Deliver Magazine’s recent feature on integrated marketing methods hits home for those of us marketing our personal brands to today’s “always-on” consumers.
Whether you’re looking to increase awareness of your personal brand, drive traffic to your website, increase opt-ins, or find new leads, success lies in creating a compelling, consistent message and approaching your audience from multiple angles to circumvent the unrelenting, ambient noise of the competition.
“Consumers don’t live a single-channel life, or even a dual channel life,” Liz Miller, VP for CMO Council, tells Deliver Magazine. “In both B-to-B and B-to-C worlds, consumers today live multichannel lives. You’re reading a magazine. You’re checking your Smartphone for emails. You’re on the wireless on your digital tablet. You get home and check your mail and your desktop computer. There are so many ways that consumers are engaging and searching for content.”
Progressive marketing companies are no longer choosing a single medium and sticking with it…they’re building and executing integrated, multi-pronged campaigns for B-to-C and B-to-B clients alike.
“You’ve got to think of your prospects’ attention span like your own,” says Scott Salkin, founder of Identity Studios, a company that specializes in integrated marketing campaigns. “Using a multi-pronged approach not only ensures that the message gets through, but also that it’s the right message at the right time. A successful campaign has to prove to the decision maker that they haven’t wasted their time.”
Salkin explains how combining five valuable elements–print, email, interactive, human touch, and social media–maximizes engagement, accelerates messaging influence, and promotes action.
- Print: According to Deliver Magazine, 79% of US households either read or scan advertising mail sent to their household. When it comes to the B2B audience, direct mail is cited as one of the top 4 highest ROI generating marketing methods (Outsells “Marketing and Ad Spending Study 2010: Total US and B2B Advertising”), and recent studies show that sending a secondary, follow-up mailing generates an even higher response rate than that first. Multi-dimensional mailers garner 40-55% response rates.
- Email: An email on its own may not be powerful enough to drive results, but when combined with the right strategy, print and human touch, introductory and follow-up emails with creative copy and a well-crafted CTA that send the reader to a landing page to schedule an appointment are valuable and seamless.
- Interactive: Marketing has evolved from a transaction-based system into an ongoing conversation. Interactive marketing tactics engage prospects, allow you to modify messages to fit the customer and prospect perception and build your brand among targeted groups.
- Human touch: Again–on its own, telemarketing can be a tricky business, especially when it’s implemented by an outsourced group of generic callers. However, it’s an important element of the multi-pronged approach, used for follow up, final appointment setting and as event reminders.
- Social media. Social media acts as an accelerator to all print email, interactive and human touch elements, driving home messaging and reaching prospects from yet another angle.
Deliver Magazine sums up the opportunity with the following quote from Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success, by Akin Arikan, “The marketer who is able to ride on the coattails of the multichannel revolution has the opportunity to connect with always-on consumers, anywhere, anytime.”
