How to Build an Integrated Marketing Strategy That Delivers Consistent Results

Trying to effectively market your small business can feel like a never-ending to-do list. You juggle paid ads, SEO, SMS, email, social media, and more—countless marketing channels, looking for something that works. And yet, you’re still not getting the results you want.

If you’ve been struggling with marketing your business, the problem probably isn’t your tactics. It’s your overall strategy.

Instead of isolated strategies for each marketing channel, work on an integrated marketing strategy. Integrated marketing ensures all of your marketing efforts work together to connect with customers. Discover how to create your own integrated marketing strategy to maximize results from the time and money you invest across channels.

What Is An Integrated Marketing Strategy Anyway?

An integrated marketing strategy is a marketing approach that unifies your messaging and approach to the customer experience across channels.

In traditional marketing, brands focus on each channel separately. You might have an SEO strategy, a social media strategy, and an email marketing strategy, but they aren’t necessarily connected. Some businesses even have different team members focus on separate channels without working with one another.

Approaching each marketing channel individually creates missed opportunities. Many potential customers won’t just interact with your business in one place. Maybe they see a social media post, then visit a page on your website, then start receiving your marketing emails.

You want your marketing in each of those places to work together for a stronger impact on customers. That’s integrated marketing.

With integrated marketing, you’re focusing on the whole customer journey. You reap omnichannel marketing benefits with a strategy that covers every touchpoint where customers may interact with your business, both physical and digital.

Why Your Shop Needs One Cohesive Voice Offline And Online

You can be creating top-tier marketing materials for different channels, but if your brand voice is different, you won’t see strong results. Think of it this way: if you were talking to a friend in person and they seemed bubbly and fun, but then they were dry and professional on the phone, you’d be confused. Customers feel the same way when your brand voice differs across channels.

Don’t assume that customers will only see your marketing materials on one channel. Instead, keep your brand voice consistent everywhere. No matter where customers interact with your brand, they should be able to recognize your voice.

Consistency helps strengthen your brand image and build trust with customers. They learn what to expect from you, which makes them more willing to complete a purchase. For example, you should be responding to your Google and Yelp reviews as much as possible. It’s easy to overlook, but these responses are an opportunity to reinforce your brand voice, connect with customers, and show your commitment to customer service.

The Secret Sauce To Synchronizing Your Marketing Channels

So, you should integrate your marketing channels. What does that actually look like in integrated marketing campaign examples​?

Try to take a step back and think about how you want potential customers to see your brand. Ask yourself these questions:

• Who is your ideal customer?
• How do you want customers to feel when they interact with your brand?
• What’s your primary message to customers?
• How does your brand stand out from your competitors?
• What visual styles represent your brand?
• What top three words describe your brand’s personality?

Once you know how you want your brand to look and sound to best connect with your target customers, you can get into the nitty-gritty of your integrated marketing approach.

Take aligning your SEO efforts with your social media marketing, for example. Business leaders often make the mistake of thinking these two channels are totally separate, but they’re not. Posting on social media can directly support your brand's search visibility. When you link to your website from your social media, you drive referral traffic and increase your odds of getting more backlinks. Your social media content also builds brand authority on specific topics, helping your website rank higher in search engine results.

Try these tactics to connect SEO and social:

• Turn your best website articles into social media content with links.
• Share links in your social posts to service or product pages when relevant.
• Discover new topics to cover from social media users’ questions and comments.

Don’t treat brand visibility as the goal of a one-time marketing campaign. Take a 365-day-a-year mindset to your integrated marketing strategy—always be working toward improving visibility. When it’s time to make a purchase, you want customers to have your brand on their minds. All your marketing contributes to that, from your SEO to your website design for service businesses.

Step-By-Step Guide To Building Your Integrated Plan

Before you brand out into creating content for specific marketing channels, you need a strong, connected foundation. That’s your integrated marketing strategy. Follow these steps to create a customized plan for your business.

Set Your Goals and Shared KPIs

You always want to start by defining your goals. What exactly do you want to accomplish through your marketing, and how are you going to measure your success?

For example, if your goal is to boost brand awareness and visibility, you might track KPIs like impressions, organic search traffic, and brand mentions. If your goal is generating leads, your KPIs could be click-through rate, number of marketing qualified leads, and cost per lead.

Define Your Audience

It’s tempting to try to market your business to absolutely everyone. Cast a wide net and see what you catch, right? That’s a mistake, though.

You will create the most effective marketing materials when you’re working with a clear audience in mind. Think about who your target customers are in detail.

• What are their ages, genders, occupations?
• What’s important to them?
• Where do they live?
• What are they interested in?
• What problems do they have that your brand can solve?

Be as specific as possible so you can create content that connects with these customers.

Select Your Marketing Channels

Applying an integrated marketing strategy doesn’t mean you need to use every available marketing channel. Rather, keep your message consistent across the channels you do use.

Consider a mix of different types of channels:

• Paid media: Pay-per-click ads, social media ads, sponsored posts
• Owned media: Your company blog, email newsletter, organic social media posts
• Earned media: Organic search traffic, news articles, unpaid reviews from influencers

Try to select channels that your target customers use consistently. You also need to consider which channels are most effective depending on the stage of the customer journey someone is in. The best way to connect with a customer at the top of the funnel is probably different from the best approach for a customer at the bottom of the funnel.

Start with just a few channels. As you figure out what works best there, you can expand into more marketing channels.

Avoiding The Common Pitfalls That Tank Marketing ROI

Marketing budgets are limited. You want to get as much return as possible on the money and effort you invest, so avoid these mistakes that will pull down your ROI:

• Mixed messaging: Keep your brand message consistent across all channels.
• Ignoring local reputation: Connect with your local community and focus on delivering great customer service to bring in strong reviews.
• Overlooking customer data: Leverage the data you already have about your customers to tailor your marketing efforts and retain more business.

Poor integration creates a disjointed customer experience. Focus on integrating your messaging, visuals, and strategy to give your marketing the best chance of success.

When To Call In The Pros At Optimize Digital Marketing!

It can be hard to see the big picture of your marketing when you’re busy doing the hard work of running your business day-in and day-out. Working with a team of experts like Optimize Digital Marketing is the perfect solution, especially for auto shops and other local service businesses.

Our team has years of experience creating and implementing integrated marketing strategies for businesses like yours. With our marketing dashboards and in-depth reporting, we’ll find the insights necessary to upgrade your campaigns. Contact us to get started on your new integrated marketing strategy.