Integrated Marketing
Agency Growth Through Integrated Marketing
The worlds of offline and online marketing have converged a long time ago – it’s all about integrated marketing. Marketing today is much more than just brand awareness – it’s more about brand participation. With the proliferation digital marketing (SEO, SEM, web, social, mobile, video, etc.) consumers have much greater control of their messaging. While marketing budgets have slid rabidly into the digital realm due to immediacy, cost efficiency, and going where the eyeballs, there may still be a strong need for more traditional platforms.
Agency principals MUST deliver integrated marketing campaigns – the key questions are “how digital must they be?” and “how do we deliver value?”
Agencies today are faced with the challenge of understanding where they play on the marketing continuum and what do their customers require:
Awareness – Acquisition – Activation – Transaction – Loyalty
To deliver relevancy and thought leadership to its clients, agencies must have a firm grasp of the strategies and tactics that can be implemented in each phase and know how best to implement them.
In the past traditional advertising, agencies excelled in awareness based campaigns, but now also focus on activating consumers to do, to transact, and to tell others about you.
I am sure you have heard much of this before. So the question is, where and how is it best for my agency to play? How does your agency learn to THINK IT – SELL IT – BUILD IT? Is it better to grow the skills/capabilities organically, partner, or just merge with other agencies? The middle ground for many has been to partner digital companies – act as a general contractor. Each of the above strategies has merit and should be evaluated in the context of the services/specialties the agency desires to deliver.
What is clear is that in all cases the Agency of Record (AOR) is in the enviable position of owning the brand. Clients are seeking agencies that strategize and can deliver integrated marketing programs.
Some initial steps to take are? The first step is an assessment of your clients’ (both current and prospective) needs.
- Map capabilities to determine how to grow accounts (Account Plan) and where additional touch points can be attained within the client’s organization.
- Determine the strategies and tactics you want the ability to deliver.
- Assess and analyze your current capabilities and staff.
- Do you need to hire?
- Train your current staff to THINK IT!
- Assess costs of building a department – acquiring – partnering
- Evaluate potential partners – negotiate a partnership.
- Build the pricing schemes according to the decisions made above – SELL IT!
- Build the processes to BUILD IT!
Integrated marketing is a must – the process includes:
- People strategies
- Customer strategies
- Enterprise strategies
How Good Is Your Integrated Marketing?
In over 10 years of consulting, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a wide range of agencies, 50+, and integrated marketing for agency growth has often been key. As an agency specialist, I’m uniquely qualified to help you understand the pros and cons of various growth strategies as applied to your highly specific circumstances.
As this series of blog posts and videos continues, I’ll walk you through alternative agency growth strategies that can be applied alone or in conjunction with others. So make sure you get on my email notification list using the form in the right hand column on this page.
And if you’d like to have a personal chat about how your agency is dealing with growth (or the lack thereof) then please contact me directly. I’d be happy to provide you with a free consultation.
