Five Questions to Ask When Creating an Integrated Marketing Plan

Integrated marketing plan

They say timing is everything. And while “they” probably weren’t thinking about marketing, this old adage certainly applies. Success in marketing can only happen when you reach your potential customers at the right place at the right time, which is why having an integrated marketing plan is so important.
An integrated marketing plan uses a cohesive look and feel and complimentary messaging across multiple customer touch points—the company’s website, email newsletters, sales dialogue, print ads, and so forth. The purpose is simple: be in as many places as your customer may be to reinforce your selling points. At the end of the day, no matter how great your offering, if your potential customers don’t know it exists, how can there be a sale?

At SalesEngine, an integrated marketing plan is created for each client, ensuring that they can reach their intended audience in multiple ways. How does it work? Take, for instance, the busy field of property management and a debt collections agency that is trying to connect with them. One property manager may prefer to watch video clips from the debt collections agency on ways to collect bad debt. Another may prefer to download the tips as a podcast and listen to it on the go. Still another may prefer to read a digital or hard copy of an article at their leisure. This multi-pronged approach strengthens a marketing strategy by creating an environment where there is more opportunity by being more accessible, more often.
So here are some questions to ask when creating your integrated marketing plan:

• Who is your audience? Are you talking to the right people in the right industries at the right job level? Do you have a strong database or do you need to it build out in order to get enough leads?
• How can you reach them? Establishing several, integrated ways to connect with your customers will increase your chances of reaching them. Catering to their behaviors, pain points, and providing solutions strengthens it even more.
• What’s in it for them? Timing is everything, but time is also precious so it is important to quickly get to the point of why your customer should pay attention to your marketing. Sharing unique, useful content gives your customers a reason to see why your brand has more to offer than just a message of “Buy me”.
• What’s your sales follow up process? Having a plan in place for how your company will follow up with leads greatly increases the success of your campaign. Follow-up emails and calls along with a Sales Rep Playbook containing talking points that tie into your campaign are some tools that help increase your chances of securing new customers.
• Is it working? Evaluate, refine, rinse and repeat. It can be challenging to create a marketing formula that works, but evaluating the ongoing progress and refining the approach is an important part of a successful integrated marketing plan. This can mean reviewing your metrics, fine-tuning your calls to action, and analyzing your database to make sure you are reaching the right people.

It comes down to this: understand your customer; provide relevant and meaningful content in a variety of ways; use a human touch in your sales follow up; evaluate your progress. In the end, every company wants to get the most sales possible out of their marketing investment. Having an integrated marketing plan is the right approach to make that happen.

by Leah Messina
http://www.salesengineintl.com/