The Importance of Integrated Marketing

Tying all of your marketing strategies into one

Integrated marketing communications is the process of developing a strategy to ensure that all aspects of your company’s marketing program including public relations, advertising, direct marketing and sales are using the same message and tone when reaching out to your company’s target audience.

Brand awareness is an important component of any marketing program to establish your business as a major player in your industry. Having a concrete and cohesive message and tone is important when building brand awareness and customer loyalty. If the various parts of your marketing program are distributing different messages to the same audience, your target market will be confused, which can cause your company to seem unreliable and inconsistent.

Even if you have different vendors for each of your marketing channels, you need to forge consistency in message and tone. One good practice is coordinating a meeting for all of the teams involved. Once the key parties have met and conversed, it can help establish a better understanding of how each vendor is contributing to your company’s marketing strategy and unify the marketing program.

Message

Messages coming from public relations should be consistent with the messages coming from advertising, direct marketing, promotions, interactive marketing and so on. Consistency is crucial when branding your company’s product or service. By displaying one clear message across all marketing outlets, your company reflects a strong, reliable brand.

Tone

Not only is the message important, but the tone of your communications should be relevant to your business as well. The tone of your message will define the company’s personality, and it should be clear to your target market.

Brand Advocacy

By conducting a marketing program that is consistent and holds true to what it promises as a brand, your business will build consumer advocacy. Brand advocacy is important because when a brand is recommended by a friend or family member, it becomes more credible. Brand advocates are your company’s most valued customers and can even help market your brand, resulting in increased profitability.

That’s another reason why consistency is so important. If your brand image is professional and reliable like a bank, but your employees can’t answer the phone properly, all the advertising is wasted. If your image is cutting edge cool, but employees in your stores look like accountants, customers won’t trust you. CEOs and marketers need to stay vigilant and gain as much integration and consistency in both the marketing message and marketing tone as possible.

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This blog post was written by Rebekah Hudder with insight from Peter Whalen, chief strategist with Thorp & Company.