Integrated Marketing Matters
Is integrated marketing important to your internal marketing functions? We know media drives awareness, interactive marketing builds relationships, and sponsorship marketing connects brands and products with influencers. But are these areas talking to each other? Are they coordinating their efforts to deliver against a consistent strategy? What about the rest of your marketing disciplines?
Oftentimes, marketing departments work in silos, feverishly accomplishing their own goals without considering the greater good of the overall organization. That’s where integrated marketing serves a critical role: ensuring all functions speak the same language and follow the same strategy throughout the key phases of marketing initiatives including innovation, development, implementation and evaluation. When done correctly, a central integrated marketing group can maximize the quality and reach of your messaging across a large variety of mediums, allowing you to more effectively connect with customers.
Think about it this way…lack of an integrated marketing function is like having all the ingredients for dinner and no final meal. You can be independently great at innovation, strategy, media, public relations and implementation, yet need a function that ensures delivery of a cohesive marketing initiative that positively impacts your target audiences.
When it comes down to it, most marketing functions strive to:
1. Introduce a new or improved product or service
2. Obtain trial or recruit new users
3. Encourage repeat usage
4. Build more frequent or multiple purchases
5. Introduce new packaging or a delivery method
6. Neutralize competitive advertising or promotion
7. Achieve trade interest
8. Generate consumer awareness
Although more than one internal group can help meet these objectives, an integrated marketing department often brings it all together. Cross-functional team leaders guide parties to stay on strategy, meet deadlines and remain within budget. They maintain a common communications thread to ensure consistency and efficiency across all marketing functions, while streamlining internal processes and keeping things simple.