Today’s marketers have to work harder and smarter than ever to break through the noise. Part of the challenge is engaging and converting audiences across multiple channels. How do you plan, manage, and execute marketing campaigns with so many moving parts? Even more important: how do you ensure your message comes across loud and clear?
The solution is to create integrated campaigns that deliver a consistent message not just across channels, but throughout the marketing funnel.
Find out how leading marketing professionals are developing integrated campaigns to drive better business results in this recorded Art & Science panel discussion webinar. This episode is part of the ongoing Success Series of webinars brought to you by the marketing experts at ViB.
Get expert tips and advice
In today’s episode, Tom Riddle, Director of Survey and Research Solutions at ViB, is joined by three expert marketers: Michelle Lowe, Senior Manager of Integrated Campaigns at AWS; Samuel Chapman, Head of Global Content at DataCore; and Christopher Mitchell, Demand Generation Manager at Google Cloud Security.
Tom and his panel of experts will share information, tips, and advice about integrated campaigns, including:
- The definition of an integrated campaign — and why it’s important
- Why — and how — to create an integrated campaign
- How to plan and execute integrated campaigns throughout the funnel
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for integrated campaign
Discover the definition of an integrated campaign
According to Hubspot, “integrated marketing is the process of arranging your different marketing channels to work in tandem to promote your products or services, typically through a strategic campaign.” Integrated campaigns also “align the primary brand message that’s being delivered through your marketing channels and assets.”
Consistency is key. Michelle explains that from email to content marketing to paid media, “integrated campaigns are multiple channels. It’s all the ways that you’re reaching your people at the right time, and with a consistent story.”
Chris adds that integrated campaigns are “a strategic, unified, omnichannel, full-funnel, go-to-market program.” Integrated campaigns allow you to go to market with “a single unified message across all of your marketing and sales channels that really span the full customer journey.”
However, integrated campaigns do not require you to treat each channel the exact same way. Quite the opposite. According to Sam, “each of those channels have a particular context that you should consider” when deciding the best way to reach your intended audience. He adds that integrated campaigns should deliver a “personalized and targeted content experience.”
Find out the top reasons to create an integrated campaign
Several use cases call for the creation of integrated campaigns. “You might have a new product launching,” says Michelle, “that you want to gain some awareness for.” For businesses that have recently acquired another company, “you may need to integrate solutions and do some training or education around what’s been integrated,” she says. “You might know that you have the awareness, but really need to build consideration or preference for your product.
Chris explains that at his company, “the driving force behind integrated campaigns is the ability to be more strategic with our marketing efforts.” For many early-stage entities, “an integrated campaign is that next evolution that gives marketing activities more structure and more planning — and ultimately leads to a more efficient and effective program with better ROI, better results.
Sam makes this point: “I’m sure every marketer is no stranger to once in a while throwing their hands up and saying, ‘Why are we even doing this?’” He says that having the structure and organization of an integrated campaign “unifies the team and builds cohesion and gives you goalposts to really rally around. It’s great for team building and morale.”
Learn where to start architecting integrated campaigns
Michelle begins by documenting every element of the campaign in a Word doc. “We want to make sure that we’re spelling out all the details of the plan,” she says. She stresses the importance of “thinking through every aspect” of the campaign, “not just putting bullets on a chart.” Actually writing out each detail in a Word doc “really forces you to think out all those details” and also helps get the team and internal stakeholders fully aligned.
She always starts with the customer’s perspective. “What are we trying to solve for them? And what’s the channel that we’re going to reach those people in?” Her team then delivers content designed for users to consume on each of those channels.
For Chris, integrated campaign planning begins at quarterly marketing planning meetings. “We decide as a group what sort of themes and integrated campaigns we want to tackle for the next upcoming quarter.” They develop themes based on a mixture of customer feedback, sales feedback, and industry trends.
His team then builds out each piece of the campaign using a comprehensive template created on a project management system. The template includes “every potential thing we might do– whether it’s creating a report or a datasheet or a video — and all the channels we could potentially push that out on.”
Sam’s team “builds out a core list of content, our personas, and pain points.” From there, they develop “three different nurture streams that all have personalized or tailored content to that persona and to that customer pain point.” His next step? “Getting everybody on board from product management to product marketing.” Aligning internal teams is key to the success of integrated campaigns.
Explore KPIs for integrated campaigns
What are the KPIs that tell you if your integrated campaigns are working? According to Michelle, “the one that we’re all marching to is revenue and pipeline.” However, she adds that she keeps her eye on several other KPIs “to make sure that we’re making progress before it becomes pipeline, before it becomes revenue.” Those additional metrics include audience engagement with the campaign such as “click-throughs through email, downloads on the website, and clicks and engagement on social media.”
For Chris, there are several primary KPIs that both he and executives care about. MQL’s opportunities, and pipeline top that list. “After those, there are secondary metrics that are still important — such as the velocity and the conversion rates.”
Sam created a “custom dashboard in Google Data Studio to track all those content metrics and see what’s performing” along with using other tools that serve up important data points. He adds: “I’m always trying to tell a story.” It all comes down to telling an engaging story that reaches the right audience.
To that end, he makes sure he gets a clear “understanding of everything down to the downloads, the click-through rates on the website, engagement with social content, and ads.” The goal is to make sure they’re using every tool at their disposal “to build a narrative.”
Get more tips for creating successful integrated campaigns
A strong, consistent message delivered across channels can mean all the difference. See how integrated campaigns can help you make the most of your marketing budget and deliver better results for your company. Find out more by watching the entire episode, “Art and Science of Integrated Campaigns.”
If you are interested in learning more about ViB and our effective marketing programs, contact us.
