Integrated Marketing Campaigns: What Are They and How Can You Optimize Them?

You’re browsing your favorite fishing website when you spy a paid ad for a new fishing rod. You check your email — only to find an email promoting that same fishing rod. Finally, after reading the email, you switch on your TV — and see a fishing rod commercial.

If the time comes when you need a new fishing rod, that fishing rod will come to mind first. You saw that rod advertised on multiple marketing channels, so you’re very likely to remember it.

That sort of advertising technique is called integrated marketing. 

So, what is an integrated marketing campaign? Furthermore, what does it take to create an effective one?

We’ll answer both of those questions below, so just keep reading. Then subscribe to Revenue Weekly — our email newsletter — for even more digital marketing tips from the agency with over 28 years of experience!

What is an integrated marketing campaign?

Integrated marketing is a type of promotion that involves spreading a specific campaign via multiple channels.

Let’s say your company makes a huge marketing push for one specific product. Rather than using only one or two channels to market the product, you would use several at once.

Moreover, those channels wouldn’t each take a different approach. Instead, they’d all use the same set of tools — the same taglines, photos of the same product, and so on — to help unify them.

What’s the difference between integrated marketing and multi-channel marketing?

Integrated marketing is distinct from multi-channel marketing.

Multi-channel marketing just means you market yourself through more than one channel, but you might take a different approach with each of those channels. Each marketing strategy you use might count as its own, separate campaign.

A water treatment plant’s digital marketing strategy, for example, might use social media for the public and email for its constituents, which allows the company to create tailored messages for each audience.

With integrated marketing, though, all your efforts are part of the same campaign — it’s just being distributed via different channels. But those channels still align with the same branding and messaging across the board.

What are the advantages of integrated marketing efforts?

The underlying principle for integrated marketing campaigns is the old adage, “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.” The idea is that by promoting the same campaign across multiple channels, you’ll create a more effective and united marketing front to drive more sales.

Integrated marketing allows you to reach a wider audience, which provides a huge advantage for your business. It also lets you more effectively reach people who don’t spend too long on any one channel.

After all, you can market via email, but no one will spend all day on their email. The same goes for something like social media ads. But if you’re marketing your campaign on both of those channels, it won’t be a problem if users switch from one to the other.

In short, with integrated marketing, you can keep reaching people even as they flip between different channels. 

What strategies can you use in an integrated campaign?

With all this talk about using different channels in your integrated marketing efforts, you’re probably wondering what those channels are. What are your options? Which marketing strategies can you use to promote your company?

In today’s world, many of the best marketing channels are online. The best digital marketing strategies to pursue include:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
• Social media marketing
• Social media advertising
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• And more!

Of course, when it comes to integrated marketing, you’re not limited to digital strategies. You can also continue to include more traditional channels, like:

• Television commercials
• Billboard advertising
• Radio advertising
• And more!

The ideal integrated marketing campaign would include a handful of strategies from both lists. The more channels you market through, the wider your reach will be — though make sure to only take on as many channels as you’re capable of managing.

3 tips for running an integrated marketing campaign

We’ve covered what integrated campaigns are and what channels they can include. So, what can you do to gain the best results from your integrated marketing efforts?

Here are three tips to follow when getting started with your integrated campaigns!

1. Be consistent across all channels

The first tip to keep in mind is that you should maintain consistency in your marketing and branding across all the channels in your integrated campaigns.

Bear in mind that even though some of your marketing is on one channel and some is on another, it’s all part of the same overall campaign, and it should look like it. As mentioned earlier, try to use the same taglines, color schemes, and so on.

Maintaining the same look and feel across all your channels will help the campaign be more cohesive, allowing users to make connections between them and better retain the information you’re trying to convey.

2. Take advantage of channel overlap points

Another way to enhance your integrated marketing is to look out for points of overlap between different channels. Those overlap points are places where two channels connect to or appear alongside one another.

For example, on social media, you can post links leading to pages on your website. So, when you post something as part of your integrated campaign, you can include a link to the page on your site about that campaign. The same goes for other channels, like email.

Establishing those connection points will help you unify your campaign across all your channels and enable users to keep moving from one marketing material to the next.

3. Tailor your channels to your audience

Finally, ensure that your channels are tailored to your audience. You shouldn’t run your campaigns by targeting different channels at random — you should choose your channels based on your target audience.

For example, if you’re primarily targeting millennials and Gen Z with your product, you’ll want to place a heavy emphasis on social media marketing, since that’s one of the best places to find that audience online.

Likewise, you can target your audience based on interests — maybe you choose to run paid ads on specific websites that you know your target audience likely frequents.

Our digital marketing campaigns impact the metrics that improve your bottom line.

See More Results

WebFX has driven the following results for clients:

$6 billion

In client revenue

24 million

Leads for our clients

7.14 million

Client phone calls

WebFX can help you boost your integrated marketing efforts

Want a hand kicking your integrated marketing campaigns into gear? Let WebFX, one of the top integrated marketing agencies, help! With over 1,100 glowing client testimonials, we’re the digital marketing agency you can trust to drive revenue for your business.

In the past five years alone, we’ve generated over 24 million leads and $6 billion in revenue for our clients. When you partner with us for our digital marketing services, you’ll get access to the same marketing expertise we provided to those businesses!

To get started with us, just call 888-601-5359 or contact us online today!