How do you make your marketing more effective?
A broad question.
I think there is one strategic approach all businesses can adopt - whatever size or budget - to make their marketing more effective: Integrated Marketing.
Doing more marketing doesn’t always make it more effective. Sometimes the useful work is joining up what’s already happening: making sure your message, your people and the next step for the customer all connect.
Integrate your efforts
By delivering a unified message across your channels to your target audience, you effectively communicate and market your brand at every phase of their journey.
Marketing strategies lack power when they're not combined. It's a bad use of effort and time operating them in silo - it will confuse those on the receiving end.
From content marketing and email marketing, to social media marketing and event marketing, create effective campaigns that utilise marketing strategies such as these - provide consistency for your customers and prospects by integrating your marketing across your channels.
Integrate internally
In addition, integrate Marketing internally within your business. Here are three examples:
Align Marketing and Sales - two teams working together with a common goal (to talk to your target audience)
Break down HR's barrier and help increase employer brand awareness - how can you support recruitment drives and showcase your company culture and brand values using social media?
Engage your employees (they’re your best advocates) by integrating their personal brands into your marketing mix - how can they play a part in your content marketing plan? How can you empower them to use social media channels to amplify your brand?
Give everyone the same brief
Before your next campaign, put the essentials in one place. You don’t need a complicated document. You do need the people involved to agree on what they’re trying to achieve.
What are we asking the audience to do, and why would they want to do it?
What message will appear in the email, on the website and in conversations with customers?
Who owns each part of the work, including answering questions and following up?
What will we measure, and when will we review it together?
Imagine a small training business promoting a webinar. The email offers a practical session for new managers, but the website gives only a general company description. Enquiries then go to an Inbox nobody has agreed to monitor. More promotion won’t solve those gaps.
A clearer webinar page, an agreed response and one person responsible for following up would make the existing activity work harder. That’s integration in practice.
Once the internal pieces fit, walk through the experience from your customer’s viewpoint to check that the promise carries through.
I enjoy helping businesses find these gaps and bring some structure to their marketing. If your activity feels disconnected, marketing consultancy can help you decide what needs attention and who needs to be involved.