We love idioms and sayings, particularly ones that are regularly repeated and often misquoted. For example, “A jack of all trades is a master of none” is regularly bandied about, not so tactfully pointing out that those who can put their hand to anything aren’t necessarily experts. But the complete saying is far more interesting. So here’s how it goes, “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes is better than a master of one”, and this, we think, relates perfectly to integrated marketing.
As experts in integrated marketing, the team at NAMA get to wear lots of hats (or, to go back to the saying, are jacks of all trades). Alongside designing and creating intelligent marketing messages for clients, we also have to wear our analytical hat to see how well our content is working, our sociology hat to focus on customer demographics, our psychology hat to drill down into what makes people buy, and a captain’s hat to manage and guide our clients towards achieving their business goals. Phew, that’s a lot of hats, and there are more stashed away and ready for any eventuality.
So, what makes developing an integrated marketing strategy require so many hats?
Pinpointing your business’ goal and destination
At this point, we’ll rummage for the business advisor/critical friend hat. To build an effective integrated marketing strategy, it’s important to know where you plan to take your business. It’s the same as planning a long car trip. You have to know where you want to go and need to consider the best way that you are going to get there. Within this, you also need to consider what resources you have available to you. That could be a budget, but it could also be things such as staff who can spread the word, time to spend on marketing, contacts in local media, and professional services to ensure that your advertising hits the spot. Alongside this, you also need to think about how you will be able to handle your business’ success and growth; will you need to recruit more staff, find more products, and expand your premises?
Identify your target audience.
This can sometimes be a sticking point. You’re not just identifying your existing customers and audience but also people you would like to attract to buy from you. Identifying a target audience will also tell you where you should be advertising. Understanding how different digital platforms work and who their user demographic is can give you some insight, but you also need to understand human nature.
Importantly, you should beware of the often tripped into trap of side-lining a particular demographic purely because of age. To be blunter, over-55s have spending power and aren’t all using stairlifts, and under-25s are potentially your future customers.
Outline what a marketing win will look like
With any marketing strategy, you have to be able to identify if it’s working. As we’ve already said, marketing comes in all shapes and sizes, so being able to recognise when something is or isn’t working is vital. Would you like to know how you do that? Analysis. It’s all about numbers. And when we say numbers, we don’t just mean the ones on your social media. Every business is going to have different targets, so marketing wins will always look different. It could be that you develop a new and loyal base of dedicated customers or that hits on your website and overall brand recognition improve. That’s why an integrated marketing strategy will always work alongside your business strategy; they’re working towards a common goal.
Talk to the rest of your team.
There are two reasons why you should have a chat about your plans with your team. First, they are your secret marketing team and can share your marketing with a wider audience. The second reason is that because your marketing and business strategies are intrinsically linked, it’s always a great idea to make sure that everyone in your company is in the same boat travelling in the same direction.
Does that sound like too many hats?
You could just find yourself an integrated marketing agency that happily admits that it’s a jack of all trades. We think we have to be in order to be masters of marketing (and as a Fellow of The Institute of Data and Marketing we can say that). So get in touch to chat about your integrated marketing strategy.
