Developing an integrated marketing strategy in the digital world is a challenge that is vexing many marketers at the moment. If you strip it down to its bare essentials, the first thing you need to think about is your overall strategy before you decide which digital platform is going to be best for you. So, in the interests of simplicity, it pays to get back to some basics before you run full steam ahead and create your plan.
Here are some online marketing topics to consider before you start building your new website, creating an app, creating an email marketing strategy or devising a social media plan:
- What markets are you trying to penetrate?
- Do you understand what your customers want?
- Do you know every aspect of your proposition and how it fits in with your customers?
- Do you know why a customer should buy from you?
- Have you thought through the sales process and how your customers are going to interact with you?
- Have you determined what kind of customer service you intend to offer?
- Have you got a game plan for monitoring your strategy and refining when necessary?
Once you can thoroughly answer the above questions you are then able to think about applying it to the digital space.
Managing your brand
In an increasingly complex digital world you need to manage your brand across your website, social media, video, apps, blogs, email marketing and any traditional offline marketing that you do. This is no easy feat.
So what is the best marketing technique to apply to this?
Well, to have a truly integrated approach, you need to think about what each digital platform can deliver and how you can exploit it. You also need to make life simple for your customers and make them feel valued. Here is a typical way you could do this:
- Create a special offer on social media
- Create a link in the special offer to an appropriate landing page on your website which reveals the details of the offer.
- Make it necessary for the customer to put in their email address on the website landing page to obtain the offer.
- Make it easy for the customer to complete the sales transaction through the website landing page.
- Capturing their email address means you can use it for email marketing purposes to tailor future offers to them
- By tailoring your offers in the future you add value, build trust and create loyalty.
And so the virtuous circle begins! This is what integrated marketing is all about and how your website works is one of the vital components of making this successful.
At Scorchsoft we understand the customer journey and how to make sure that their experience on your website integrates with the rest of your digital marketing and delivers to your customers’ requirements. For more information please contact us now to book a consultation.
