Today’s hybrid world combined with the fragmentation of media channels makes effective and efficient brand building more challenging than ever before. The critical missing element to address this challenge is integration. And there are two types of integration that need to be achieved: message integration across media channels and integration between sales and marketing.
Let’s address message Integration across media channels first because it is most frequently associated with brand campaign integration. Brand marketing communications that deliver a consistent message across advertising, social media, direct marketing, etc. in an integrated way increase message reach and, more importantly, brand proposition recall. Really strong integration is achieved through an omnichannel approach where there is a seamless and unified brand experience all along the path to purchase.
Proper media integration is often a challenge of smaller brands with limited budgets. Broad-based reach is sacrificed for more narrowly targeted media that allows the brand to achieve greater message frequency. Professor Byron Sharp, Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, in his book How Brands Grow, believes greater reach should not become the victim of greater frequency. For him, efficiency suffers when it requires multiple messages to achieve a sales outcome. He advocates that strong creative executions integrated across multiple media channels is the far better solution. According to Professor Sharp “The principle of one exposure media planning affects creativity as well—it means designing advertising that works first time, every time.” A significant contributing factor, therefore, for smaller budget brand managers, is strong, emotionally engaging creatives that move buyers to act on their first impression.
The second type of integration is between sales and marketing. The sales team is often not included early in the brand campaign planning cycle. In business-to-business brand campaigns, marketing creates a positive environment for the sales team to close or convert the sale. When the brand message is inconsistently delivered between these two groups and/or the effort is not well coordinated geographically, brand building ROI is sacrificed. Getting sales and marketing on the same page at the beginning of the planning process is absolutely critical. And, in my experience, could easily be the single most important improvement a brand manager can make in achieving desired financial results.
Finding the right balance of reach and frequency through campaign integration requires a strong understanding of the customer and competitor alternatives. Getting sales and marketing on the same page requires senior leadership to demand an integrated plan with results owned by both groups. Our Bloodhound Group strategists have experience achieving integration at both levels and can help you successfully integrate for more effective and efficient brand building.