Marketing across various channels is imperative for attaining new consumers, providing consistent brand exposure, and developing your company. Modern marketers have more numerous sources at hand to influence customers than ever before. It is crucial to maximize the impression of more and more of these channels as practicable.
The question you must ask yourself is,
“Is my brand’s marketing message established across the organisation, and are all my marketing channels complementing each other?”
That is where an integrated marketing strategy comes in. Integrated marketing is a strategy that helps present a holistic and unified broadcast over each marketing channel used by your brand. Integrated marketing offers flexibility wherever customers prefer to interact with a brand.
Integrated marketing prevents the risk of delivering confusing messages or conversing in an independent opinion, presenting your brand as fragmented or disorderly.
Let us understand this with an example. It should not matter the device in which a customer is viewing the marketing content. The experience and the message to be delivered must remain the same on every device. Similarly, the queries and understanding of a customer about a product through the chatbot service must remain the same as and when he talks to a sales representative on a live call.
This marketing is possible because of integrated marketing communications. It is a component of integrated marketing that ensures that your brand delivers a consistent experience across all means of communication. But, that does not mean that it will keep dishing out the same repetitive message on all channels.
Instead, every idea must converge on the same underlying concept of the brand. This concept pushes the buyers with the decision-making process. It helps a targeted public receive constant and effective brand messaging through different marketing channels in an integrated approach.
On the opposite hand, Integrated Marketing is the complete strategy adopted to connect all individual marketing endeavours. Although applied interchangeably, integrated marketing is not the same as integrated marketing communication. Its difference from the latter is quite subtle in a way.
Integrated Marketing vs Omnichannel Marketing
This question is definitely troubling your mind, “Is there any difference between omnichannel marketing and integrated marketing? Are not they both employed to achieve coherence?” The answer is a definite yes but in diverse forms.
Omnichannel marketing is concentrated on customer experience — it combines several communication channels to give seamless consumer communication with a brand. This can involve using an app when you are in a queue at Starbucks to buy your morning cup of coffee or taking advantage of Sephora’s in-store beauty workshops.
Integrated marketing is more engrossed by a brand’s message. It is about flawlessly combining all that is there, from ads and sales promotions to PR and social media to target consumers. For example, Snickers’ “You Are Not You When You Are Hungry” campaign was formed in 2010 and ran over retail, television, social, and print. Even though the execution differs across media and markets, the primary motive (that when you are starving, your mood changes you into a different person — actually) continues to be the same.
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It is essential to see that omnichannel and integrated marketing should operate together in diverse marketing projects. It would be a wasted opportunity to only concentrate on a customer’s multi-dimensional brand experience and not their purchasing experience or vis a vis.
Integrated marketing does not typically happen without concentrated preparation and effort because of the complications arising in modern marketing channels. It is, however, also crucial to comprehend how the seven Ps of marketing fit into planning a dependable and strategic marketing mix.
Various institutes offer marketing leadership courses that will teach you to strategise different marketing strategies required. But before we understand these strategies, let us explore the reasons a company should use integrated marketing.
Benefits of Integrated Marketing
Consonant Narrative
An average grown-up sees more than 350 ads per day. Still, only around one-third of them draw a few moments of attention. Of these ads, only a handful will the person recollect the next day.
To guarantee that your advertisements and other marketing sources make an enduring impact, integrate them into a consonant narrative and execute over various transmission channels. Potential customers will remember a billboard ad to a greater degree since its contents evoke another ad seen online.
The customer will be more likely to interact with your ads that mimic their recent interactions with your brand on social media.
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Developed Marketing Campaign Execution
More comprehensive compatibility inside your brand’s narrative connected with integrated marketing directs to more reliable and overall campaign execution. Corporations that top in marketing results are 1.5 times more suitable for an integrated technology resolution that assists them to communicate the very narrative over all the channels.
Decreased Costs and Greater Value
Integrating the marketing channels can assist you in overcoming the prices of manufacturing marketing content by reusing similar content across various media. Suppose you have a brand mascot, for example. In that case, you can employ images and videos of the said mascot in both online and offline marketing media.
Similarly, you can share the same talking points to sales agents in various areas or events to synchronise your messaging. These practices become more effective because of narrative consistency, but they also help to reduce your overhead.
Encourage Collaboration
Integrated marketing promotes various departments across your company to cooperate. A firm that does not collaborate is handicapped on the inside. The internal methods are slow and effective resolutions take up a lot of time.
The advantages of adopting an integrated marketing approach have been made clear in the present times. Therefore, there are various parts involved in developing an integrated marketing plan that needs evaluation.
Uniform Customer Experience
It is not just marketers who profit from integrated marketing. Consumers will also relish the uniformity and standardisation that appear with a centralised brand narrative.
The added familiarity becomes more relaxed for them as they learn about what you do and how you can assist them. Therefore, integrated marketing works hand-in-hand with omnichannel marketing, which, in turn, will present the most satisfying customer experience.
Also Read: A Step-by-Step Guide to Digital Marketing
How You Can Implement Integrated Marketing?
It is crucial to understand what a general marketing plan requires to understand how integrated marketing is implemented.
A marketing plan is a report generated by a marketer which explains their perception of the current market position. It further identifies the steps that show how the company will accomplish its marketing goals.
Contents of a Marketing Plan
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Situation Analysis
Situation analysis focuses on the right market for your product or service, including details on competitors, market size and trends.
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Marketing Strategy
Marketing strategy describes your firm’s marketing goals depending on the inputs from the other features of your business like finance, sales and human resource.
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Marketing Projects
Marketing projects inform about the activities executed by marketers to hit your marketing objectives.
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Financial Forecasts
Financial forecast involves measuring sales metrics, a projection of expenses and determining how much you must sell to break even.
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Monitoring
Establishing up a feedback circuit to monitor marketing actions and make course improvements at reasonable periods is the responsibility involved in monitoring.
Now that we have understood what a marketing plan is, let us plunge deeper into the components of integrated marketing strategy. But, to have a successful marketing plan, you must address some critical concerns:
1) What is your company going to produce?
2) What will you charge for the product?
3) How will your company deliver this product and its services to your potential customers?
4) How are you going to inform your customers about this product and the services it provides?
You can obtain the answers to these questions and gain more knowledge, insight, or tips on using integrated marketing strategies. On Talentedge, you will find digital marketing classes from the best universities like the IIM Lucknow marketing course, MICA’s postgraduate certificate course in marketing and brand management, etc. Search for digital marketing classes on Talentedge and enrol yourself for a marketing leadership course. Till you choose to enrol in one, let us assist you in finding the answers to these questions.
Also Read: 10 Best Digital Marketing Courses to Advance Your Career
Components of Integrated Marketing
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Customer Focus
Successful marketing strategies begin and finish with customers. Making customers a top priority is quite known but seldom administered because marketing glory does not get accomplished by retaining consumers. Acquisition, viral campaigns, and awards get consideration, but they rarely improve profitability. The majority of the capital that adds to the company’s survival can only be attained with loyal shoppers’ help.
Marketing to established buyers costs less and produces more income. These people remember and trust your business, so they do not require a tough sell to receive the order. Design your principal marketing strategy about them. Here are some ideas that will help you to construct a successful marketing campaign:
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Print Marketing
Even in this digital generation, print is an essential element of an integrated marketing campaign. After all, you can not employ email or social media marketing without establishing proximity, and print is a magnificent gateway to be seen. Print advertising produces brand recognition and can work as a gateway to further personalised marketing. It does not need an internet connection to read or share.
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Banner Ads
Many have observed that the banner ad has become out of style, but you could do more damage if you look for exposure. Banner ads generate awareness of your brand and support to promote queries by potential customers.
Additionally, you can ensure your banner ads are targeted for specific demographics at specific times by employing targeted advertising. This way, the right audience sees the ads, most likely to be inspired by your product and interested in purchasing.
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Landing Pages
When a person clicks on an ad, you will want to ensure that they obtain the appropriate message. You also must make sure that these people have effortless access to take the subsequent step in forming a connection.
Landing pages allow you to create a significant first impact and present specific content. If your landing page is influential enough, you will have many people subscribing to your email list in no time.
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Email Marketing
The most personalised, customisable and comfortable approach to the market, email marketing enables you to regularly stay in touch with clients and maintain an update on your newest ventures.
Email marketing also facilitates you to trace which receivers click on your links and eventually make purchases, aiding you to understand your best customers’ aims.
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Social Media
It is simple to get social media wrong. Examples have been abundant in the headlines when businesses have blundered. But, if you take time to set guidelines for your organisation’s posts and responses, you will receive the profits.
By generating appropriate content for your followers, you will also increase their bonds to your firm. You will also understand that they will market on your behalf. Building a conversation with and collecting from your followers is an excellent method to make them feel special.
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Influencer Marketing
Take time to investigate who leads the discussion (regionally or nationwide) about your product or sector. Then, generate a plan to employ these influencers to communicate your brand’s unique story. Unique content designed by qualified influencers can do miracles to validate your brand and fascinate your audience with meaningful, targeted, and exciting stories.
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Strategic Events
Putting on impressive, impactful and diplomatic events is the foundation of integrated marketing. Events draw people together in a place where fundamental ideas and relationships can be created. Never forget that an event must clearly represent your company’s goals as a brand strategy. Excellent execution is crucial to any successful event, and the relationships formed should have a deep-rooted ROI.
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Organic Search Engine Marketing
Search engines prioritise outcomes based on how related pages are the too particular search words and phrases. It implies that you can edit your pages to become more suitable to famous search words, pushing your website up the lines.
It indicates Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. While this is a sensitive science, it will not require any capital to use if you choose to do it yourself.
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Paid Search Marketing Engine
If organic SEO is not up to your lane, you can perpetually obtain your way to the top. The paid search involves acquiring the claims to a specific search phrase and making your ad appear before or beneath organic search results.
For example, you could buy the keywords “need marketing analytics” to guarantee that anyone’s search carries these words, and your website gets views.
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Direct Mail Marketing
Last but not least, direct marketing is vital and still yields significant outcomes. Considering the time and energy to mail something supports you to strengthen the brand perception. A well-designed creation in someone’s home or business is a regular reminder of what you can offer to them. And direct mail allows you to squeeze in more goodies, such as company marked pens, markers, and stickers.
Talentedge provides conventional classroom instructions and digital training sessions through online classes in partnership with various universities. Courses such as IIM Lucknow for marketing courses, analytics course in marketing at XLRI, marketing analytics course at spjmr, etc. These courses will help you understand these integrated marketing strategies and teach you how to execute them in a real-life situation.
Also Read: Your Ultimate Guide to Career in Marketing
Interdepartmental Cooperation
Opposite to common belief, good communication among departments is not sufficient to make integrated marketing work properly. Departments have to work collectively. Communication is necessary, but the dedication to do everything it needs to solve problems is essential.
The correlation between sales, marketing and customer care are usually adversarial. Legacy problems trouble current managers. The primary step is reaching out to the other units to build a more reliable working atmosphere and customer experience. The means of converting from separated to integrated is challenging but worth the struggle. It enhances everything from confidence to profitability.
Here are some tips for you from us to help you establish smooth communication among your company’s departments:
- Encourage employees to get to know the people outside of their department.
- Set weekly meetings where departments share their projects and discuss the areas where they need help.
- Divide up tasks so that the employees can help in other departments.
- Eliminate jargon that creates outsiders and cause confusion.
- Provide office-bound and remote employees tools for the employees to talk to each other.
- Unite employees around the common goal and objectives that are required to improve the business.
Database Communication
Every corporation has varied databases loaded with essential and extraneous information. Sifting through raw data to locate chunks of actionable information is not pleasant (at least for many people), but it can give phenomenal results.
Designing a one-stop store for every data requirement is practically inaccessible because various channels and departments have unique demands. The resources wanted to present the mega-database are widespread.
Rather than draining time and funds on producing a turn-key resolution, form communication pathways that enable sharing crucial information across platforms. Many will be automated; others will be hand-operated. But, each and everyone will give the necessary information to enormously increase a successful business.
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There are basically two types of database communication in marketing:
- Consumer Database Marketing: It is equipped for companies that sell immediately to consumers (B2C). Well-bred B2C marketers regularly improve their consumer database by executing contests, discounts codes for first-time purchasers, giveaways, free plus shipping offers, and account registration during checkouts.
- Business database marketing: It is equipped towards corporations that sell immediately to businesses (B2B). The primary data compilation techniques for B2B marketers incorporate event registrations, whitepaper downloads, industry reports, demos, webinar registrations, free marketing tools, and free trial offers.
A business database is generally smaller than a consumer database. This is since B2B marketers seem to focus on high-value “target accounts” and not crowds of people. This is usually related to account-based marketing.
Leverage
Every channel has its unique strengths and vulnerabilities. Leveraging the strengths of one communication channel to compensate for the lapses in another increases effectiveness and decreases costs. The leveraging process starts with an in-depth judgment of each communication channel, how your consumers communicate with it, and the related expenses.
Accepting the information obtained during the understanding stage, ascertain the best means to implement the marketing and service your customers await with the channels that maximise your revenue on investment. Leverage wants due attention and monitoring because media are multiplying. Installing systems in place of humans to estimate the effectiveness save time and funds.
Also Read: Skills Every Digital Marketing Professional Must Possess
Learning the various types of leverage in business is crucial to arrive at the heart of what leverage can accomplish.
- Financial Leverage: Financial leverage primarily means using other people’s funds to achieve bonuses. Businesses can apply monetary strategies like investment and debt financing to increase financial leverage. You will have more extra capital available, but it will also increase your liability. Keeping your financial leverage ratio low is best for more excellent durability.
- Operating Leverage: A sort of financial leverage, operating leverage happens when your operating expenses are established, but your revenues or earnings are increasing. High operating leverage indicates that you lose more money overall when income reduces. To estimate your operational leverage, divide your fixed costs by variable costs.
- Time Leverage: Time is the most limited source – yet we all barter it tirelessly every day when we work. Time leverage is, therefore, one of the most fundamental sorts. It implies using other people’s time to achieve your duties, naturally providing you more hours in the day. Delegating and working with technology are two methods to enhance your time leverage.
- Personal Leverage: Personal leverage, or relationship leverage, is essential to every field of your life. You are applying influence in the best feasible way when you invest yourself with the correct people and use those associations to accomplish anything.
Return on Investment
Sustainable companies need profitability. Producing a return on investment requires preparation and dedication. Every channel, function and department must produce results that add to the company’s economic well-being. The performance statements should be general knowledge for everyone operating a business or offering recommendations.
Regrettably, this is not the case. Someplace between conventional and new media, people substituted “investment” with “influence”. Any action that does not increase contact with paying consumers, boost profits, or diminish costs is a waste of supplies.
Including the awaited return on investment in your strategy makes it a priority. When the team members grasp that producing a return is a necessity, they think differently. A chance of fewer recommendations looms because every other person is doing more of these tasks just because they benefit their company.
Calculating return on marketing investment can assist business decisions and optimize marketing purposes at an organisational level. For marketers, knowing the ROI produced by a campaign benefits:
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Verify Marketing Spend
CMOS consistently schedule the allocation of resources and budget for marketing efforts as a topmost priority. Yet, it is vital that current marketing spend and resources be justified at the administrative level to ensure funding and supplies for later campaigns. To get this done, marketers must precisely calculate the ROI their marketing efforts produce for the company. For instance, they must know if local ads drive progress and ROI while display ads fall low. From here on, budgets can be allocated appropriately.
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Distribute Marketing Funds
Over various online and offline channels, there is a horde of potential marketing mix mixtures. But, any type of campaign leadership requires funding. Understanding which online and offline forces drive the most income is necessary for adequately administering the marketing funds.
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Survey Campaign Success and Organize Baselines
A significant part of any flourishing marketing team is measuring campaign success and organise baselines to refer to future efforts. Keeping this in mind, accurately measuring ROI assists marketers do both of these things.
By perceiving the impact of every campaign on the whole revenue increase, marketers can adequately recognise the proper combination of online and offline campaign endeavours. Furthermore, consistent ROI measures enable marketers to establish baselines to instantly assess their progress and corrective steps to maximise impact.
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Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis empowers marketers to accurately perceive how their company works in their particular trade, tracing opponents’ marketing ROI. For instance, marketers tracing publicly available financial data can calculate the ROI of opponents and improve baselines to display these estimations—assisting in keeping efforts continually competitive.
Also Read: Best Content Marketing Ideas & Strategies to Grow your Business Effectively in 2022
Skills You Will Need For Integrated Marketing
Essential marketing skills can be split into two sections – soft skills and hard skills. Soft skills are more general, widely suitable, and valuable (or necessary) in several career paths. Hard skills are majorly concentrated on technological abilities and expertise with particular tools and strategies.
Since marketing is a vast territory, the hard skills you will require to get a job will fluctuate excessively from role to role. Therefore, this part of the article focuses on the most common skills companies seek when recruiting an entry-level marketing supervisor or assistant.
Soft Skills
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Communication
At its heart, marketing is all about communicating to the public, so it is not surprising that communication is the topmost skill required to be in this field! It is essential in your marketing work to express yourself and convey concepts to others in a clear, engaging way.
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Creativity and Problem-Solving
The primary purpose of marketing is to rise up through the noise and deliver a perfect message that resonates with your target audience. Creativity and imagining outside the box to discover new methods of producing things are hallmarks of a successful marketing professional. No matter how creative you perceive yourself, marketing requires tackling problems from new perspectives and developing innovative resolutions to mounting hurdles.
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Attention to Detail
If you are a marketer, the work you do will be judged by thousands of eyes, no matter if it is a blog post, script or a product you created. Great attention to detail is essential to ensure that the image of your company is maintained. You need to make sure that your consumers are receiving the correct information.
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Interpersonal Skills
Marketing often indicates managing closely with a more extensive marketing team, co-workers in other departments, clients, and/or merchants. You must have excellent interpersonal skills and develop effective working relationships with others. You will frequently interact with many people and maintaining interpersonal skills is very crucial.
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Leadership
Maybe your initial marketing role apparently might not be in management. Still, leadership is an imperative skill to increase and improve over time. The skill of leadership can be put to use at a point in your career. As per the role chosen for you, you can take charge of a specific project, work as the face person for a client or vendor, or assist and lead your junior team members with their tasks.
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Adaptability
Marketing is a rapidly-changing field, with new most valuable systems, tools, and standards emerging regularly. Additionally, marketing teams usually operate under strict deadlines and some last-minute assigned projects or look for priorities moving with little notice. A strong marketer will relish this sort of fast-paced atmosphere and will adapt to varying situations with ease.
Hard Skills
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Content Writing
Content writing is a profoundly sought-after craft, no matter what profession you are in. Nevertheless, it is necessary for marketing, where communication is a crucial part of your daily work.
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Data Analysis & Analytics
Marketing is useless without analysis: you are required to determine the progress and ROI of your marketing applications. Working with data from various sources and regions and understanding their relevance is a crucial skill needed in marketing. You must be able to analyze and predict future actions for the business.
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Project Management
Project management is an integral piece of every marketer’s career: whether you are balancing multiple campaigns, projects, or clients, you will have a robust collection of project management talents to keep a record of everything happening and get tasks done effectively. This suggests catching up to the deadlines, making your work your top priority, and keeping in mind others’ participation – all while giving an outstanding end result!
There are various digital marketing classes like brand management in marketing by MICA, marketing courses at IIM Lucknow, etc. These courses will help you become a successful marketing professional.
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Research
Research is necessary for marketing to sketch campaign plans, strategise and create content. This research could assume numerous forms. Peering into opponents’ marketing operations, studying more about a subject related to your organisation’s duties or products, or creating a table of connections in a particular industry.
Understanding how to manage efficient research from legitimate references is an underrated but crucial skill that will boost the quality of your work.
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SEO/SEM
Search engines are the most striking marketing devices utilised now. It is critical to understand how to apply them to your business’s benefit, whether funded or original strategies. The world of search engine marketing is gigantic and ever-changing, and many marketers work only in this area. As a marketing professional, you will not be required to identify the ins and outs of search engine optimization. But understanding and being ready to apply the basics is imperative.
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Social Media Marketing
Social media remains one of the familiar, efficient sources for companies to be in touch with their consumers- like the established platforms Facebook or LinkedIn or upcoming platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. Apprehending how to accommodate a brand’s voice to social media and connect authentically among the public is an integral element of contemporary marketing.
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Email Marketing
Although distinct sorts of marketing have advanced remarkably in current times, email continues a primary method of communication. Every marketer must learn the basics of email marketing, including voice and trend, appealing subject lines, and powerful calls to action.
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Visual Marketing
Design is a scary term for those who do not see themselves as creative – you do not require to be an expert graphic designer to succeed in marketing! Generally, marketing departments will already have a committed designer on their team. Otherwise, you will have to outsource different significant design projects to a company or entrepreneur.
However, you must be at ease with the fundamentals of visual marketing – image selection for a website or a social media post.
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Website Management
Ultimately, being satisfied working in the back end of a website is an essential marketing skill. Again, you need not be a developer or web designer if it does not interest you! Most marketers, though, will demand if you can update pages, create landing pages, and various primary web functions.
After looking at this list of skills, you must be wondering whether you have what it takes to be in marketing. But you must not trouble yourself – all the skills mentioned can be developed through devoted education and training. Marketing leadership courses are fantastic to study the most fundamental marketing skills companies seek, both softcore and essential technical skills.
Marketing courses from IIM Lucknow, management courses from MICA and XLRI, etc., can help you with the right marketing skills. Talentedge provides various online courses in marketing and other fields in partnership with some renowned institutions.
Also Read: Benefits Of Online Marketing Certification Courses
Examples of Integrated Marketing
Among several integrated marketing examples, the ‘Geico gecko’ is traditional. It begins with a simplistic idea, using a talking gecko as the profile of Geico insurance. It adheres to a single theme about how 15 minutes of talking to Geico can guide you to 15 per cent savings on simple car insurance.
The insurer moulded the theme and the spokes-gecko within print ads and TV commercials. They provided the lizard with his very own social media handles. They even went as far as to publish his autobiography. While the campaign continued, public opinions of the company improved, exceeding so than for car insurers as a group.
The ad campaign for the 2015 film “The Martian” similarly implemented an integrated marketing strategy over several channels. The strategy’s purpose was to communicate the enthusiasm of space exploration and deliver the world of the movie to life through all the diverse marketing activities.
It assisted in carrying the movie to the summit of the box office. Similar to other integrated marketing examples, it profited from regulating strategy and owning a compelling ad campaign.
To Recap
As you can understand from these real-life examples, producing an efficient integrated marketing strategy is possible only if you use the appropriate technology. Rather than depending on personalised marketing efforts, an integrated approach best works with the multiple channels possible to modern industries.
By integrating social media, advertising, and sales promotion tools, you provide consistency, clarity, and the best communications impression.
These marketing schemes can prove to be effective on their own, but you will only see the accurate result when used together. An adequate integrated campaign utilises the most appropriate schemes to the target audience. It is closely observed so that outcomes can be analysed to understand improvement possibilities.
So, are you ready for a career in marketing and want to become a successful marketing professional? Then do not wait and quickly enrol yourself in IIM Lucknow marketing courses and kick-start a career in marketing.
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