What’s the Future of Integrated Marketing?
What’s the Future of Integrated Marketing? Challenging, that’s for sure. Typically, if you’ve taken a deep dive into marketing, you’ve immersed yourself in social, digital and traditional ways of marketing your company. If you’re anxious to achieve presence in every possible path to purchase, and you want to stay on the cutting edge of marketing, you might drive yourself crazy because there are so many ways to market these days.
You are likely to be juggling umpteen social media sites, email campaigns, hiring the right SEO nerd, making your website mobile-friendly, running PPC Ads, and doing everything you can to keep up with new discoveries in Local Search. And that is only digital and social. Don’t forget about the traditional ways of marketing including all of your collateral items, POP/POS, outdoor advertising – including vehicle wraps, collecting addresses (yes, physical) for your direct mail, and any local TV ads or Radio spots you can afford. Remember to toss in grassroots/guerilla marketing, casual sponsorships, and your basic PR strategies and tactics. Stressing yet?
So what do I think the future of Integrated Marketing is? It’s not a gazillion new ways to market, but it is how you can manage to keep your head above water in an ocean of marketing tactics. As marketing continues to grow and become more complex, companies with all-in-one, easy-to-use marketing platforms, i.e. integrated marketing software, tempt marketers with simplification. I suggest you judge the time and money you’ve spent with all of your different vendors, plus your in-house departments, and consider consolidating to one marketing platform that does it all. You will be surprised with how much more you can get done in less time, and generally, lower costs. That’s why I’m proud to say I work at a company that works so hard to make juggling marketing (and all the new trends) much easier to deal with.
Best of luck with your next Marketing Plan!