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Why an Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy is Essential

• Craig Wilson
• February 23, 2016

Most businesses have their one marketing strategy that works reasonably well for them. Whether they’re using social media posts, blogging, making videos or ranking high in search, it’s bringing business to the door and things are great.

But how much better could your marketing be performing? Imagine if you had multiple marketing tactics working in unison as an integrated digital marketing strategy rather than relying on one or two channels.

Here’s why you your business should have an integrated digital marketing strategy.

• You can’t put all your eggs in one basket: Sure social media is a popular, but hypothetically, what if down the line people begin using it less or move on to other media platforms? Users have a history of being fickle, embracing one network then moving away. Remember MySpace? Then you begin losing your customers and having to start all over with a whole new game plan. If you have an integrated digital marketing strategy in place, this has less chance of happening. If social media flops for a while, you can focus on other channels you have going such as traditional advertising, events, videos or email marketing.

• One channel keeps you from seeing what’s out there: If you limit your business to one channel for your digital marketing strategy, it keeps you from exploring other options or points of view with other channels. Your business might be good at expressing their points of view on social media, but if you begin blogging along with that, it can make your point of view even clearer to your audience. This is one advantage of many that comes from having an integrated digital marketing strategy.

So, how can your business get an integrated digital marketing strategy going? Try these steps from Inbound.

1. “Figure out what differentiates you in the marketplace.”
2. “Focus on the channels where you know your target market is present.”
3. “Start by concentrating on a couple of key channels, and [optimise] those channels to make them as profitable as possible.”
4. “Study your competitors regularly to figure out how they are generating business.”
5. “Once you have [optimised] the performance of one or two channels, keep expanding this until you have several different ways of generating business.”

Here is what an integrated digital marketing strategy can look like….