The Fork In The Road

Integrated Marketing: The Only Way to Guarantee Fully Optimized Marketing

For years, I’ve preached the benefits of integrated marketing, so it is time I write about it here as well. Too many companies silo their marketing approaches into narrow disciplines without creating a plan for them to support each other.

The answer is not to only hire generalists without any expertise, but in addition to these focus-area experts, senior marketing executives must be responsible for creating an integrated marketing approach.

One of the easiest ways to begin to create and implement an integrated marketing approach is with a themed approach. Take for example these four potential themes that could run in three or four month cycles over a year:

1)      Cost Savings

2)      Time to Market

3)      New Approach to Old Problem

4)      Sustainability

Messaging related to themes would then be woven into product marketing, analyst relations, demand generation programs and public relations. Like a product launch, the timing of each effort and tactic should be plotted so as to support each other. For example, the analyst relations outreach and thought leadership push would be a few months ahead of the demand generation and messaging to existing customers.

It should go without saying that although the themes and core messaging are the same, each piece must be tailored to a specific audience type. This is even true within the same marketing function. For example, your buyer could be a business unit leader, while the end user (influencer) could be at the staff level. While an attribute such as “easy to use” will resonate with the influencer, it is only a nice additional benefit to the business unit leader looking for a more strategic reason to approve the purchase.

Early stage tech companies sometimes mistake their product attributes for their brand. Others mistake public relations for a brand strategy. A good brand strategy is the perfect example of integrated marketing because it:

• requires articulating the company vision
• influences the product marketing approach and messaging
• determines if the product roadmap is legitimate
• is justified though leadership/analyst relations/public relations/social media
•  is sold as a concept to prospects through demand generation/advertising/ SEM

A siloed marketing approach will never see these commonalities. At best, companies without an integrated marketing approach are wasting time and money by duplicating efforts. At worst, they are weakening their brand and confusing the marketplace.

 

Why I Like Targeted Advertising

There has been a lot of talk lately about privacy and advertising lately. Some of it has been about what happens to collected data – a la Facebook and Apple products. Occasionally, someone crosses the line and confuses targeted advertising with a breach of privacy. There is a clear difference between knowing what might interest me and knowing everything about me.

This week, I received a tweet about an old article blasting AnchorFree for not protecting privacy because it is advertising supported. A comment to the article accused the company’s products of being spyware, one of the things it promises to protect against.

If you aren’t familiar with AnchorFree, it sells a product called Hotspot Shield. This is used by people who want privacy while online such as for shopping. It is also used by people in regions that regularly censor communications and access to the internet. My understanding of how it works is because Hotspot Shield uses a double-blind approach to communications, you cannot link back to the end user. As you can imagine, what could be an added protection against fraud in the US, can literally be a lifesaver in other parts of the world.

The complaint, and misinterpretation I believe, comes from a wrong assumption that it is a violation of privacy to target advertising. If everyone in advertising went along with this line of thinking, companies would experience significantly lower sales because their messages would not hit the right audience, and consumers would miss offers that are relevant to them. Frankly, I would rather see something I might be interested in purchasing than an approach of spraying advertising wildly and hoping something will stick. Case in point, no matter how many times I see a Viagra commercial, I am not the target audience and will never purchase it.

In addition to a growing number of Freemium services that have some level of advertising, whether it be banners or pop-ups, there are also companies which are delivering advertising with your expressed permission. Although seen less in the US, in Europe where countries such as the Netherlands require opt-in only for email marketing, this is much more the norm.

In March, the British mobile telecommunications company O2 announced more than two million people had already subscribed to O2 More, the company’s opt-in advertising platform. There are thousands of advertisers lined up to take advantage of direct and approved communications with O2 More subscribers.

In the European Union, tracking on your own website and across others is a sticky situation at best, opt-in advertising better targets advertising to visitors about whom there is relatively limited information. When customers care about the advertising they are seeing, the response rates can be incredible.

The next phase is opt-in advertising with consumer preferences. Simply said, if I tell you what is of interest to me and you present relevant advertising, I’m more likely to buy. This also implies I’m less likely to see advertising that doesn’t interest me. I don’t know if I will ever totally lose those annoying Viagra ads, but maybe I can overlook them if I see a few more ads that seem to have a clue I’m a professional woman.

What Your PR Firm Isn’t Telling You

I don’t know you or your pr firm, so I should be at a safe enough distance to tell you what they won’t tell you.

1)      They aren’t nearly as excited about your product/solution/offering as you are. Healthy pr firms won’t take clients they don’t believe in, but that doesn’t mean they think your product is the greatest thing ever created. Think of it this way:  if you are a founder, your company is your child. No one will ever love your child as much as you do.

2)      No matter how good their media relationships are, they can’t work miracles. If you don’t have something newsworthy, you can’t expect your pr firm to call in favors to get coverage. If your pr firm really does have great connections with members of the media, they didn’t get it from asking friends to publish information that will hurt their credibility. And, please don't ask each week when will you have your TechCrunch hit.

3)      Degrading your internal staff in front of your pr representative doesn’t make you look important, just pathetic.

4)      Just because you’re told someone in the firm is a social media expert doesn’t mean they are. As the requirements for social media have grown, some agencies have hired or developed staff who truly understand how best to leverage this medium. Others have dubbed a senior member of staff as “the expert.” There are also some traditional pr firms who still believe the answer to the request for social media expertise is to assign one of their staff as the person who pitches bloggers. To know what you’re getting, you’ll need to ask about their results or examples of campaigns.

5)      If you don’t tell your pr firm what is motivating your desire for media coverage, they won’t give you the best results. For example, if you want coverage because you are preparing for a new round of funding, outreach should focus primarily on business media, analyst relations, targeted speaking opportunities and media which potential investors will see. If you are seeking to only ramp sales, positioning should be directed to what your customers’ decision-makers care about and media they will see.

The list could go on, but I won’t give away all their secrets.