Employing an integrated marketing strategy allows companies and causes to achieve greater marketing ROI. Why? Simply put: when all marketing channels are coordinated and working towards achieving a common set of goals, resources are optimized and the pathway for evaluating success is clearer.
Here are four scenarios when integration helps to achieve maximum marketing impact.
Tradeshow Marketing
Think back to when tradeshow marketing used to consist of what happened at your booth during the show, a little bit of pre-event advertising and personal outreach to some warm leads. While simpler, proving ROI was a greater challenge.
Taking an integrated approach to trade show marketing aligns sales and marketing strategies and ensures a consistent stream of communications and engagement opportunities from pre- through post-show. It provides an opportunity for the sales and marketing team to work collaboratively towards achieving a common goal, and provides multiple opportunities for prospect/client education and engagement. So, which marketing/sales tactics are part of an integrated tradeshow marketing strategy? Email marketing, content marketing (whitepapers, e-books, toolkits, etc.), collateral materials, media relations, speaking engagements and the list goes on.
With many of these tactics being trackable, businesses have the opportunity to monitor a prospect/lead activity from the time they enter the top of the sales funnel and while they continue to progress through the marketing funnel.
Fundraising
Crowdfunding, capital campaigns, annual appeals, social fundraising and signature events are all great opportunities to generate unrestricted donor dollars for worthy causes. And, when fundraising and marketing are integrated into a cohesive strategy, they’re an opportunity to reach more people and secure more donations.
Let’s look at a capital campaign, for example. With the feasibility study complete and campaign chairs, or co-chairs, in place, you’re ready to ramp it up and work towards achieving your fundraising goal. While the one-on-one outreach your development team is doing is critical, employing marketing channels with broader reach – such as email marketing, media relations and social media marketing – will help to put your campaign on the radar of more prospective donors. It also provides an opportunity for target audiences to consume your content through the channel(s) that are best suited to their communications preferences.
Community Relations/CSR
Oftentimes, CSR and community relations campaigns have an added component of integration that stems beyond merging online and offline activities. It’s integrating with your community partner’s marketing and communications teams. In this instance, integration is necessary to ensure consistency of messaging and to avoid duplication of efforts.
By executing an integrated marketing program to increase awareness of, and, if applicable, community support for, a CSR/community relations initiative, companies and causes alike benefit from:
- An opportunity to gain exposure to and engage with new audiences (for a nonprofit partner, this can mean exposure to a new pool of prospective donors)
- Online and offline visibility for the partnership and its impact on the community
- An opportunity to generate media coverage in new marketing (depending on the geographic parameters of the engagement)
Business Development/Lead Generation
The insights one’s sales team gains from being out in the field is valuable knowledge to help propel one’s marketing program. Whether common questions encountered during the sales cycle become the inspiration behind optimized blog posts or educational seminars for lead generation become the focus of your social media marketing videos, there is a tremendous opportunity to generate measurable marketing ROI by employing a strategy that seamlessly integrates sales and marketing.
When aligning sales and marketing programs, identify opportunities to leverage each team’s existing bank of content and collateral to inspire new sales and marketing content. Further, take a look at past successes and missteps to identify opportunities to achieve greater success in the future.
An integrated marketing strategy ensures online and offline marketing activities are built upon a common foundation of messaging and visual assets, and that all activities are working synergistically to achieve a common set of goals. While the continued growth of digital marketing bring more opportunities for concise measurement to the table in this equation, it is prudent to continue leveraging the tried and true offline tactics that have engaged audiences and contributed to marketing success from the onset.
