You are a small to medium size business trying to build your business and establish a stronghold in your market. You have limited dollars to spend marketing your business. Sound familiar?

 

It is absolutely essential that the money you spend on marketing return the greatest results.

 

Businesses will spend billions of dollars in 2006 marketing their products and services and most of the money will not be efficiently spent. Consumers are being exposed to a greater variety of marketing communication from a number of different sources. These sources include: advertising, sales promotion, public relations, internet advertising, e-marketing, direct mail, business cards, informational pieces and brochures, telephone marketing, causal and event marketing, trade shows, sponsorships, or viral marketing

I am not going to discuss the merits of any one of these methods but more importantly ask the question:

 

Are all the elements of your marketing working together?

 

 All too often companies fail to integrate their various communications. Mass advertising says one thing, company sales brochures say something else, and their website says something altogether different.

 

Conflicting messages from these different mediums can result in a confused consumer.

 

Integrated Marketing is a marketing communication strategy that considers how all the elements of your marketing communicates with the public.

 

The American Association of Advertising Agencies defines Integrated Marketing as the “concept of marketing communication planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic role of a variety of communication disciplines (general advertising, direct response, sales promotion and public relations) and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency and maximum communications impact.”

 

Simply said, integrated marketing helps businesses connect with their customers by synchronizing all marketing messages into one compelling voice.

 

An article by the University of Villanova on Integrated Marketing defines integrated marketing as “The practice of blending different elements of the communication mix in mutually reinforcing ways.”

 

All customer touch points must be designed and orchestrated with the consumer and how he or she views the touch.

 

Is your marketing message consistent across all customer touch points?

 

Will a visitor to your business have the same impression of your business as the customer who calls your business? Will the person who sees your ad think about your business in the same light as the person who meets you at a trade show? Does your advertising communicate the same message as your sales brochure or your public relations campaign?

 

In other words, are all your communication messages consistent with the image you are trying to convey or the brand you are trying to build?

 

Successful marketing synchronizes and leverages every communication opportunity.

Whether the message is an internal message or an external message, a non-verbal message or a verbal message, it is extremely important that each element augment the other. 

 

The idea of Integrated Marketing is not new. Walt Disney was using what he called “synergy” in the 1950’s and 1960’s to drive the Disney Company forward. Disney used a coordinated marketing effort between print, television, movies, merchandising, and the theme parks. Each part of the Disney marketing mix reinforced the other aspects of the mix that when viewed together built the Disney Brand of today.

 

To successfully integrate the communication message a communication strategy needs to be developed. This communications strategy must include how the product or service is positioned.  Positioning is defined as the perception that the targeted consumers have of a businesses products or services.

 

Marketing is becoming more and more challenging and less and less effective. Today it is much more difficult to reach the consumer who is being bombarded by messages everywhere they turn. You must integrate all of your organizations messages to maximize their power, reach and effectiveness. It has been said and I truly believe that:

 

“The whole of a marketing campaign can be greater than the sum of its parts if those parts work tightly together to assist one another.”

 

 

 

 

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