Integrated Marketing...What It Is, Why Is It Important & How Can You Use It In Your Business

Does your marketing strategy include an integrated plan?

You have a variety of ways to market your business - including advertising, direct mail, social media, email marketing - just to name a few. All of these enable you to reach out to your clients to let them know what’s going on in your business and the products and services you have available for them. Each of those systems has its own marketing strategy.

When you integrate your marketing strategies together you’re making your marketing message stronger.
Here's a visual example that might help you see how much stronger your marketing gets when you integrate it. Put your hands together so your fingers are pointing up toward the sky. Line up the fingers of both hands – you can spread your fingers apart or you can keep them together, it doesn’t matter. Now have someone pull on your arms and you try to keep your hands together. You can't really keep your hands together can you?

Now, let's say each of your fingers represent one marketing strategy. So, one finger is email, one finger is direct mail and so on. Just because you have all these strategies in place doesn’t make your marketing strong. You may get one new client from each independent strategy.

Now, take your hands in the same way, but this time lace your fingers together. Fold them over and in between the fingers of the other hand and have someone try to pull your arms apart now. It's much easier to keep your hands together this way because you have a stronger base. It's the same with your marketing.

Think about this in marketing. Do you talk about your direct mail in your email campaigns? Do you address what you sent in your email or your direct mail on your social networking sites? Are your advertisements telling people to connect with you on your social media sites?

That's how you integrate your marketing. Everything is connected and laced together to make your marketing much stronger.

The reason this makes your marketing stronger is you never know if your clients are checking their email. Maybe they don’t even check their mail every day. You might even have clients who aren't interested in social media sites, or it might be that they're interested in only one or two of social media sites and not others.

When you integrate your marketing you now have the ability to mention in your email marketing that you sent them something in the mail. You might even mention on your social network sites that you just mailed something out so people will be on the lookout for it. This simple strategy will broaden your reach because you can never be 100% sure who's looking where for their communication with you and increase the chances of your prospects seeing your messages.

When you talk about one marketing strategy in another media you’re much more likely to capture your clients and prospects attention. They will be on the lookout for things coming from you.

And for your clients and prospects who check their mail every day, their emails go to their phone so they don’t miss a single one, they’re checking in on Facebook and Twitter, and their other social sites four or five times a day, they see your message on all of those medias. So your chances are multiplied of them not only seeing your offer but of taking action.

That’s integrating your marketing. That’s putting all of your marketing strategies to work to support one another so your marketing, like your laced hands, is stronger.
Give some strategic thought to your marketing, and if you’re not already, start implementing strategies to strengthen every system you use, with integration.