the "multiplier effect."
Have a follow-up plan in hand to be able to respond to a prospect with promptitude. It is vital to act quickly while the interaction is still fresh in the prospect's mind. Automated follow-up engines make it easy to follow up with dynamic content.
5. Make things easier to the customers
Empowering the customer is the utmost requirement to differentiate with others. Empower means that customer tells you his/her needs & wants that you will have to put tiresome effort to accomplish them, and provide convenient to customer to delight him/her.
Personalizing communications and running mix media campaigns can be a challenge for those selling organizations that do not currently have the technology or process infrastructure to develop media mix strategies, manage customer data, manage marketing content and execute integrated campaigns.
Sellers will find that there are several service providers that can help them transition from their current practices to leverage more effective marketing practices.
In addition, customers that interact with your company over multiple channels are often more loyal than those that respond to single-channel only. It's essential that you understand your customers as well as their preferences in order to communicate with them effectively. The key reasons to implement a mix media strategy include:
# More targeted and actionable information
# Multi-channel value proposition for customer
# Greater convenience for the customer, and above all
# A person or team who can visualize and make effective strategies.
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