Over the course of my 30-year career, integrated marketing has included: mass media (TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, OOH), database marketing, point-of-sale, public relations, conferences and events, seminars, webinars and now, more recently, email, social media and mobile.
I’m a proponent of inbound marketing. The internet has put consumers in charge of the information they will or will not review prior to buying a product or service. As such, it’s incumbent upon marketers to provide information of value to prospective consumers for free.
Information of value is information that is timely and relevant. If you’re going to send me an email it better pertain to what I’m interested in or I will unsubscribe.
I’m of the generation that still values email. I’m well aware that younger generations do not. As such, you need to segment your target based on age and online media usage habits (i.e., email, social media and mobile, as well as their integration on mobile devices).
It’s critical to understand as much as you can about your target audience and segment them so you can communicate to them via the right media, with the right message at the right time. Not dissimilar to knowing how to plan a media buy 20 or 30 years ago.
This requires a reliable CRM database and employees who understand the criticality of keeping the data in the CRM as up to date and complete as possible.
I just installed a CRM database where I work and included links to contacts’ Facebook pages, LinkedIn pages, twitter accounts and blogs. This generated some strange looks from the folks using the CRM; however, if I’m a sales rep calling on a prospect, I would surely like to understand as much about my prospect as possible before making the initial sales call.
What are you doing to integrate new media into your marketing and deliver a cohesive message?
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