Integrated Digital Marketing: what is and why you need this strategy

If you look around nowadays, you’ll see far too much advertising and marketing. Brands are constantly fighting for customers ‘ attention. 

When we analyze the Digital Marketing world, we see that the same has been happening: wherever you are, you’ll face a dozen ads and pieces of content.

So, if you want to drive better results and get the best strategy up and running quickly, to generate leads and sales, you need to cut through the noise of marketing. 

But how can we do that? The answer is integrated Digital Marketing.

By integrating your communication, you can tell a compelling story to your customers, leaving absolutely no room for doubt. 

You boost the chances of getting noticed and help people go through the buyer’s journey, from a visitor to an excited and loyal fan.

Do you want to know more? Here’s what we are going treat:

• What is integrated Digital Marketing?
• What are the channels of an integrated Digital Marketing strategy?
• What are the benefits of integrating your Digital Marketing?

 

What is integrated Digital Marketing?

Integrated Digital Marketing encompasses the idea of creating a unique form of expression that’s easy to identify in all of the channels your customer uses. 

It’s like using a single language to speak in different situations.

That means it’s a strategy that blends all your marketing tactics. Then, each campaign and approach complement the other, creating a consistent image on the mind of the users and tracing a journey for them to go on. 

By being consistent, you can become memorable to your audience.

But integrated Digital Marketing also means having a well-structured and well-defined marketing plan. 

That includes taking care of the online presence by managing different channels of the digital world. 

It involves making sure your organization is on the web, where your customer already is. 

All those efforts should point in one direction only and express the same image to the mind of the users.

Unifying all the channels

We can understand this concept by looking at the idea of a digital picture. 

What is a picture? Just a set of pixels that work together to make us believe we see some specific form.

Those pixels apart don’t make much sense, but when they gather, we get the proper meaning. 

Then, communication happens. 

That’s the same with your Digital Marketing. 

If you develop a method to unify all those channels, creating the same experience to the audience, your marketing works as a whole and makes more sense to prospects.

Thus, people will go from one touchpoint to another without noticing the difference. 

They will go smoothly through the journey without any interruption.

So, to summarize what we’re saying: integrated Digital Marketing is about creating a plan to make sure you’re using digital media and to make sure you’re using it the right way.

Those means of communications include the 3 types of digital media: 

• paid media (paid advertising); 
• earned media (organic search obtained with a website or a blog);
• owned media (Social Media, Email, and others).

 

What are the channels of an integrated Digital Marketing strategy?

So, how can you do that? First, you have to identify the channels. The last paragraph gave you a quick view of what those are. Let’s go through and explain how to use them! 

Organic Search

Position a website on top of Google SERPs must be a top priority when you work with digital strategies, such as Content Marketing. Organic search should lead prospects to pages that represent clearly who you are and what you’re offering. 

That means your content must be relevant to the audience, engaging them to take the next step in the buyer’s journey.

And you can do that by applying SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques, like link building, proper use of keywords, and optimization of your website’s loading speed.

Social Media

Social Media is a term that encompasses many channels of communication. 

It’s a set of communities that gathers 3.5 billion people, which is 45% of the world’s population, as the We Are Social study showed last year.

We’re talking about a variety of options: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter, just to name a few. Each one has its style and requires different approaches.

Nevertheless, you have to make sure your brand is essentially the same, conveying the same image. 

Then, you can strengthen your strategy in a setting that’s familiar to the audience. 

Here’s one way to do that: design a brand persona, with a clear language and voice to use in every media. 

By doing that, you connect with people and make them trust you as a friend trying to help, and not another company trying to get their money.

Content Marketing

Your Content Marketing strategy also has to align with the other tactics. 

It’s essential to focus on creating useful, powerful, interactive content, with the same language you’re speaking in all the other channels. 

Take into account the user experience as well, producing content that addresses the buyer persona’s needs, and it’s engaging to read.

If your content follows your Social Media strategy, for instance, you can send people from Facebook or Instagram to sign up for more on the website.

Or you can get them to solve problems or pain points with educational pieces. You start the conversation in one environment and finish it on another.

Paid Advertising

When it comes to paid advertising, it’s pretty much the same. This channel can complement the others. It doesn’t matter if you’re working with one of these:

• paid search: pages that show up on top of Google results page;
• display ads: banners that communicate through visual and text on sites/blogs;
• social media ads: visual pieces created to spread on social networks.

A paid search takes 64.6% of the clicks for the most prominent keywords on the Google results page — so don’t forget to add them to your strategy!

You have to make sure you’re using segmentation the proper way to talk to the right people at the right time. 

 

What are the benefits of integrating your Digital Marketing?

Let’s review some benefits of an integrated plan.

Brand Awareness

When marketers integrate the means of communication, they can easily build brand awareness.

After all, your company will be everywhere on the internet, available for customers to start a conversation. 

Your business will be on the Social Media they use, on their email, and Google when they search for something. 

ROI

Creating a consistent marketing plan is the key to achieving a higher and faster ROI (Return Over Investment).

Every effort will reward the enterprise with more sales and excellent results, increasing revenue, and allowing for rapid growth. 

That is because it’s easy for leads to engage when you tell a clear, consistent story.

Conversions

As we could see in some examples previously mentioned, you can enhance your conversion rates with an integrated plan.

You will talk to your prospect with a unique language and offer them a great experience everywhere they go. 

So, they will have no choice but to sign up to discover more and become a lead. 

When all your marketing efforts point in one single direction, it’s easy for buyers to understand where you want them to go. 

Brand loyalty

A great way to generate loyalty is to position your brand consistently on the mind of the customer. 

That means being efficient and cohesive with your content, advertising, and social media messaging. 

Efficient, in this case, means your communication is tailored to the needs of your audience. On the other hand, cohesive means integrating your channels. 

An integrated Digital Marketing strategy is always crafting the same feeling on every touchpoint and interaction of your customer with your brand.

You can do that by unifying every channel and planning your tactics with one single goal in mind, getting all of them to work together to move your customer further in the buyer’s journey. 

Have you enjoyed this post? Get more insights with our article about 6 Digital Marketing channels.