Integrated Marketing: Developing the right online, offline mix.

Breaking down the channels and developing the right online, offline marketing mix is what integrated marketing is all about. Understanding which ones to use and when, is for the strategic minded, who are well experienced in online marketing, advertising and public relations.

BREAKING DOWN THE CHANNELS

Integrated Marketing channels come in two flavours, online and offline. The main point of difference between online and offline channels is that online is defined by the ability to connect the consumer directly to your business, at the click of a button. Whereas offline channels engage now, act later.

Online marketing channels include email, social media, online advertising, search engine optimization, affiliate, webinars, blogs, RSS, podcast, online gaming, Internet Radio, and Internet TV. Offline marketing channels include newspaper, magazine, direct mail, public relations, billboard, traditional radio, and television.

An integrated marketing approach aims to understand the target audience and what marketing channels will most likely engage the consumer. This allows marketers’ to decide whether they will take a mass-media approach or target specific online and offline (niche) channels.

One of the most difficult parts of using offline marketing channels is tracking the ROI on advertising and knowing where to attribute your sales. Online marketing channels often allow the use of tracking software or provide (embedded) analytics therefore assisting with sales attribution. Because online can give such a clear indication of what worked and what didn’t, the integrated marketing plan which is proven to have worked, then becomes more of a “marketing system” which can be repeated for each new campaign.

The marketing communication call-to-action is the key indicator which defines the channels you will most likely integrate into your campaign, and which methods you will apply to those channels. Below is the online channel breakdown.

THE ONLINE CHANNELS

ONLINE ADVERTISING

Online Advertising can appear in many different channels. The most common is Google Advertising (Adwords) which is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Pay Per 1000 Impressions (CPM). Adwords are not limited to displaying within the search engine results pages (SERPs) but can display across many websites and Google services when triggered to display due to it’s associated keyword relevance. Online advertising can be very useful to assist other channels call-to-action, such as to visit a website. Other channels which assist in completing your integrated online advertising strategy are Bing, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

EMAIL (EDM)

Email marketing is commonly referred to as an Electronic Direct Mail (EDM) and can have many calls-to-action. The most likely will be to click through to a website / page or share the message via Social Media or send to a friend. Other Calls-To-Action could be to print a coupon and take it in-store or save-the-date / register for an event. All of the above actions require additional marketing channels to be integrated and strategies to be implemented to better assist with driving the conversion.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

When your call to action is to visit your website or specific page, then you’re going to need to ensure the target audience will get there, efficiently. The audience will either use Google or Bing to search or visit your web address directly by typing in www.yourdomain.com.au/pagename. Building custom landing pages which are optimized for the keywords associated with your campaign will allow you to track searches and direct clicks to your page and assist in attributing your marketing channel ROI.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Media has many sub-channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc. If you’re using Facebook within your campaign you will be using paid (promoted or sponsored) advertising and organic posts.

The Facebook Paid Advertising Call-to-action will be to either like your page, enter a competition, play a game or go to your website. Skills required will be online advertising and social media marketing, and/or game development and/or search engine optimisation.

WEBINARS AND BLOGS

Both Webinars and Blogs are about education or part of your inbound marketing and are most often found via search, social media or email. They therefore should always have a call-to-action to either engage in reading related articles, downloading an ebook, registering for email newsletters or a related event.

INTERNET RADIO

Internet Radio can be streamed via many different 3rd party websites or software, via a traditional radio station and of course your own website. Regardless of where you’re streaming, ensuring a visual call-to-action accompanies your audio is important. Traditional radio calls-to-action still apply in this arena but with the clickable visual means that tracking your conversion is going to be far simpler because of the “click.”

ONLINE GAMING

This channel is believed to be one of the biggest growth areas for advertising we will see in the next decade as gaming merges with online shopping and augmented reality but they’re another topic all-together.

In-Game Advertising (IGA) is the term used to describe advertising which advertises a specific product during game play. Such as being able to buy a Coke for your in-game personality or seeing a (virtual) billboard within the game which displays a Coke advertisement.

Advergaming is similar to IGA however the game has been specifically created to promote a single product or brand. Both of the above game advertising options allow for many calls-to-action to be explored such as receiving a real voucher for a Coke via email to take to your nearest supermarket. This requires the integration of channels such as IGA, EDM and SEO to all work seamlessly.

Games are hugely popular on smartphones and mobile tablets. With application developers generating revenue for their free mobile apps via mobile advertising, the opportunity exists for you to place text, banner and video advertising across these apps. Your call-to-action could be to purchase your app, purchase tickets to an event, shop online etc. Integrating mobile advertising into your marketing plan is still a new consideration for most brands in Australia but has been well adopted in North America, Europe and Asia for some time.

INTERNET TV

Internet TV is hugely popular in this digital age and is commonly referred to as catchup TV. Internet TV should not be confused with video sharing websites like Youtube. Internet TV is most commonly broadcast by traditional TV media corporations such as Australia’s ABC, SBS, Seven, Nine, Ten and paid channels. The commercial media corporations have finally caught onto the trend and are not only distributing TV ads but also banner advertisements while your watching your show. A clickable call-to-action is always going to greatly assist with tracking your conversion, therefore the banner ads are a must.

Brands are also getting onboard the Internet TV trend by launching their own www.yourdomain.tv websites. Redbull.tv and BodyScience.tv utilize video streaming software to deliver their content. Coming up with your own Internet TV channel means you have total control over calls-to-action and tracking conversion.

OFFLINE CHANNELS

NEWSPAPER, MAGAZINE, MAIL, PR, BILLBOARD, RADIO AND TV

Attributing offline integrated marketing to sales is always tricky. But there are quite a few tricks of the trade that can assist.

All offline advertisements will generally have a call-to-action like, call 1300 XXX XXX, Visit store location X, go to a website or connect on social media. Given the target audience is most likely to take action at the same time as seeing or hearing the advertisement we have to make a few assumptions.

Smartphone’s are the most common device our target audience will use to first call or use an internet map to find the location, visit a website or connect on social media. It’s therefore important to have your location visible on Google maps and Yelp to enable the consumer to better establish which side of the street your business is located on. It’s not always clear and the easier you make the next step the greater the chance of a conversion. Getting your business listed on Google or Yelp requires Search Engine Optimization.

If you’re using social media as a call to action, hashtags for Twitter and Instagram are a must. Facebook likes are much harder to attribute to any offline activity unless you track the geographic location increase, and timing of likes from those locations which correspond with the offline marketing geo-location and time of release.

Smartphones can also be used to scan QR codes or use mobile applications to turn the motionless print advertisement into a rich media experience by playing a video or full length advertisement on their phone. Pacific Magazines promotes the GENIE app for Apple and Android devices.

If no smartphone exists then setting up a totally new website (often with a mysterious domain name) like www.mymysteriousdomainname.com enables you to better track your ad performance than www.yourdomain.com.au/mysteriouscampaign The reason being is that Google often intervenes by enabling searches of your brand name or domain to occur. Thus desaturating the effectiveness of attributing the conversion to the offline media.

Tracking phone calls requires the setup of a unique 1300 number with call-tracking enabled. Call-Tracking can reveal geographic location and even record the phone calls for better understanding as to what your target audience were requesting when they did call.

MUST HAVES OF INTEGRATED MARKETING

Every marketing channel must have:

Each integrated channel’s aim defined,
Their own measurable KPIs,
A measurable call-to-action,
Skill sets required,
Implementation budget for each,
Budget to track and report on channel KPIs and overall ROI.