Marketing professionals know today it is absolutely essential to have integrated marketing solutions when developing a campaign to reach customers. Integrated marketing is more than just using a wide variety of media to reach potential customers; it’s creating a cohesive message and delivering that message over multiple media channels with a specific strategy for when your message is viewed and in what format.

The different media channels portray the same company image and product message, and are also interconnected to result in multiple customer contacts: a prospect who receives a direct mail piece may go to a web site link printed on the mailer and sign up to receive email messages.

In addition to integration of traditional marketing media, social media has emerged as a new requirement in developing a marketing strategy. According to the following chart by Marketing Sherpa, 89% of surveyed companies have integrated social media into their marketing strategy in some way.

This interconnectivity can be hard to accomplish successfully if you don’t have experience creating integrated marketing campaigns. This is where it is helpful to bring in a marketing vendor that does have the expertise to design and execute your campaign over multiple platforms.

We all know that different customers are more amenable to different messages in different formats. A good marketing expert with experience with integrated marketing will look at your customer demographics and develop a plan that is just right for your customers and your message. Integration between different parts of your strategy will allow for more efficiency in message deployment and better response overall.