What does marketing mean to you? To many it’s just a mixture of advertising, branding, direct mail, websites, email marketing, and so on. Some will feel that it’s an ill-disciplined, hungry beast that always needs feeding and when you look at it it’s difficult to see if it’s delivering anything tangible for your business. Whereas others will feel that it’s a vital tool instrumental to the future success and growth of their business.

Whatever your view, as we move into a time of economic uncertainty what is required now is a more integrated approach to marketing your products and services. One that brings together the myriad of channels available to the modern marketer with a co-ordinated voice delivering the right message, to the right customer, at the right time. While ensuring that through appropriate analytics and review the cycle is continually improved.

If that definition of marketing sounds interesting then read on as we build you a step by step guide on how to achieve this across multiple channels whilst ensuring you get the best return on investment from every marketing pound you spend.

Work out what it is you actually sell
Before you can build an integrated marketing system it’s imperative that you really understand what it is you are selling. This may sound a little odd that we’re telling you that you don’t know what you sell - but bare with us for a second and all will become clear.

Many businesses spend so much time talking about themselves that there is very little time to communicate what they actually do for their customers. Or to put that another way – what problems they solve. And here lies the core issue. Your prospects couldn’t care less about who you are! They want to know what you can do for them and what problems you solve for them. If you don’t communicate this to them quickly - they will just
ignore you and move on.

Working out what you actually sell and the benefits you can deliver is possibly the most important thing you’ll ever do in business. Ask yourselves what problem you solve as a business as this will help identify the main reasons people buy from you. To illustrate this point think about the simple examples below.

You’ll notice in the above examples that the value of the product or service increases dramatically when it moves from the left hand column to the right. Once you work out what it is your customers are really buying – this will give you a clear guide to align all the different marketing channels in your system.

Offline - Branding, design, direct marketing
Your integrated marketing system will fall at the first hurdle if your customers don’t identify with and recognise your branding across all your channels. Getting this element right starts with a voyage of discovery to define what your brand really is so you can position yourself appropriately. 

• What is your vision for the brand?
• What are your values?
• What are you really selling?
• What problem are you solving?
• Who are your customers?
• How can you communicate with these customers?
• What are your strengths and opportunities?
• Who are your key competitors?
• What is your point of differentiation?
• How are you currently positioning yourself?

Once you have answers to these and other key questions you will be able to work with your design partner to create a strong brand identity that will clearly communicate for you over and over again. It’s vital that you create something that will be of compelling benefit to your customers. And it’s not just about a logo as this is only an entry point to the brand – there are many other brand elements that must be considered.

When your brand identity is implemented consistently it generates awareness, trust and a clear understanding of what you stand for. And when done correctly you can strengthen your brand and communicate its essence at every opportunity. All this makes it easier for companies to believe, trust and buy from you and never before has this been so important.

On & Offline - PR & advertising
Traditionally public / media relations and event management were off line channels but with the advent of more online publications, social media, blogs, online forums and webinars this is no longer the case. Taking the example of a press release, traditional media coverage is still key and can heighten awareness of your brand and generate enquiries. But when combined with online press it can get your message in front of a new audience as well as driving significant traffic to your website.

Another benefit in using online distribution for your press releases is that by having more links to your website the major search engines will elevate you in their rankings again increasing your website traffic, enquiries and opportunities. This is just one of the examples of how aligning your multiple on and off line channels can bring hidden gain to your organisation.

And where does advertising fit into all this? It’s not necessarily right for every company but when used as part of an integrated programme it can make a real difference to the awareness of your brand. 

Online - Websites, email marketing and search marketing
Take a look at your current website and ask yourself some questions.

• Is it clearly communicating the problem you solve for you customers?
• Does it have strong calls to action?
• Are you capturing data for future email marketing?
• Are enquiries flowing through into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to ensure they are all followed up?
• Does it clearly represent your brand?
• Is it being regularly updated with content, blog posts, press releases and so on? 

If you can answer ‘yes’ to all these questions – well done - you’re ahead of the curve! If you answered ‘no’ you’re not maximising the potential benefit you can get from your website and it’s important that you work with your web company to put things right before you start increasing traffic to your website - otherwise you risk wasting your money as visitors hit the ‘back button’ - unsure if you can help them or what to do next.

Once you have your website in order there are lots of ways you can drive targeted traffic to it. Here are just a few of the channels you can use. 

• Pay per click (PPC) – paid for adverts that appear on the search engines when people type in a key phrase related to your business. You only pay when your advert is clicked.
• Search engine optimisation (SEO) – techniques to ensure your website gets listed in the natural results for your keywords. This is achieved by using on-page and off-page strategies.
• Email marketing – nurturing prospects into sales using a steady, consistent stream of email marketing messages with soft and hard offers to build up trust

Analysis & improvement
This brings us to the last stage in the cycle. Irrespective of the channel used to create the contact all leads should be logged into your CRM program so you can track prospects' progress as they develop from prospects into
clients. With your digital channels this can normally be achieved automatically but even with direct mail and telephone contacts, enquiry codes or simply asking the prospect, can identify what channel created the lead.

Once you have all this data collected it is time to look back on the past period’s activities and measure each marketing tactic's performance: sales figures, return on investments and other metrics should be used to set a benchmark against which later projects can be measured and decisions made.

It’s also time to review any other monitoring systems. For example programs like Google Analytics can provide valuable insight into what’s working and what isn’t on your website and other digital channels.

Finally, using the data gained through the recording and analytics above the refinement process will allow you to remove as much inefficiency from the marketing process as possible. This may even require you to revisit your branding and design...which conveniently brings us right back to the beginning of the cycle.

How do you implement and maintain the process?
Putting this program into place might sound like a daunting task but in actuality you're likely to have a lot of the basic building blocks needed to host it in place as it is. All that is required is for you to fill in the missing gaps. So if you have a brand identity in place but no brand guidelines then you need to concentrate on applying your brand consistently across all points of contact with your stakeholders. If you have a website with a data capture & email marketing program up and running, but no SEO or PPC tactics concentrate on getting your search strategy up and running quickly. 

Once the gaps are filled, it's then simply a case of ensuring every part of the marketing process draws on th decisions that were made in the segment before it. For instance, do your website and email marketing match the branding guidelines set out earlier on in the cycle? Has there been a positive response (increased conversions) to the newsletters you've been sending? Rather than using more sophisticated forms of trial and error, you'll be making decisions based on actual, empirical evidence.

Maintaining the integrated process is also easier than you might imagine. Because the process hinges on the ethos of best practice, every element of the process is encouraged to reach the highest possible quality standards, and the analysis & improvement segment of the cycle ensures that the processes are being tested for improvement continuously.

Conclusion
An integrated marketing process is a sensible way to achieve business growth. It is ideal for those who want to create a point of difference and make assured steps into the world of digital marketing.

For simplicity's sake we have included four of the main online advertising channels of today, but the beauty of the integrated marketing model – a cyclical structure with a process of continual review – means that it is possible to add new channels such as social media or mobile marketing without interrupting the channels already in place.

Since it also operates on a principle code of best practice and is geared towards continuous review, the process can 'take care of itself' to some extent. This means you have more breathing space and confidence with which to test unknown marketing channels before making them a fully-fledged part of your marketing process.

By maintaining the basic principles of testing, measuring and improvement that are intrinsic to this cycle your business should be in good shape to weather the uncertain times ahead and stay one step ahead of your competition.