Imagine discovering an advertisement of a new airline on Instagram that is offering tickets at reasonable prices and then browsing the airline’s website to purchase a ticket.

If website sold tickets at prices different than the ones promoted on their Instagram account, you’d be quite disappointed.

Now imagine that same airline offering tickets at affordable prices as promoted on their Instagram account, in a consistent brand color scheme, tone, messaging and other aesthetics, making it easy to collect and redeem points, and having courteous flight attendants.

This is a fine example of integrated marketing at work.

If you’re interested in offering a cohesive and consistent brand experience that leaves your customers delighted, this blog is for you.

Read on as we guide you on how to build a stellar integrated advertising campaign of your own.

First up, let’s clear a couple of myths around integrated advertising.

Myth: Integrated advertising applies only to your digital advertising channels.

Truth: It doesn’t only apply to your digital advertising channels; traditional media channels are also included.

Myth: Integrated advertising depends largely on how or when a customer interacts with your brand.

Truth: It demolishes disparities and differences only to align the message that you intend to share across multiple channels, regardless of how or when a customer interacts with your brand.

Now, let’s talk about why integrated advertising campaigns are significant.

Integrated advertising campaigns might differ in objectives but all must have one thing in common: a consistent branding experience.

• Effectiveness: It’s more effective to run a composite marketing campaign across all channels as compared to running disparate campaigns on individual channels.
• Wider net: An integrated campaign helps you reach a wider audience than a single channel.
• Increased exposure: Integrated advertising helps amplify your chances of being seen on different channels thereby keeping your brand on top of minds of potential customers and inching them closer to conversions.
• Builds trust: This integrated strategy delivers consistent brand experience and builds trust with visitors.
• Money saver: It saves money since content assets can be quickly repackaged and repurposed for varied marketing channels.

 A Quick Roadmap to Creating Your Integrated Advertising Campaign

 Follow these recommended steps to get started with creating an excellent integrated advertising   campaign.·       

• Layout your overarching campaign goals

• Select your marketing channels and subsequent goals 

Now that you’ve established your overarching integrated marketing campaign goal, it will help you select relevant channels and corresponding goals. 

You can choose from a vast pool of marketing or advertising and sales channels depending on your marketing goals. 

1. Advertising (print and search advertising channels)
2. Direct marketing
3. Email marketing
4. Public Relations
5. Sales promotions
6. Online marketing (e.g. website, content marketing, and SEO)
7. Social media advertising
8. Events & sponsorships
9. Packaging 

For example, if it’s only a rebranding exercise, you don’t need to take the route of radio ads. However if you need to expand to a new territory, using radio ads and print media make complete sense. It all boils down to what you’re set out to accomplish through your integrated advertising campaign. 

• Establish your target audiences according to channel

Every advertising channel has its own specific audience targeting. It’s imperative that you define your target audience by channel. There’d be some inevitable overlapping but it’s rational that you select buyer persona and customize assets depending on each medium.  

• Select your channel manager

It’s recommended that you clearly establish the roles for the marketing and advertising team members and expectations from each of the channels. Let each member report clearly on audience, posting frequency, optimization practices, analytics and attribution reporting. This will pave the way to customize content to be most successful across each of the selected mediums.

Never fall into the trap to entrust one team member with the complete responsibility of managing all channels, as this might be the recipe for disaster. It’s always best to share channel management responsibilities across few team members. 

• Build your advertising assets

Bingo! You’re now all set to create your own integrated advertising campaign content. Involve your content writers, graphic designers and other creative professionals of your team at this crucial stage.

Ensure that your integrated advertise content is contextual and adaptable to each of the different mediums it’s created for. A smart hack around this is to create one creative asset and repurpose the same to be used for different channels.

Each of the assets, however, must be aligned to your brand guidelines that must entail broad guidelines for voice, tone, visual, messaging, file formats, and target audience information.

It’s recommended to make sure that your integrated campaign asset reflects your brand personality, regardless of the channel your audience discovers it on.

• Create your lead generation plan

Regardless of your campaign objectives, we assume that you’d always welcome new leads. After all, customers power your business’ growth. Always be clear about the lead closure loop and also the conversion ratio.

Do you have a conversion path designed? How can they subscribe to your blog or newsletter? How’d they download your content offer? How can they register on your website? How is your lead nurturing campaign designed? Have you planned to enroll them in an automated workflow? Is there a lead scoring mechanism in place? How does the handoff process to sales look like?

It’s also rational to keep the sales team posted on your campaign’s outline, status and outcomes to stay on course with new leads and customers.

• Measure and optimize your campaign

Woo-hoo! It’s time to launch your integrated advertising campaign. But you’re not done yet. Jumpstart tracking the KPIs and metrics that you had benchmarked before you set out building this campaign.

Keep the progress documented and learning to optimize, rinse and repeat fo future campaigns.

Hey, Wait?

You might have followed the best strategies or have the best creative minds on team but it’s all incomplete without the right tool kit – a good platform to kick start your campaign.

What if you could access a single window platform that helps your launch your integrated advertising campaign across different medium - -print, radio and digital – in a few clicks?

Yes, such a solution does exist.

Well, HTMedia’s latest flagship program - HT AdWorks is an integrated platform that offers customizable media plans, expert consultations and exclusive discounts to business of all sizes and helps them grow better than ever. Our do-it-yourself (DIY) platform lets you run campaigns seamlessly across all our print, radio and digital media properties in a few clicks.

To learn more, click here.