Modern B2B marketing is highly varied. One day, we might be sending targeted email campaigns to a prospect, and the next day, we could be sharing content on LinkedIn. Alone, these methods can be used to great effect, pulling in more leads and ultimately achieving a higher number of sales. Combined, they become an unstoppable marketing force.
With that in mind, let’s examine integrated marketing campaigns. We’ll explore the benefits of this approach and how you can build your own integrated campaign.
Why is integrated marketing important?
Too many businesses are running disorganized and fragmented campaigns. They’re not seeing the desired results and failing to achieve consistent growth.
Integrated marketing has reformed traditional strategies by combining all marketing streams into one consistent campaign across all platforms.
In other words, your marketing message on email should be the same as on social media and other marketing streams and should be coordinated towards the same goal. You should use the same tone of voice, branding, and visual media, but most importantly — the same messaging and calls to action. No matter where a lead sees your marketing materials, they should be confident about who they belong to and their purpose.
If prospects are constantly being exposed to the same message, it’s more to be remembered. This way, integrated marketing increases brand awareness and helps to pull in more leads.
There’s no denying that integrated marketing can be a powerful force. But how should you get started with building your campaign? Below, we’ve explored some essential steps.
1. Understand your target audience
Understanding your target audience might sound basic, but it’s at the heart of an effective integrated marketing campaign. To build an effective integrated campaign, you need to identify your audience and which content they’re most likely to interact with.
Collect consumer behavior data from your website, customer support, product usage, and all customer-facing areas. Use this information to build a comprehensive B2B buyer persona.
This should include the following information:
- Demographic information – What is the average age of users of your product? What position do they occupy within their company?
- Goals – What is a buyer trying to achieve? For example, an HR manager might want to streamline employee onboarding or interview scheduling.
- Competitors – What, if any, competitor brands is a prospect currently interacting with? Why do these businesses appeal to your customers?
- Pain points – What difficulties are you helping your customers to overcome? Think about the different ways your product offering can help.
At the end of this process, you should have built a detailed buyer persona that you can use to craft an informed and data-based integrated campaign.
2. Set clear and measurable goals
An integrated marketing campaign aims to present a clear, unified, and instantly recognizable message to your customers. But, to stay on track, you need a clear set of objectives.
Make sure the goals for your campaign follow the SMART framework.
On top of this, you’ll need to consider the budget you have for your campaign. It’s worth using your online accounting software to create, allocate, and forecast your budgets. This will give you a much more realistic idea of how much you can spend on marketing and what types of channels you want to focus on.
Once you’ve established the goals and budget for your overall campaign, you should set performance goals for your channels. You need to consider how your audience will likely interact with each channel and how each will come together as part of your overall campaign. It’s a good idea to set channel-specific KPIs, for example:
- Social Media: Engagement rate, reach, followers growth.
- Email Marketing: Open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate.
- SEO/SEM: Organic traffic, bounce rate, keyword rankings.
- Content Marketing: Page views, time on page, social shares.
- PPC: Cost per click, click-through rate, return on ad spend.
Finally, take a holistic approach to tracking these goals using a CRM system that integrates with your marketing data to track the entire customer journey.
3. Develop a comprehensive creative strategy
Content is a key pillar of B2B marketing, and a consistent message is key to an integrated marketing campaign.
Take Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign, for example. This phenomenal integrated campaign spanned everything from print to social media to OOH, strengthening Nike’s brand image with a message that has become instantly recognizable throughout the years and across the world.
To create your own, use the knowledge you gained from your audience research to help you determine which platforms you want to focus on and which formats and messages will resonate.
You can also use a keyword research tool to produce a list of relevant terms to include within your content to help boost performance.
That said, remember that one-time performance isn’t everything when it comes to an integrated campaign. As with the Nike example above, try to create a message that fits your campaign goals and reflects your brand and its values.
Ultimately, integrated marketing is about building a coherent marketing campaign. Your blogs, social media posts, and emails should all use the same tone, colors, and design.
For example, if you want to come across as down-to-earth, you might use a more casual tone. A premium brand, on the other hand, might opt for a more formal tone.
4. Utilize multi-channel marketing tactics
In the modern world, it makes sense to use cross-channel marketing. But, while you might be using a variety of platforms, are you making the most of them?
To find out, keep a closer eye on the overall customer experience. You likely collect data throughout the customer journey. Consider how users interact with your different marketing channels and how you can coordinate experiences on each channel.
Acer’s “Time Capsule” giveaway campaign is a great example. Acer used YouTube, where its largest audience is, to post a short video that tells its history. A similar, recognizable message was also used across their other channels but tweaked slightly to pose their Time Capsule giveaway question:
In doing so, Acer created a fun and engaging multi-channel campaign conveying its legacy and innovation within electronics and computing.
Of course, while it’s necessary to maximize marketing channels, it’s equally important to consider the available resources. Avoid stretching yourself too thinly. If you only have a limited team or a small budget, you should focus on a select few channels that you can optimize as your campaign progresses.
5. Create compelling and personalized messaging
As any marketer knows, personalization is at the heart of modern marketing. Handled correctly, it can improve customer experiences. Shoppers will feel more connected to your brand and more likely to make a purchase.
You only need to look at the data to see the power of personalization on the B2B customer journey. A recent study found that engagement with calls-to-actions increased by nearly 70% year on year, requests for product demonstrations grew 4X, and conversion rates doubled.
Data is central to effective personalization. It helps you gain a strong understanding of your audience’s different types. Earlier, we mentioned the importance of creating buyer personas. Build as many personas as possible that represent the different subsets of your audience.
You’ll need to segment your data into smaller groups to do this. Not everyone who uses your product will have the same seniority or even work in the same department. Each of these groups will respond to different types of messaging. Segmentation helps you to understand these groups more clearly.
6. Implement a strong SEO and SEM strategy
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) are essential in every B2B integrated marketing campaign.
SEO is the process of climbing the search results on search engine pages through organic tactics. This SEO optimization involves various tactics, including keyword research, link building, and content marketing.
SEM is a broader strategy encompassing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to boost search engine rankings. Here, organizations bid on specific high-ranking keywords. Those that place the highest bids get a prime position on the search engine results page.
Both SEM and SEO can help power your marketing campaign. An organic approach can be both cost-effective and sustainable. Using consistent SEO tactics, you can ensure your website and social media content is more easily discoverable.
Paid advertising, on the other hand, can provide a quick boost to a campaign. Instead of the slow buildup of SEO, you can instantly get people where you want them to be.
7. Measure and analyze campaign performance
You should be plugged into the data from the moment you kick off your campaign. Earlier, we encouraged you to pick a set of KPIs to track progress towards your goals. Monitor these regularly: is your campaign on track to meet its objectives?
Of course, an integrated marketing campaign brings together many different marketing channels. It can be difficult to keep track of all this information. That’s why it’s a good idea to invest in cloud ERP software. This centralizes all critical data into one location. Any employee with an internet connection can access it and get the information they need.
Using an integrated CRM or multi-channel reporting tool allows you to examine the performance of individual marketing streams.
This analysis is a chance to see how effectively your resources are utilized and which channels are under-performing. If your resources are thinly stretched, cutting out a particular marketing channel might be wise. Alternatively, consider running some A/B tests to see how performance can be improved.
8. Continuously optimize and refine your strategy
Using a “rinse and repeat” strategy for every campaign is the easiest way to fail in integrated marketing. No strategy is perfect. Knowing your approach’s strengths and weaknesses is important going forward. That’s why it’s essential to reflect on your progress at the end of every campaign and continue refining your strategy.
Use the data you’ve collected throughout the campaign and ask yourself some questions. Below are a few examples.
- Did we meet our targets? If not, why?
- Were our buyer personas accurate, and did they help us reach our audience?
- Did we focus on the right KPIs to get a complete picture of our performance?
- Which marketing channels performed well and which underperformed?
Final thoughts on building an effective integrated marketing campaign
You may have the perfect B2B product, but that alone isn’t enough to pull customers in. With many B2B industries becoming increasingly crowded, having a winning strategy is essential. An integrated campaign is the only way to build a coherent marketing vision. With a unified approach, you can boost brand awareness and attract customers across marketing channels.
Here, we’ve explored some key steps for building an integrated campaign. Take these one by one, and above all, take your time. A rushed approach won’t get you anywhere. Spending time getting to know your audience and building a campaign around them is the best way to achieve success.
So, why not get to work and see what an integrated marketing campaign can do for you?
