Having an integrated marketing strategy can actively help you to define the path of your brand. Major corporations as well as small businesses and nonprofits must prioritize the development and execution of a marketing strategy, which outlines the core message of the brand and speaks directly to the consumer. In order to reach success, it is essential to outline the ways to ensure that the strategy has addressed all areas of the business.
1.Understand the Competition
No one wants to keep looking over their shoulder in business. However, it is important to know the lay of the land. Every business should know what’s doing well in their market. Within every niche, there are heavy hitters that understand their consumer. In order to define their needs, you have to know what they are being offered by others. How is the consumer being treated? What do they like about different products? Where is the service gap that needs to be addressed? By doing this reflection, a business will be able to better plan out a thoughtful marketing strategy.
2.Know Your Demographic
It’s impossible to create an integrated marketing strategy without knowing who your demographic is. Before moving forward with a comprehensive social media strategy, you have to know who you are targeting. Are you targeting women? If so, what age? Do you know their socioeconomic status? Why and how would they encounter your products or services? Once you brainstorm answers, it will become easier to narrow down your target audience. You can make this task easier by using various analytics and visualization tools. For example, with Maptive you can create custom heat maps and get more precise insights about your customers, allowing you to refine your approach in much more detail.
3.Understand Your Unicorn Power
After you’ve identified your target consumer and know who your competitors are, you have to spend time figuring out what makes you special. Every business has a secret sauce, and you must know what yours consists of. What makes you stand out in the market should play to your strengths. Create an elevator pitch that quickly describes your business and why someone should pick yours versus a competitor’s.
4.Identify Your Platforms
With the strong presence of social media in the online world, it is imperative to amplify your message across multiple platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, SnapChat, etc. While it’s essential to actively post and connect with users on all of these platforms, not all platforms will generate the same amount of leads. You have to decide which of these platforms will give you access to your target consumer. Does your target consumer spend more time on LinkedIn or Facebook? Also, keep your budget in mind. You should optimise each platform for organic growth. However, when you run paid ads, you should analyse the market prior to targeting consumers.
- The SEO Advantage
Strong, consistent content should be prioritised in your integrated marketing plan, especially SEO, which will allow your content to be recognised by Google so people can more easily find your business. If people don’t know you exist, then you might as well not have a business. A company that has proven to provide excellent SEO services is worth the investment to help you move more into the limelight.
- Cross-Promotion
Because the method of delivery and tone will vary from platform to platform, content creators must understand how each platform differs and how the content should reflect these differences. Even though the core message is the same, the way it is communicated will vary depending on the context of the platform. For example, professionals embrace video, micro content and long content posted on LinkedIn, while on Twitter, it is preferred to spark the conversation instead of posting a dissertation. In your integrated marketing strategy, it is always a smart idea to demonstrate how different platforms will play off each other. For example, you can post original content on your social media and include your website link in the profile for your followers to gain more info.
- The “Bait and Hook” Technique
You could also use your social media, specifically Instagram Stories, to capture emails through the “hook and bait” technique. Provide value to your audience and ask them to swipe up for more information. In order to obtain additional information, an email address should be required. This way, you will collect emails from your followers. Once you have their contact information, you can increase your marketing strategy with not only social media but with targeted emails, newsletters and free materials of value to build trust with your consumer.
Sometimes, overthinking can kill your productivity. You could create an innovative mobile app, diversify your content on multiple platforms and analyse your place in the market but still fall short in execution because of your need to control every detail. While it is necessary to have a good plan, it is just as important to be open to the possibilities that may lie ahead and adjust accordingly.