The Plain-English Guide to Integrated Marketing Communications

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

A white heart on a red square appears on a laptops and sell phone, symbolizing integrated marketing

I fly Southwest Airlines almost exclusively. They offer reasonable prices, make racketing points easy, and always have fun and kind flight attendants.

One thing I’ve noticed about Southwest is their branding is on point.

Whether I’m booking a flight on their mobile application, being served my go-to in-flight ginger ale, or walking through the terminal at Midway Airport, I’m surrounded by Southwest’s consistent brand colors, messaging, and imagery.

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Why are integrated marketing campaigns effective?

While integrated marketing campaigns can differ in their goals (e.g., converting views, building brand awareness, etc.), they should all have one component in common: to align your marketing channels to present a united marketing “front”.

If your marketing channels are players, consider your integrated marketing campaign the coach in charge of running plays and helping your channels work as a unified system — not disparate ones.

It’s also more effective to run integrated marketing campaigns than campaigns on individual channels. Integrated marketing campaigns are impactful for a few reasons:

How to Build an Integrated Marketing Campaign

  1. Establish your overarching campaign goal
  2. Choose your marketing channels and set goals for each one
  3. Define your buyer personas by channel
  4. Identify your channel managers
  5. Create adaptable marketing assets and messaging
  6. Establish your plan for collecting leads
  7. Launch, measure, and iterate your campaign

So, how can you build your integrated marketing campaign? Follow these steps to get started.

1. Establish your overarching campaign goal.

Before you consider what channels will be part of your integrated marketing campaign, you must consider the goal of the entire campaign.

Maybe you’ve launched a new product, service, or initiative and want to get it in front of customers — like Southwest’s Transfarency. Perhaps you’ve rebranded and wish to broadcast your new message — like Old Spice’s Smell Like a Man, Man. Maybe you’ve chosen a new positioning tagline and want your audience to start associating your brand with it — like Snickers’ You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.

(Don’t worry, we’ll dig deeper into these examples later.)

Whatever your campaign goal may be, always remember to make it SMART. This will help you stay focused, track your campaign success, and learn how to improve the next time.

These goals should also relate to at least one of the following key performance indicators (KPIs) and their subsequent metrics, which you can track when you launch your campaign.

Unique page views by channel and source

Bounce rate; average time on page

Top (and falling) content

Top page views; top exits

Click-throughs; conversions; backlinks

Comments; social shares

Total leads; total sessions; session to lead conversion rate

Lead to marketing qualified lead (MQL); MQL to sales qualified lead (SQL); customer purchase/closed-won business

Also, while increased engagement and new leads are always exciting, a multi-channel campaign should consider the bigger picture: how your campaign impacts sales opportunities and business revenue. Take a moment to map out how you want your campaign to impact your bottom line, too.

2. Choose your marketing channels and set goals for each one.

Now that you know your overarching integrated marketing campaign goal, you probably have a better idea of what channels (if not all of them) can help you reach that goal.

For example, if you want to roll out a new logo and branding suite, you don’t necessarily need to leverage radio ads. On the other hand, if you’re extending your audience to target a new geographic region or city, radio ads, billboard ads, TV ads, and other local channels may come in handy.

Choosing your channel(s) all boils down to what you’re trying to achieve through your integrated marketing campaign. There are 10 major marketing “channels” that you can use to distribute your campaign content.

Your integrated marketing campaign should include a variety of marketing channels to reach the widest audience and drive home your campaign message. If you see one or more channels plateau, don’t hesitate to add, remove, or test new ones.

3. Define your buyer personas by channel.

Every marketing channel targets its specific buyer persona. For this reason, instead of defining a broad persona for your campaign, you must define your audience by channel.

There will inevitably be some overlap, but it’s wise to understand exactly who you’re talking to on each medium and how to tailor those specific assets to be the most successful.

Note: With some campaigns, you may be targeting a specific audience. In this case, flip steps 2 and 3 — define your buyer persona(s) first and then decide which channels can help you reach that audience.

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4. Identify your channel managers.

Depending on the size of your marketing team, you may have different people (or entire groups) in charge of other channels. When running a multi-channel marketing campaign, you must determine who specifically will ensure their channel(s) align with the campaign.

Free Marketing Plan Template

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.