The 7 Barriers to Successful Integrated Marketing

Here are the 7 leading organizational speed bumps that prevent successful adoption and execution of integrated multi-channel promotion:

1. Lack of multi-disciplinary skill-sets (offline and online marketing) within the organization;

2. Lack of interdepartmental coordination if online and offline marketing responsibilities are spread among different departments;

3. Lack of agreed-upon campaign measurement methodologies;

4. Lack of proper campaign measurement tools;

5. Lack of time;

6. Pre-conceived biases ("This type of marketing has always worked for us . why take our marketing budget dollars away from a proven strategy"?);

7. Company politics and different departmental agendas when offline and online marketing are spread among different departments.

Guidelines For Integrated Marketing

For organizations that can overcome the above barriers, here are some guidelines for capitalizing on an integrated plan:  

• Match your search marketing campaigns with your offline messaging by ensuring your PPC campaigns target the same words and terms used in your offline advertising.

• Coordinate your integrated campaign schedules by developing a calendar of all offline promotions so that you can modify/expand your search campaigns at the appropriate time.

• Use visitor and conversion data from your web analytics to help structure your offline campaigns for maximum effectiveness, by determining keywords and navigation behavior that most likely lead to conversions.

• Always create distinct landing pages as targets for your offline promotions that enforce continuity in the message, offer and format to the printed piece. And be sure to use different URL's or coupon codes for each separate promotion so that accurate measurement and tracking will be in place.

• Have systems in place to track orders/leads received via phone.

Now, let's see ways to Measure The Effectiveness of Your Campaigns ...