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IMW(hat)? Integrated Marketing Dashboards, thats what!

PUBLISHED ON 2 JUNE, 2014

Today we are heading into the second day of the DMA’s Integrated Marketing event. We are very excited to be sponsoring the event, and discussing the realities of how companies are truly approaching their Integrated Marketing efforts.

So, what is IMW all about?

The idea behind Integrated Marketing is simple:

creating a consistent brand message across all channels, and ensuring that you are reaching your customers wherever they are, will allow you to increase brand recognition, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty.

And, It’s really not hard to argue the case for this theory:

giving your customers the information they need about you, wherever they are, and in the manner that they will best understand- and doing all of this consistently across channels- will allow them to understand you and your offering, and build trust in your brand.

Where we run into trouble, however, is in the implementation of this model.

Firstly, how can we ensure that we are transmitting a consistent brand message across customers with different cultural backgrounds and behaviour?

It is crucial to plan comprehensively from the beginning. We need to have our brand message extremely clear from the get go and all stakeholders need to be involved and educated on this. We also need to have thought carefully about how this brand message can be adjusted to different customer segments without losing its meaning. Whilst understanding the behaviour and preferences of each segment is vital (and can be explored using analytics), we need to ensure that we don’t work so hard to relate to these segments that we lose our focus.

Secondly, different channels call for different sorts of marketing, so how can we be consistent with our message across these channels?

Although a tweet is an entirely different entity from an article in a respected journal, if our potential customers use both, we must try to have a presence in each. Comprehensive analysis of our target segments and the use best practices for marketing throughout these mediums is essential to ensuring our message is understood. Translating and adjusting the delivery of a core idea can be difficult to do but is vital to successful Integrated Marketing.

Thirdly, we should be meeting our potential customers everywhere they go, but how do we know where they go? and how can we make sure we are speaking to them in all channels?

Of course, neither of these issues is easy to solve, and both require analysis. Analytics might give you some of the answers you require, but further understanding your customers might require actually talking to them. Customer surveys, focus groups, or other alternatives might also be essential in understanding the sorts of channels your potential clients frequent. Furthermore, resource limitations are always a problem for marketers, especially in the case where we are targeting an audience spread over multiple channels. In the case (almost always the case, unfortunately) that you do not have sufficient resources (both budget and human) to spread over marketing throughout all of the channels your potential clients access, analytics should help you recognize which channels are most important in terms of customer lifetime value. These are the channels you should focus your resources on.

Last but definitely not least, how can we make sure that all of these efforts are successful? How can we measure our efforts in context and see our performance towards our long run strategic objectives?

We can be highly successful in meeting our potential customers in every channel, and also in sending out a consistent brand message. But what is all of this worth if we cannot show the impact this is having on our long run strategic objectives? The easiest way to see the impact of your Integrated Marketing is to bring all your data together in context.

An Integrated Marketing Dashboard can help you do so, by:

• Bringing all your information together in one dashboard, irrespective of the channel its coming from
• Showing your data broken down by sources or segments
• Demonstrating how different indicators affect your long run strategic performance (by showing your goals and progress towards them)
• Allowing you to communicate with your colleagues based on the data in one central location so that you can share ideas, observations, and recommendations and collaborate to turn these into actions
• Ensuring you can see the impact of key actions and events on your performance

So, our solution to overcoming the obstacles associated with Integrated Marketing? Planning, analysing, prioritising and exploring your insights. The best way to ensure that your marketing team is spreading a consistent message to all of your potential customers across all channels is clear communication of objectives, and collaboration to make sure your team is acting on the data insights available to you. Have you considered using a workflow-powered marketing dashboard to help you find success with Integrated Marketing?

 

Stop by booth 204 for more information on how Sweetspot can help you succeed in your Integrated Marketing efforts!