Integrated Marketing - What is it and Why is it Important?

Integrated marketing is the holistic approach to communication in marketing. It's making sure that you are being consistent in your marketing both online and offline. Consistency is key in making sure that consumers understand your marketing message which leads to a great result and return on your investment. The Integrated marketing helps by optimizing the spend whether online or offline and putting the right number of dollars towards the most effective approach.

It used to be we could look at marketing in two segments - online and offline. Marketing is shifting and you will find the most optimum result by utilizing an integrated approach.

Let me share an example with you:

Marketing your company's personality

(MoneyWatch) To prospects, you probably look run-of-the-mill. As the old saying goes, experience is what you get when you wanted something else. So the trick is to learn from mistakes - preferably other people's mistakes. When it comes to marketing your company, don't make the mistake of looking like everyone else who does what you do.

"No matter what business you're in, you probably walk and talk a lot like the other people who do what you do," says Terri Langhans, author of a great book titled The 7 Marketing Mistakes Every Business Makes and How To Fix Them and the founder of the marketing firm Blah, Blah, Blah.

Why sales doesn't have its rightful place at the boardroom table?

August 8, 2012 was a milestone for professional salespeople around Australia. Until that day there had been no officially recognised benchmark for professional selling at tertiary level.

Finance, marketing, production, engineering, IT, business administration, research and design, human resources, logistics, procurement and even entrepreneurship – it's a long list – all have recognised tertiary qualifications. Professional business selling is the last role in the value chain to be officially recognised in this space.

The Compensation Conundrum

Tales of the disconnect between sales and marketing have long been told. Misaligned goals, differing definitions of qualified leads, blame games, and more.

One underexplored area that can help to increase collaboration and improve alignment among sales and marketing teams is compensation. Linking marketers’ variable pay to sales performance increases the likelihood that marketers will make it their mission to work closely with sales teams to ensure that marketing efforts drive positive sales outcomes.

Sales Tips from a Marketing Master

In 2005 Seth Godin, a marketing guru and author of several classic marketing books, posted his list of facts that every good marketer should know. But his list doesn't only apply to the marketing side of business: several of his tips are just as relevant (if not more so) for salespeople.

1. Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
The 80/20 is so often quoted in business because it's surprisingly accurate. All salespeople soon come to realize that there are a few customers in their territory who quietly buy over and over without any fuss. Those customers will end up making the company (and the salesperson) far more money over time than the general pool of customers. So keeping those customers happy should be a priority! Send thank-you cards, birthday cards, special gifts, and anything else you can think of to recognize and appreciate your best customers.

SEO Is Leaving Marketing Behind

I’m starting to feel like search engine optimization should be re-labeled again. Real search engine optimization rarely makes any more headlines. The basic processes have been grilled into virtually every corporate and startup by now. People know they should be chasing keywords, populating their Websites with tons of unique content, begging for links from every link-friendly resource, and second-guessing their analytics on a daily basis about why search referral traffic is going up or down.

That’s search engine optimization, right?

So, Where Exactly Is the Optimization in Search Marketing?

10 interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week

Once again I've rounded up some of the most interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week.

Stats include smartphone shopping in the EU5, e-commerce delivery expectations, ad clicks on the mobile web, interactice iPad apps and three different sets of Facebook stats.

Email Marketing Tips That Can Increase Online Sales

Do you have a large email mailing list? Are you making the kind of money that you’d hoped you’d be making in your online business right now? Or are you struggling from day to day wondering how you can earn a nice living online? Well if this describes you, you should know that your situation can be fixed if you’re willing to work to change it.

To make money online, you need to use email marketing. 80% of your total business profits will come from sales on the “backend” (repeat sales from existing customers). So if you’re thrilled with the money you’re making now on the front end, imagine how much more money you could be making if you kept selling to the people on your customer list?

8 Steps for Social Media Marketing Success

Do you follow, friend, like, tweet, #hashtag, circle, search, share, upload, link-in, link-to, favorite, discover, connect, bookmark, filter, share, pin, post, upload, comment and connect? You should.

For business, it’s become an imperative—for marketing, PR, personal branding, customer relations—you name it. For life outside of work, it’s a ton of fun.

The Cost Of Being Right vs. When It’s Ok To Shut Up

Last weekend, I did something that I don’t usually do. I took my kids to see a movie,  Ice Age: Continental Drift.  I don’t usually attend the movies because I can’t stand sitting through all the inappropriate previews that my kids shouldn’t see, but that is another blog post altogether.

The day before we went to see the movie, I called our local Regal theater to ask some questions about ages and pricing.  I wanted to pre-purchase our tickets so that we could skip the long and boring line.  Those of you with kids will know how fun those are!  After speaking to the theater, and getting the information I needed, I bought the tickets and set our schedule for a fun time the next day.  Simple right?

5 Tips to Help Your Marketing Messages Sing

With attention spans short and competition intense, clear language is essential to help marketing messages sing and spark interest in your business.

As in all relationships, people connect with straightforward and honest communications. In fact, 84% of consumers are inclined to trust companies using jargon-free language, according to Joseph Kimble in Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please: The Case for Plain Language in Business, Government, and Law (Carolina Academic Press, 2012).

SWOT Analysis for Web Publishers

The rapid changes in the search industry over the last sixteen months have left many web publishers wondering whether they should pivot their business models or exist the industry entirely. This is a difficult question for business owners who have invested years of their lives and much of their wealth in firms which may no longer be viable contenders in the "new" search industry.

SWOT analysis is a technique which business owners can use to strategically analyze their businesses in relation to their competitors and the marketplace as a whole. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunites, Threats.

• Strengths are attributes of the organization which provide an advantage in the marketplace.
• Weaknesses are attributres of the organization which cause a disadvantage in the marketplace.
• Opportunities are actions the organization could take to create an advantage in the marketplace.
• Threats are events which could happen in the environment and cause the organization to be disadvantaged.

The first two areas, Strengths and Weaknesses, focus primarily on the internal attributes of the organization. The last two areas, Opportunities and Threats, focus primary on how the organization may be affected by external events.

Unsubscribe Me You Bully: 4 Common Email Marketing Mistakes that Lead to Unsubscribes

When I get unwanted and unsolicited emails from someone I don’t know, the first thing I do is look for the unsubscribe link. Yet, I’m still struggling with the fact that often when I’ve asked to be “unsubscribed,” an email somehow manages to sneak through to my inbox. This is when I start to doubt myself, “wait a minute, I thought I unsubscribed last time, but maybe I didn’t?” So, I continue to keep hitting the unsubscribe button, but somehow, “they” [a restaurant, store, blog, etc.] don’t really seem to grasp the concept of unsubscribing. And the reason I unsubscribe to half of these in the first place is because I am no longer interested in what they have to say because it’s either always the same stuff, or it is stuff I am not interested in learning about.

Time is Money: Cost of Social Media Marketing for Businesses

Small business owners are lucky. Since they are small, they don’t need a million dollar budget and a 15 person team managing their marketing. They can do it themselves, hire an individual internally or outsource it to a marketing professional in the community. But I’d like to address the common misconception that social media marketing doesn’t cost a lot. If someone is telling you that they can take over all your social media marketing initiatives for $100 a month, they’re lying to you. If you want to hire a college student for $7.25 an hour to do the job for you, go ahead. They don’t have the skills or know-how to do a good job and won’t care about doing a good job because you’re paying them minimum wage.

Use your brain: Why marketers need to understand neuroscience

The following post is adapted from The Social Life of Brands, an article published in June in the management magazine strategy+business. It was co-written with Mary Beth McEuen, vice president and executive director of the Maritz Institute, and Emily Falk, an assistant professor of communication studies and psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Every form of interaction between companies and consumers—taking place online and offline, in stores, and over mobile devices—is shaped by the social nature of brands. Today, because of the exponential growth in social media, these conversations among consumers and between consumers and brands are more visible. Managing these connections at every scale, from individual contact to millions of people, is the fundamental task of marketing today.

Οι 2 επιλογές της Οικονομικής κρίσης (σε μια επιχείρηση)

Τα πράγματα δεν είναι εύκολα, παρόλα αυτά πιστεύω ότι το παιχνίδι δεν έχει χαθεί – τουλάχιστον όχι ακόμα! Η Οικονομική Κρίση μας έχει πλήξει όλους άσχημα, και αναφέρομαι κυρίως στις μικρές επιχειρήσεις και τους ελεύθερους επαγγελματίες.

• Έχουμε σημαντική Πτώση τζίρου, όπου σε πολλούς κλάδους φτάνει από 50% μέχρι και 80% – και σε κάποιους κλάδους ακόμα μεγαλύτερη
• Έχουμε Λιγότερες αγορές από τους πελάτες – και μικρότερη κατανάλωση!
• Έχουμε βεβαίως λιγότερους πελάτες. Έχουμε μείωση δηλαδή των ανθρώπων που επισκέπτονται το κατάστημα ή το γραφείο μας!
• Επίσης το παράδοξο που συμβαίνει είναι να δουλεύουμε περισσότερες ώρες – και να βγάζουμε λιγότερα χρήματα (πραγματικά είναι μυστήριο!)
• Παρατηρείται επίσης έντονη έλλειψη ενδιαφέροντος για την δουλειά και την επιχείρηση τους από πολλούς επαγγελματίες
• Επικρατεί πεσμένη διάθεση για δουλειά με αποτέλεσμα να μην γίνονται κινήσεις και ενέργειες για την επιβίωση και ανάπτυξη της δουλειάς τους και πολλοί μοιάζουν σαν έχουν ήδη παραδοθεί
• Και αυτό που βλέπουμε όλοι μας – και οι πελάτες σας – είναι κατεβασμένα πρόσωπα και γκρίνια σχεδόν σε όλα – όλα μας φταίνε

Five Guidelines for Outsourcing Your Search Engine Marketing

It's true there are great benefits to being found in search engines, whether it be Google, Bing, or Yahoo!. When someone is searching for your product or service and they find you in a search engine it not only build credibility, but it also often gains you the inquiry of a "warm" lead. A consumer that is ready to purchase.

First off, don't let anyone tell you that you can't learn search engine marketing. You can. However, it will take time and effort on your part. The information is out there, but you must seek it out, implement it, and monitor it. There are some companies that just don't have the time or resources to do search engine marketing on their own so they seek to outsource it. This is not a bad move, provided you do your homework and don't get taken by search engine marketing companies that are not legit and won't get you the desired results you are paying for.

From Customer Conversation to Conversion

For many organizations, integrating the customer experience with social media remains a challenge. The teams in charge of advertising, product marketing, and public relations are still learning to work together. While those discussions are taking place, the customer is the driver's seat.

Marketing that makes business sense, means taking a look at how you design and build the entire organization, nnot just the promotional end of things. Solid execution is key to results. How do you get all your marketing and communication to work together to deliver performance?

Marketing Principles Learned from Volkswagen

What is the most important marketing principle?

If someone asked you this question, regardless of whether or not you are affiliated in marketing, what would be your answer?

Loyalty? Focus? Customer Service? Unique Selling?

Why List Segmentation Matters in Email Marketing

Recently I came across an online retailer who added me to their email list since I attended an event at one of their stores. Besides being angry that they opted me in without giving the ok, it got me thinking about how most online retailers do not think through the process of email marketing. In their eyes they want to get as many email addresses as possible and blast away. What better way to set yourself up for poor data and reporting.