It’s no secret that a single platform, medium or channel is not sufficient for effective marketing in this day and age. Every company needs to have a multiplatform presence. It’s imperative for companies to explore all available mediums and to reach out to their target audience using all relevant modes of communication. That is essentially what integrated marketing is. This simple guide will help you to have an understanding of integrated marketing and thereby its significance.

• Integrated marketing is an approach wherein a campaign uses all available mediums, be it for advertising and sales or promotional and branding purposes. There are traditional mediums such as billboards, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets or brochures, flyers, mails and newsletters. There are traditional audio mediums such as radio or podcasts and audiovisual mediums such as television. There are new age mediums such as the internet, social networks and social media. Integrated marketing simply means you must use all these available mediums or most of them to reach out to your audience.

• Integrated marketing is not simply about the mediums and using most or all of them. How you use them is also important. Your marketing strategy may or may not be uniform for all these mediums. The manner in which you use a roadside billboard will be different from PR and blog posts. The video you produce and share on social media may be quite different in its messaging compared with the advertisement in the newspaper. The actual content may vary but the messaging needs to be the same. A company cannot embark on contradicting or contrasting messaging. This will not have the desired effect since people may be a little perplexed about what exactly your message is. Many people will come across your messages or marketing endeavors on multiple platforms or through more than one medium. They must receive the same message, albeit in different forms of content.

• Integrated marketing also calls for a certain degree of uniformity in time. Just as Shakespeare popularized the uniformity of time, place and action in his plays, the best digital marketers of the day will be able to make the most of multiple mediums at the same time. When different sections of your target audience are reached out to with various types of content through multiple mediums at the same time, you would succeed at establishing the foundation for a viral event. People will start to talk, discuss your products or services and share their experiences.