News
News Article
Marketing+
Tue
17
May 2022
What’s the difference between using multiple digital channels in your marketing, and a fully integrated digital campaign? We asked our Digital experts how to plan for success when building a truly integrated digital marketing campaign.
As Giorgio Cassella, Head of Marketing at Evoluted says, “the key is in the name. It means strategically planning your campaigns to combine multiple moving parts into one consistent message designed around driving customers towards a specific action; as opposed to simply running multiple performance channels in tandem but without any continuity and only considering single-step actions.”
These multiple performance channels include email, display, and social media to create a unique message that’s identifiable to your customers.
So how do you plan for success when planning your integrated campaign? We reached out to some of our Network agency members to find out, beginning with common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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“Isolated, channel-based thinking is one of the biggest pitfalls that a marketing and agency team can fall into when planning a large, integrated campaign that comprises a range of different activity.” This is according to Jonathan Branney, Digital Marketing Strategy Director at Banc.
This is echoed by Giorgio Cassella.
“A major mistake we see frequently with new clients at Evoluted is that in the past they’ve tried to take an integrated approach simply by combining complementary channels i.e. SEO and PPC for an “integrated search strategy.”
Approaches like this only focus on the first interaction and require audiences to be active on the same platform - search.
Instead, truly integrated campaigns should ensure multiple touch points with customers across multiple relevant platforms, using shared messaging and a congruous, nurturing approach to help move them towards the desired action.”
For Jonathan, it’s also important to establish a clear stakeholder engagement strategy from the get-go to ensure that “everyone involved with the campaign can lend their expertise and input into the solution, and so that clear lines of accountability are drawn from the start.
Regular strategy reviews to evaluate performance and progress are also critical to ensuring everyone can see the big picture and how their work factors into it.”
When working across multiple channels, applying a blanket KPI for all activity with each individual campaign type or channel expecting to meet the KPI in isolation is one of the biggest mistakes seen by George Gangar, Head of Digital strategy at Impression.
“For example, expecting all campaign types and channels to hit an individual ROAS of 4. It undermines one of the best things about running multi-channel campaigns: your ability to use a variety of different channels, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. By applying the same KPI to all of them, you reduce your flexibility and often throttle growth.”
To avoid this mistake, he says that a far better approach is to “apply a blended ROAS target to your marketing activity as a whole and allow different channels to deviate from this based on the role they are playing in your strategy.”
Need support avoiding these common integrated marketing campaign mistakes? GO! can help. Find out more.
Integrated marketing campaigns may differ in their goals (converting sales, building brand awareness etc.) but they should all have one common goal: aligning your channels to present a unified marketing approach.
According to HubSpot, there are seven steps that you can follow to help you build an effective integrated campaign.
With multiple channels involved in an integrated campaign, different specialisms are required to add value to what a business is aiming to achieve from their marketing.
As such, we asked our Network members where external support can help achieve this added value.
For Johnathan Branney, “The right external partner will be well-equipped from a structural perspective to deliver these kinds of projects (which can otherwise be costly and operationally difficult to plan internally), and will have access to a wealth of data, insight, tools and expertise that will help bring your brief to life.”
“There are quite a few ways that external support can be useful, but if I had to pick one I'd say that it's vital to make sure that your data and analytics setup is sound.
If you have a single source of truth that you can trust, you're much better placed to make accurate and informed decisions; attribution, incrementality testing and scenario planning are all key to effective campaign measurement and can only be done properly when your data is accurate.” – George Gangar
“Brands, initially, need to focus on truly understanding who their audience are and where they’re active, aligning their pricing, product, and positioning strategies. When you’re in the thick of it, it’s easy to become blinkered and forget the bigger picture.
Only once armed with this macro understanding of their marketing mix should they plot out tactical approaches.
Seeking external support can help with this process, resulting in the development of properly integrated campaigns, using shared assets across relevant platforms and presenting a “unified front” with their brand’s creative, guiding customers to the desired action.” – Giorgio Cassella
Need external support for building an integrated digital marketing campaign? Whether it's analytics, performance or creative, GO! can connect you to the right agencies for the job. Tell us your requirements here and we’ll be in touch.
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