Why Integrated Marketing is Essential for Small Businesses

Integrated marketing is essential to business owners because they can not afford to misspend or waste money on a single isolated marketing effort.

It may be tempting to focus on one aspect of marketing – a new website, a direct mail campaign, radio ads or as a manufacturer, simply letting your partners market for you.

What happens if that one piece of marketing doesn’t work? Your entire marketing effort fails because you’ve put all of your eggs into one basket, as the saying goes.

Instead, consider an integrated marketing plan that takes the best parts of online marketing, such as websites, email newsletters, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click ads, and uses that to make your traditional, offline efforts, such as direct mail, advertising and public relations, even more effective.

To internalize a message, a person must be exposed to it several times. If you hit them three times with three different messages, it is nearly the same as being exposed only once. Even worse, it could be confusing and disorienting, resulting in a negative experience with your brand.

Integrated marketing addresses this issue by creating a plan with a consistent message and then delivering it through as many outlets as possible – online and offline.

And, while you might consider shopping for individual service providers yourself to save a few dollars, you could actually be wasting funds in the process.

Time is money. So, you have to factor in the time you will spend shopping for the best deal and, most importantly, reading reviews to make sure that the “best price” doesn’t give you the worst services.

Although it is wise to always be budget conscious, the cost of each component shouldn’t be your primary concern when evaluating an integrated marketing plan. Instead, look at the expense and benefits of the entire plan working together.

For instance, a website might cost $4,000 to build and then you might spend $10,000 in pay-per-click banner ads over the next year, but if the content on the banners doesn’t match the message on your direct mail or your customer service people aren’t able to answer questions about the website, then you’ve wasted a lot of money.

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UniMedia can serve as a great benefit to you and your team. We have a proven track record when it comes to the creation of successful integrated marketing campaigns and have already established a network of trusted service providers, including printers, promotional product suppliers, exhibit and display providers, photographers and more. Because we already understand the intricacies of integrated marketing, we can  get things done faster, more efficiently and with better results. Contact us today to discuss your options.