Integrated Digital Marketing: What It Is & How To Get Started

Dmytro Zaichenko
Jul 8, 2024 6:46:07 AM

If you're reading this, you may wonder what integrated digital marketing is and how it can help your business.

You're at the right place – this post is for you. 

To maximize the impact of your marketing on business, you have to align the approaches and channels you use.

This is the essence of integrated digital marketing. However, there are practical ways and nuances to implement that properly.

Let’s explore how you can start with an integrated digital marketing strategy and benefit from it.

  1. What is Integrated Digital Marketing?
  2. 6 Key Channels for Integrated Digital Marketing
    1. Content Marketing
    2. Video Marketing
    3. SEO
    4. Social Media
    5. Paid Ads
    6. Email Marketing
  3. Steps to Create an Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy
    1. Step 1: Market and Competitors Research
    2. Step 2: Goals Setting
    3. Step 3: Content Creation
    4. Step 4: Content Distribution Across Channels
    5. Step 5: Monitoring and Optimization
  4. Why Integrating Your Digital Marketing is Beneficial

What is Integrated Digital Marketing?

Integrated digital marketing represents the idea of distributing a unified brand image and message across marketing channels.

In other words, this strategy ensures that people will recognize your brand and have a uniform understanding of your product or service in any channel they interact with you.

With this approach, you bring all your marketing strategies together to convey the same message to potential and existing customers. By doing so, you create a solid brand identity.

Let’s take the HubSpot unified message, for example.

Whether you visit their website, their social media profiles, you’ll get the same message that "You grow better with HubSpot."

integrated digital marketing example from Hubspot

Moreover, each platform uses a similar tagline "Get in your *smart* CRM era." 

integrated digital marketing example from Hubspot

From inspiring stories and funny memes on their social media to customized offers aligning with target audience interests, HubSpot conveys their message of being helpful for customers' business growth.

6 Key Channels for Integrated Digital Marketing 

Integrated marketing isn't exclusively about brand positioning.

Its essential part lies in which and how organizations use marketing channels to leverage their brand positioning.

We’ve singled out 5 key channels vital for the successful implementation of unified digital marketing.

1. Content Marketing 

This channel is crucial for any integrated digital marketing campaign.

High-quality and relevant content helps to build up your brand identity, for one thing.

For another, it can increase brand awareness and foster strong relationships with your customers.

You can choose among various types of content:

  • blog posts
  • tutorials
  • FAQs
  • infographics
  • ebooks
  • guides

2. Video Marketing

Video content is currently among the most effective types of content.

It helps to increase engagement, bring more qualified leads, and increase conversion.

For instance, you can employ animated explainer videos to improve the onboarding experience

You can also consider including videos in emails to help users make more informative purchasing decisions.

Say, you send a marketing email with a video and an engaging video CTA to register for a webinar or schedule a software demo.

If you need some inspiration, check out some non-trivial video CTA ideas.

3. SEO

As a part of an integrated digital marketing strategy, search engine optimization helps to boost online presence.

With good SEO, your company can attract target audiences.

As a result, you'll have more organic traffic and potential customers.

Effective SEO includes keyword research, tech SEO, off-page SEO, etc.

But there must be an alignment with content marketing.

Staying consistent in optimizing your content will help your audience associate your brand with a particular message.

It may also help them recognize your brand through valuable content even when the name isn’t visible.

Simply speaking, you need to unite content marketing and SEO: create top-notch content and optimize it so the world can easily find it.

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4. Social Media

Social media is one of the easiest ways to showcase your company to your target audience.

It’s a perfect solution to share your content and brand message. For example, you can:

  • share your website blog posts on social media
  • update your followers about product news and updates, etc
  • create a buzz about an upcoming product feature
  • experiment with content types, e.g., use videos, promotional animations, carousels, etc

In many industries, social media assists in leveraging your marketing efforts.

Different social media have unique features and styles, so consider this when choosing which social media channel will work best for your business.

For instance, Instagram will work better for videos and focusing a lot on emotional triggers.

Whereas, Facebook might hook your audience with a well-crafted article, research, or statistics.

On social media, you can engage with your audience systematically and create a sense of community with your audience.

You can use that for distributing your content, containing a unified brand message and expertise.

5. Paid Ads

Paid ads are a great way to reinforce your digital marketing.

The key advantage of integration is that you can repurpose your content for ads on various platforms while conveying the same message.

The same video, product page, or infographics can be advertised on different channels.

In paid advertising, it's important to analyze and optimize your campaign constantly.

A constant PPC campaign audit, robust analysis, and automation tools can help with that greatly.

You'll know what works for your audience and what doesn't. 

Having paid advertising integrated into your digital marketing strategy can also help you understand target audiences.

You can use it to adjust your positioning and offers as well as polish other marketing channels.

6. Email Marketing

With the help of email marketing, you can leverage personalized approaches to every customer.

Newsletters, promotions, welcome guides, or personalized offers can be easily communicated via email. 

You can use email to distribute content and reach subscribers who might have missed the content on other channels.

And thanks to personalization, you can send targeted messages to different segments.

Apart from that, this channel helps to reinforce relationships with existing customers as well as nurture leads from subscribers.

So, email marketing can be a good addition to your integrated digital marketing strategy.

Steps to Create an Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy 

After reviewing the important channels for the concept of integrated marketing, we can move on to the implementation of this approach. It consists of 5 steps.

Step 1: Market and Competitors Research

Start with researching your market. Evaluate your position in it. Examine your competitors' strengths and weaknesses.

It can help you determine how you can supersede them.

Discover what marketing tactics your competitors use.

Is there something you can borrow for your integrated digital marketing strategy?

Consider using Porter’s Five Forces to examine the competitive landscape.

It includes analyzing competitors, buyers, new market entrants, substitutes, and suppliers.

Also, SWOT analysis can help you:

a tabular overview of SWOT analysis

Source: WordStream

Additionally, it’s important to deeply analyze your target audience and customers.

You can conduct a conjoint analysis to evaluate what product/service features users appreciate the most and how they interact with your company.

Understanding your potential and existing customers will help you craft and convey the right message to the exact audience at the right time.

Step 2: Goals Setting

After researching the market and outlining your position in it, it’s time to define a unified goal for your integrated digital marketing strategy.

You need to set a clear, measurable goal that will guide your unified marketing efforts.

For instance, if you want to boost brand awareness of a new product feature, increase MRR, or shift the perception of your service – goals can be different but have to be tailored.

Think about how to use the strengths of various digital marketing channels to get the most out of them.

So, say, you need to boost brand awareness.

What channel will work best for your existing users, and what for potential?

Is it going to be email, social media, or both?

How can you employ SEO for this?

Which content format will be preferable?

How can you repurpose content for various channels? Answering

these questions can help you set your strategic goal.

Step 3: Content Creation

After setting your objectives, it’s time to make content.

Create a content plan that will outline your way of developing and delivering relevant content to your audience.

Think of what type of content you’ll create for different segments: when you’ll need explainer videos, for instance, or when to focus on posts.

Consider creating repurposing content so you can adapt it for different channels. 

Here are a few content ideas for inspiration for various formats:

  • Comparison blog post: compare products, services, or solutions
  • How-to Guides: step-by-step information in the form of infographics or video
  • Industry Trends: what’s new in your industry
  • FAQs: frequently asked questions can be answered in a post, infographic, or a video 
  • Explainer Videos: perfect to showcase how something works 
  • product demo: presenting the value of your product or service 
  • Testimonial Videos: sharing customers’ experiences to forge meaningful connections with your audience 
  • Landing Page Videos: videos to encourage some action on a landing page, like signing up or purchasing a product
  • Social Media Videos: videos tailored for a specific social media platform; quite commonly, the message of such video should be understood even without a sound

Some companies find that their audience loves to read blog posts, while others prefer podcasts.

Run tests and try different types of content to see what works best for you.

Step 4: Content Distribution Across Channels

Your audience, your product/services, and your resources will influence the choice of content distribution channels.

Integrated digital marketing involves a mix of channels for better reach, engagement, and visibility.

We can distinguish three content distribution categories:

  • Owned Content Distribution: These include channels that your company possesses, like your website, your social media page, email newsletter, or your blog.
  • Earned Content Distribution: It involves a third party promoting or sharing your content via social mentions, guest posts, product reviews, etc.
  • Paid Content Distribution: These are the channels you pay for to distribute your content. For example, paid ads, influencer marketing, or sponsored content distribution.

types of content distribution

Source: HubSpot

It’s important to optimize your content for every channel.

This includes learning the rules, requirements, and tech specs of each channel.

And to top it all, staying consistent with distribution is essential.

Step 5: Monitoring and Optimization 

Keep in mind that integrated digital marketing needs to be flexible, so always leave room for optimization.

Track key metrics per channel, analyze the outcomes to see if there are ways for improvement, or just ensure that everything works well.

Don't skip regular monitoring and strategy reviews.

These allow you to follow the objectives of your integrated digital marketing campaign, track your progress, and monitor the market dynamics. 

Regarding metrics, each channel has its own set of benchmarks. For instance, paid advertising is focused mostly on tracking impressions, clicks, CPC, CPA, and others.

It's also important to track strategic marketing metrics: conversion rates, ROI, CAC, LTV, etc. This way, you can overview the effectiveness of your integrated marketing efforts.

Why Integrating Your Digital Marketing is Beneficial

Integrated digital marketing offers a plethora of opportunities and benefits for a company. 

Among key advantages are the following:

  • Consistency: Unified marketing efforts help you stay consistent in your offerings. No matter where a customer interacts with a brand, they will have the same perception of it.
  • Boosted Reach:  You can maximize your reach by conveying your brand message via many channels. Blend your marketing efforts to engage your audiences at multiple touchpoints of their customer journey.
  • Increased Efficiency: Save costs by repurposing your content for various channels. Multichannel marketing campaigns improve brand visibility and recognition. As a result, it leads to more conversions.

Recap: Are You Ready to Unify Your Marketing Efforts? 

As you see, integrated digital marketing is an efficient approach to promoting your products or services.

It can help to ensure a seamless experience through various channels. Is it a bit challenging? No more than any other marketing strategy. 

Unify your marketing efforts to take your business to the next level.

Aligning your brand messaging across all platforms isn’t just a trend. It is the key to maximizing your brand potential. 

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