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MERA guest editorial


Crank Up the Volume On Your Marketing


R


eaching your customers in today’s market- place is complicated to say the least. With so many different ways to communicate with them and so many businesses competing


for attention, it can seem impossible get your message heard. The good news is that there is a way to easily reach customers and prospects across today’s multiple marketing channels—integrate your marketing. Right now your marketing strategy might consist of sending out a newsletter or an email and then calling it a day. While that’s a good start, you could be missing out on hundreds of customers and thou- sands of dollars in sales by concentrating all of your marketing efforts into one channel. The volume at which you are broadcasting your message will be pretty low. By taking an integrated approach, your message has a chance to reach multiple people multiple times on multiple channels. You’re busy—and that’s understandable—but your custom- ers are a diverse bunch who frequent different places and use different technologies, so using a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t always effective. Some of them are searching online for prod- ucts, using social media to stay connected and essentially living with an iPhone in their hands at all times. Others spend all day in the shop listening to the radio and occasionally glanc- ing over the day’s newspaper or the latest issue of their favorite car magazine. There are also plenty more who fall somewhere in-between these two extremes. In order to reach all your cus- tomers and prospects, you should spread your message across multiple channels, from banner ads and social media to email and direct mail. So, how do you go about developing an integrated market- ing plan? It all starts with thinking about your message. Your message is the unifying voice in all of your marketing efforts, no matter where it is seen or heard. It is how someone can look at a banner ad or see an email and know those two pieces of content are from the same company. An integrated message is more than writing a tagline or using a consistent color palette. Your integrated message (or messages as the case may be) should touch on what your business is, what it does for your customers, and how it’s different from similar businesses. It should answer this question: why should they choose you?


58 Mobile Electronics July 2014


SUZANNE MARTIN, CMO, REVENEW


With the message ready, it’s time to put it out there where customers can find it. Are they search- ing online for you and your products? Be there with search marketing. Are they spending time on cer- tain websites? Place banner ads on the sites they frequent. Do they spend time on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or LinkedIn? Make sure your brand is engaging and advertising on those sites. These social media channels should also be integrated into your other marketing efforts as well. For example, you can add ‘Follow’ and ‘Like’ buttons to your newsletters and include your Twitter handle on print materials. You’ll also want to make sure your message is


integrated into the copy on your website, marketing elements you are using and any “real estate” you have online or offline. You, your sales people, and customer service personnel should be using this message when engaging with customers in person, on the phone, and even on Twitter and Facebook. After all, indi- vidual interactions with a company have a huge impact on how customers perceive it.


One thing to be conscious of is that different mediums often require different treatment of your message. For example, social media posts should be enticing and to the point whereas copy on your website or blog can be longer and more detailed. The message you develop for a banner ad might work brilliantly online, but that exact message may not translate as well on your print materials. This doesn’t mean you can’t repurpose copy and images from


product sheets or your other marketing campaigns. In fact, this is a great way to save time and make your life a little bit easier. What you want to make sure of, however, is that the way you position your message makes sense for the channel or medium you are using. A simple way to do this is to put yourself in your audience’s place. Think about how and where your audience will be seeing your message and whether you would pay attention to it in that circumstance. Integrated marketing comes down to taking advantage of the channels you have available to you. You don’t need to attack all of them head-on, but if you start putting a little bit more time and effort into those that your customers frequent the most, it will have a huge impact on your business. 


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