top 10

graphic of integrated digital agency hard at work for their clientsIf you’re not tackling digital marketing with the right integrated approach, you’re leaving connections, conversions and revenue on the table. Not to mention the fact that you’re leaving windows and doors open all over, allowing the competition to slip through and convert customers before you can get to them. It doesn’t matter if you’re a multimillion-dollar brand, either. Without the right online marketing (or integrated digital marketing agency partnership), Goliaths fall to Davids all the time.

If you’re here looking for an affordable integrated digital marketing agency that puts results and client communication as top priorities, call us at 855-473-6582 or click here to request a quote.

Here’s why you can’t afford to ignore the problem …

Here are just some of the reasons a single-channel, stale or lackluster digital marketing strategy is causing your business to lose credibility and ROI.

  • Mobile access to the internet has surpassed desktop access and is still climbing. If your website isn’t responsive for positive user experience on mobile — or if you aren’t optimizing for mobile search or using mobile ads — you’re losing out on a huge part of the market.
  • Today’s consumers are internet savvy, which means they’re at least somewhat aware of advertising and marketing efforts. They don’t always trust traditional advertising — especially when it comes from large companies or corporations, which can be seen as lacking the human touch — but they do trust organic authenticity and authority. If your SEO, content and other marketing efforts aren’t working together to create authentic authority and engagement, you’re not going to see the highest level of ROI possible.
  • You know who else consumers trust? Each other. Digital branding efforts that lead to reviews, links and social shares get you in front of more people. Plus, those organic shares of your brand and content are more likely to perform because people see other people engaging with you and want to follow suit.
  • Consumers are increasingly living multi-device and multichannel lifestyles. This is true across the board but especially for younger audiences. If your marketing strategy isn’t taking the big picture into account, you’re going to look like a dinosaur to these users. If you can’t handle more than one channel or marketing strategy at a time, how are you going to manage users who live across all these devices and channels? And if you can and do handle this type of integrated approach but don’t do it well, that might be worse. Consumers are going to doubt you, and it will show up in your traffic, conversion and revenue numbers.

Why you need to take action on an integrated online marketing strategy today …

If you don’t take action, the problem is only going to get worse. You’ll fall further and further behind, losing consumer trust and attention while competitors that do embrace integrated marketing regularly steal your thunder.

At best, your numbers are going to trend downward over time.

At worst, you’ll become a relic online, with little to no movement on your website, service or product pages.

And the solutions many brands throw at this problem don’t work. So many companies start pumping money and effort into the one or two channels that have always worked for them, not understanding that the problem is that they aren’t diverse enough with marketing. Their solution only exacerbates the problem.

With a single-minded marketing drive, you’re setting yourself up for obsolescence or failure if anything changes or goes wrong. And things will change. Nothing is more fickle than the digital landscape, and brands with integrated internet marketing strategies are able to pivot and recover more quickly when trends swerve.

What do you get out of an integrated marketing strategy?

By working with the integrated marketing experts at Lead to Conversion™, you can get ahead of these issues, beat the competition and increase performance for your brand online. Here are 10 reasons to invest in integrated marketing today.

1. Strategic goals and follow-up on those plans

integrated digital marketing strategy image

If you don’t have a strategy, you may be sunk even if you do take a multichannel or integrated approach to marketing. Here’s why.

First, hitting the digital marketing treadmill without a plan leaves you spinning, constantly fighting an uphill battle and running as fast as you can without getting anywhere. This is bad for any company, but it’s especially disastrous for enterprises and corporates, where wheels once put into motion can be hard to stop even if they aren’t going anywhere.

A comprehensive strategy is a road map from current state to desired state. Once you start drawing this map, you may even realize that where you thought you wanted to go is the wrong destination, and proper strategizing lets you make adjustments to your marketing plan so you head toward the right place for your business. By starting with strategic goal setting, you can seek stakeholder feedback and ensure your marketing plans are going to work for the entire enterprise.

Second, a strategy isn’t just a line between points A and B and the hope that you can make it there. It’s a stairstep approach with measurable milestones that lets you reevaluate your goals, actions and performance constantly and make continuous improvements that help you succeed at lower cost and in less time than an unorganized approach. This is a huge benefit to marketing directors and VPs in enterprise structures because milestones with attached numbers make for convincing presentations when asking for marketing budget or the go-ahead with new campaigns. It’s great for smaller brands and even solopreneurs because you know exactly what you need to do to make growth happen with the help of marketing.

Still not seeing the value in strategic thinking when it comes to integrated marketing plans? Think of it in terms of resolutions — the new year, new you kind.

The standard resolution goes like this: I want to lose weight. I want to make more money. I want to save more money. You get the idea.

The average success with a resolution of this type? Failure by February.

Experts point out that resolutions don’t make sense when you frame them as simple aspirations. So what if you want to be healthier or more financially stable (or get more done with your online marketing plan)? What does that even mean, and how are you going to get there?

Instead of vague resolutions and aspirations, a real, professional marketing strategy ensures you have measurable goals. The difference for your bottom line between those two states of strategy can be huge. In the first instance, you’re simply hoping for improvement. In the second, you lay out a smart plan based on benchmarks, your own business needs and goals, expert advice and realistic yet challenging milestones. Then you break each milestone into projects and each project into tasks. It makes it easy to get the entire team and vendors involved at the appropriate level because everyone knows exactly what tasks they’re responsible for and when.

By starting with the first task and working through each one, you can start experiencing little wins and accomplishments almost immediately. Piling those on top of each other starts to create a snowball effect, and before you know it, you’re hitting milestones and blasting through goals with your integrated marketing strategy.

And the best part about all of this when you work with Lead to Conversion™? You don’t even have to do the work on every task. We customize our services to take the right level of marketing burden off your team’s shoulders, all without compromising your mission and business vision. First, we help you create a detailed integrated marketing strategy that’s much more than aspiration. Then, we help you put it into action.

If this was the only benefit you got from working with experts on an integrated marketing strategy, it would be worth it. But you don’t just get this one benefit. You get them all — all 10 on this list plus many others.

So, let’s look at a few more. Number five is going to be a winner with any company and may help you get the go-ahead for your marketing plans, but don’t skip ahead — you’ll miss some critical benefits that could turn your online marketing from murky to magnificent.

 

2. A competitive online platform

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We already pointed out that having no integrated marketing strategy allows competitors to beat you in the market. But a poor integrated marketing strategy — one that’s based on limited experience, best guesses or a big soup of every stakeholder’s opinion — does the same thing.

If you’re not doing the research and connecting with experts to understand exactly how your marketing solutions should work together, you may not even be connecting with the bulk of your audience. And if you aren’t losing out to existing competitors, you are going to be chasing new businesses. That’s because new competitors don’t have existing “gut reactions” to rely on, so they’re doing the research.

That research may include:

  • Understanding the target audience and customer — not the customer of yesteryear but the customer of today and tomorrow. Do you know exactly where your customers are online and how to reach them?
  • Knowing exactly which keywords to target for optimization and successful Pay Per Click ad campaigns — and keeping up with those ever-changing trends. Do you know what keywords are truly performing? Where did you come up with those keywords?
  • Choosing the right style, length and topics for your content. Do pillar blog posts perform better in your niche than short and sweet? Should you be writing in first person or third, and does your target audience like news stories, how-tos or fun engagement pieces?
  • Where should your ads go on the page to drive the highest conversion rates, and what few words can you put in PPC text ads to make them perform?
  • What social platforms does your target audience favor, and how can you best engage with them? Do paid ads work, or do you need to focus on organic content? Do you know what types of posts are most likely to drive shares and clicks?

These are just some of the questions you need to know the answers to so you can create a competitive online marketing platform. But you don’t have to do all the research and figure it out yourself. At Lead to Conversion™, we’ve already done this research — we’re always doing this research, so we can jump right in with answers and the resources to delve down into your audience for targeted integrated marketing that works for your brand.

 

3. Create trust and authority with consumers

hands shaking after running a successful integrated digital marketing campaign

We already pointed out that having no integrated marketing strategy allows competitors to beat you in the market. But a poor integrated marketing strategy — one that’s based on limited experience, best guesses or a big soup of every stakeholder’s opinion — does the same thing.

If you’re not doing the research and connecting with experts to understand exactly how your marketing solutions should work together, you may not even be connecting with the bulk of your audience. And if you aren’t losing out to existing competitors, you are going to be chasing new businesses. That’s because new competitors don’t have existing “gut reactions” to rely on, so they’re doing the research.

That research may include:

  • Understanding the target audience and customer — not the customer of yesteryear but the customer of today and tomorrow. Do you know exactly where your customers are online and how to reach them?
  • Knowing exactly which keywords to target for optimization and successful Pay Per Click ad campaigns — and keeping up with those ever-changing trends. Do you know what keywords are truly performing? Where did you come up with those keywords?
  • Choosing the right style, length and topics for your content. Do pillar blog posts perform better in your niche than short and sweet? Should you be writing in first person or third, and does your target audience like news stories, how-tos or fun engagement pieces?
  • Where should your ads go on the page to drive the highest conversion rates, and what few words can you put in PPC text ads to make them perform?
  • What social platforms does your target audience favor, and how can you best engage with them? Do paid ads work, or do you need to focus on organic content? Do you know what types of posts are most likely to drive shares and clicks?

These are just some of the questions you need to know the answers to so you can create a competitive online marketing platform. But you don’t have to do all the research and figure it out yourself. At Lead to Conversion™, we’ve already done this research — we’re always doing this research, so we can jump right in with answers and the resources to delve down into your audience for targeted integrated marketing that works for your brand.

 

4. Ensure you’re the first person they think of

guy unsure if his internet marketing strategy is working image

It’s not always realistic to think that someone will see your brand a magical number of times and then click through and buy your product. What if you sell a product that is needs-based and specific for certain situations? People aren’t going to avail themselves of your goods and services simply because they saw the seventh ad or social post. This is true for services such as urgent health care, plumbing, window installation (or any type of home improvement good or service), time- or season-sensitive goods and many other types of products.

However, an integrated marketing strategy can ensure you’re the first brand a consumer thinks of when the need arises.

One reason an integrated approach provides this benefit is that you’re simply being seen more by the consumer with this approach. That makes it more likely they’ll see and pay attention to your message and remember it later.

For this reason, it’s also important to be long-term and consistent in your marketing approach. A huge blast that appeared all over the web six months ago may have been superseded in consumer minds by the competition if you haven’t done anything recently. Obviously, you’ll need to approach your strategy with your business goals and needs in mind; if you’re launching a new brand, product or line, a blast can be a useful tool.

Another reason an integrated approach helps consumers remember you at the right time is that it positions you positively in their minds as a brand to be trusted. When someone sees your website appear in the search engines a couple of time or sees a few ads on social, they may remember the name of your company. But they don’t have specific associations with it. On the other hand, if someone sees your name at the top of the search results, notes that it matches something they saw on social and they click through and read blog posts that demonstrate your brand’s integrity and experience, they’re more likely to remember you as someone they thought positively of when the time comes.

Plus, if you know how to bang the integrated marketing drums the right way, you’re not just going to appear all those times in the past for this prospect. You’ll also show up when they search during their time of need, triggering that final “ah-ha!” moment for them and convincing them you’re the business or provider to handle their needs.

You may be thinking that it takes a lot of marketing firepower and abracadabra to get this type of brand awareness, but the truth is that it’s possible with almost any standard marketing budget if you know exactly what you’re doing. And at Lead to Conversion™, we do.

 

5. Save time and money

save time and money using Lead to Conversion™s website marketing services

Money talks, and if you’re looking to score approvals for online marketing campaigns, presenting ideas that will save the business time and dollars is a good way to do so.

Here’s one myth about online marketing: Search engine optimization and content marketing are free. That’s simply not true. Yes, there are so-called free methods of optimization (such as writing your own content in-house), and Google doesn’t charge you anything for appearances in organic search. Google’s even nice enough to offer up a Google Business Profile page you can integrate into marketing efforts for some great wins, and it doesn’t charge for the trouble.

But none of that is actually free. If your marketing staff is spending time writing content, managing organic social posts or claiming and updating your Google Business Profile page, you’re paying labor costs. You might even be losing out because your staff isn’t working on other projects or consumer-facing tasks, especially if your marketing plan isn’t getting the job done to begin with.

Add to this the truth that most enterprises aren’t going to make it on “free” marketing alone, and you’re likely spending money on PPC and other online marketing efforts.

Working with experts to create an integrated marketing strategy can help you drive down the costs of marketing — both in dollars and time.

First, as you’ve already seen, a professional integrated marketing strategy puts metrics in place. That lets you know what you’re spending money on and whether you’re getting a return. It also helps you know faster if strategies aren’t working so you can improve them, saving on unnecessary spending and ensuring the highest return on each marketing investment.

But an integrated marketing strategy, when deployed correctly, can also reduce the amount you need to spend on marketing to begin with. If your organic and “free” marketing tactics are appropriately supporting PPC ads, for example, you get a lot more bang for every buck. And if you’ve done the research and combined intelligent use of data with paid marketing techniques, you can more clearly target your audience with ads rather than paying for sweeping campaigns that include a lot of waste.

Plus, if you’re struggling to find good people with the right experience to execute a multichannel digital marketing campaign internally, you may be spending more on recruiting and hiring than you have to. When you work with an outside agency that already has the experience you need, you can do a lot more with less in the marketing department, which means your spend goes toward performance instead of training, hiring and rehiring.

 

6. Ensure consistent (and not confusing) online messaging

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Confusing messaging is a bog that any brand can fall into, and numerous root causes can lead to this. Here are just some reasons that a business could be confusing its target audience or delivering inconsistent (and ineffective) digital marketing messages.

  • Siloed marketing teams or staffers who don’t communicate well or work on a big-picture, holistic plan. These individuals may think they’re working toward the same goal but have different understandings of the vision, or they may simply be incohesive and create overwork as they scramble to cover similar tasks.
  • Stakeholders that take a swooping-bird approach. These are executives, sales team leaders and others who sweep in quickly, providing feedback or direction on marketing, and then swoop out without waiting to understand the plan and how it will work long-term. The result is often a reswoop just days or weeks from the original direction because marketing isn’t already driving the results. If you don’t have an integrated approach that includes metrics you can explain, you may be stuck reworking your marketing plan again when it hasn’t even had time to reach full steam.
  • A lack of understanding of all the platforms or tools that are part of the strategy. Communication that works on Twitter or Facebook doesn’t work the same on a blog or Snapchat. A brilliant concept for your webpages falls flat without responsive website design. Holistic marketing requires wide-ranging knowledge that can be difficult for one person or team to gain. And misunderstanding even a single platform or tool can lead to marketing campaigns that are confusing or even internally inconsistent.

There are several solutions for this particular marketing problem. First, you can build an expert in-house marketing team, scouring the web for the best people and paying them to keep up with constantly evolving trends so you’re never behind the game. Or, you can hire a team that’s already built. At Lead to Conversion™, we’ve put together a team of some of the best and brightest in the digital marketing space, and we have people that specialize in almost every industry and marketing vertical. When you partner with our integrated digital marketing agency, you get the best resources and knowledge without laying out the money required to recruit your own team.

 

7. Always have a winner in your strategy

work with the best holistic marketing agency and rise to the top in 2019A multichannel digital marketing agency knows that eggs in baskets are a real concern. You definitely don’t want all your marketing eggs in the same basket (or channel). First, it’s just bad strategy for so many of the reasons discussed above. But another reason is that by diversifying, you play a better odds game.

Here’s a hard truth about online marketing: A lot of it is controlled by a few enterprises. And none of those enterprises are you.

What happens if Facebook goes belly up next month in some catastrophic PR nightmare? If you’ve based the bulk of your marketing strategy on the social platform, that’s going to be bad news. What if Facebook is still around but changes its paid social media marketing rules?

What happens the next time Google swaps a few numbers in its algorithms and marketers across the globe start scrambling? Your organic search engine optimization efforts may be given a good shaking that’s hard to recover from immediately.

What happens if competition heats up suddenly on keywords that have been your bread and butter for your paid search advertising for months? You could see a sudden drop in paid ad conversions and click-throughs.

What if none of these things happens but your brand is hit by a negative review campaign on Google or internet trolls take over your Facebook page? Obviously, you can take action to mitigate these issues, but if you’ve relied solely on the compromised channel for online marketing, you could suffer big revenue losses while you recover.

All of these are very real issues that can arise for any company. In fact, some of these have happened and will happen again.

One way you can hedge your bets and ensure you always have a strong digital marketing strategy is with an integrated approach. All your marketing efforts should support each other, but none should be the only pillar holding up your online brand.

A holistic digital marketing agency such as Lead to Conversion™ knows how to diversify your online branding so you’re never left picking up pieces after a firestorm hits one channel. You can more easily recover because other channels continue to hold your brand up as you make tweaks and respond to these types of issues.

8. Shepherd shoppers through sales funnels more effectivelyconstruct effective digital sales funnels for your business image

Cart abandonment rates — the percentage of times people put something in their shopping cart online only to navigate away from the page without completing the purchase — are high. They fall somewhere between 60 and 80 percent on average, and this is just one example of losing people in the funnel.

No matter your business type or industry, or how you use online marketing, you’re likely losing people somewhere in the funnel. And if you’re not deploying a viable, expert integrated digital marketing strategy, you’re probably losing people at an even higher rate.

Some reasons for this include:

  • Your strategy isn’t holistic. You catch user attention on the SERPs or on social or anywhere else online, but that interest doesn’t carry over to another channel because you aren’t on another channel.
  • Your strategy is holistic, but it doesn’t connect. User interest doesn’t carry over because your integration is disjointed. For example, you may do a great job targeting Gen-Zers on Snapchat, but once they swipe to see more, they’re dropped on a landing page that’s better primed for Gen X. Everything has to work together seamlessly to drive people through your funnel.
  • Your strategy is shotgun. Maybe you’ve taken time to build a series of targeted bridges — PPC ads, landing pages and other content created specifically for the audience in question — but few people are taking the bait. One reason for this is a poorly targeted campaign.

These are just a few of the reasons your sales funnel isn’t getting more love from your marketing campaign. And they’re all problems that can be addressed by integrated online marketing strategies — especially in the hands of experts.

If you’re steeped in best practices and great content but can’t figure out why you’re not seeing more effective or efficient results, there’s likely a link broken somewhere along the way. An integrated digital marketing agency can help you find and mend those broken links to increase your performance online.

9. Encourage brand culture and sharing

digital branding image

Remember how we said that consumers today trust brands that are authentic and authorities? One way to position yourself to earn that trust is by using integrated marketing to drive brand culture.

This works best with a solid integrated approach for a few reasons.

  • With an integrated digital marketing campaign, your message is clear and consistent, no matter where the consumer sees it. That reinforces the integrity and consistency of your brand.
  • When you’re sounding off in an authoritative way and engaging with users across multiple channels, you have a better chance at higher engagement levels. That engagement can easily turn into likes and shares, which are heralds to the rest of the internet that people believe your brand has something of value to offer.
  • Paid advertising acts as a net, driving people to your brand content, where you can display your authority and drive conversions. Without both components, you can’t create as much awareness of your brand or culture.
  • Multichannel approaches let you align your marketing culture with the way people actually interact with the internet and their devices. Most individuals, especially in younger generations, aren’t single-channel or even single-device users. They switch seamlessly between voice, mobile and desktop, traversing the web from social profiles to SERPs to forums to brand pages without thinking much about the journey. If you’re not multichannel, you’re not moving with the audience, which can be a drag on your brand culture.
  • Integrated digital marketing also lets you create marketing that’s native in nature. That means your message is displayed like it belongs on the page or profile in question and not just as an obvious advertisement. It’s not a bait-and-switch because sponsored content is still marked accordingly, but it does help you engage with your audience in a way that’s more appropriate for a cultural connection.

 

10. Be prepared for tomorrow without sacrificing today

prepare for tomorrows online marketing campaign today

Getting all nine of the benefits above out of an integrated online marketing strategy can be an enormous win for your company. You’ll see better results, save time and money and connect with consumers to build a culture that makes marketing even easier and more productive in the future.

But that’s not even all!

We’ve got one more benefit of integrated marketing for you to consider.

Integrated marketing lets you plan strategies for tomorrow without risking today’s performance. When you’re not tied to one channel or approach, you can experiment safely with A/B testing in small sections within your strategy without undermining the efforts you already know work. And that means you can position your business to be a leader.

Marketing trends are always changing, and the companies that do well online are typically ahead of the game. An integrated digital marketing strategy lets you test new concepts and ideas, deploying them slowly across campaigns or an entire strategy as you see good results. It also lets you take risks in smaller areas that you may not otherwise take, and those types of risks can turn into huge wins.

We don’t recommend tinkering with things randomly, obviously. That’s why working with an integrated digital marketing agency is critical to success now and in the future. An expert, controlled approach to testing is important to ensure you don’t break things downline in your marketing strategy or cause online branding issues.

At Lead to Conversion™, we understand exactly how all the parts of an integrated marketing approach work together. We also stay up-to-date on marketing trends and what’s happening within the industry, so we can help enterprises make best guesses and data-driven decisions about what risks to take. We help you create the best possible marketing plan for today and plan ahead to stay at the top of your field tomorrow.

 

Get All This and More From Your Marketing Strategy

Now that you know about the benefits of an integrated marketing strategy helmed by an expert organization, it’s time to take action.

With online marketing becoming more competitive by the day, can you afford to continue in the same vein month after month?

With consumers savvier to advertising techniques and demanding more authenticity and authority even in marketing, can your enterprise continue to draw customers without more thought to marketing efforts?

Integrated digital marketing is a complex landscape that can’t be conquered with a single-vehicle. The brands that are winning online are doing so via multiple channels and integrated strategies that pair enterprise strengths with best practices and in-depth knowledge that helps predict behavior.

Don’t get caught unaware or get buried by the up-and-comers. Reach out to the experts at Lead to Conversion™ today to schedule a consultation. We work to understand your industry, enterprise and business goals and then present you with winning integrated digital marketing strategies that let you reap all of the benefits above.

Whatever your budget, business goals or understanding of marketing is, we can help. Our customized approach to integrated marketing services lets us assist organizations of all types to enhance their marketing performance and drive bottom-line metrics to new heights.