Integrated Marketing Series: What Is Integrated Marketing? (Part 1 of 3)

If you are like most senior living communities today, you have a website presence that serves as a first point of contact for prospects seeking information about your community. You probably also engage in a variety of advertising, public relations, sales and special promotional initiatives.

Growth-centered senior living communities have now found that using a combination of traditional and digital (online) media channels can create a more productive platform for engaging potential customers and achieving better business results.

With so many different media channels now being used by consumers searching for senior living information, it can be very easy for your primary message to become diffused or blurred if it is not communicated consistently – and consistently well – across all channels. Rather than presenting a clear and compelling picture of your community’s key advantages and relevant benefits, your prospects could be confused as to what your message really is and how your services can make their lives better.

What Is Integrated Marketing?

Integrated marketing is a simple concept. It ensures that all forms of communications and messages are carefully linked together. All marketing tactics work better if they work together rather than separately. Their sum is more significant than their parts, providing each speaks consistently with one voice all the time.

Research has shown it takes 6 to 8 marketing touches to generate a qualified lead (Salesforce). Each touch helps move a prospect through the sales funnel. Integrated marketing campaigns use a more holistic approach than those using a single marketing medium or channel. They’re more interesting, more impactful, and they typically have higher response rates and generate more leads.

Unlike one-off promotional tactics, effectively executed integrated marketing (IM) plans orchestrate your community’s key campaign message(s) in a harmonious, synergistic and sequenced manner through the many communications channels you use to reach your target audiences. Beyond ensuring message consistency, marketing integration also focuses on the distribution of the message in a properly timed order based on interaction with the customer, their phase of the buyer journey and the specific media used.

In addition to effectively connecting your relevant marketing content with your target prospects and motivating the desired response, a well-conceived integrated marketing strategy has the power to make the whole greater than the sum of its various parts – while also optimizing the cost-effectiveness of your marketing budget.

The Primary Benefits of Integrated Marketing Campaigns

Effectively planned and orchestrated integrated marketing campaigns provide senior living communities with tangible, results -based benefits. Key among them are:

• ROI: Saves money/Increases profits through increased efficiency – A clear, consistent and consolidated message that reaches prospects through their preferred media channels has a better chance of cutting through the noise of hundreds of commercial messages that bombard prospects.
• Boosts sales – Integrated marketing campaigns stretch your consistent messages across several communications channels to create more avenues for prospects to become aware, engaged and ultimately, committed to making a purchase.  Carefully linked messages help by giving timely reminders, updated information and special offers which, when presented in a planned sequence, help move prospects through the stages of the buying process.
• Creates competitive advantage – Research suggests that images shared online and offline boost advertising awareness and responses. Consistent images and relevant messages help nurture long-term relationships with customers. SageAge Strategies uses CRM and lead databases to identify which prospects need what information when.

Key Integrated Marketing Tactics

The following marketing tactics can be used to create effective integrated marketing campaigns:

• Traditional Marketing – Broadcast, radio, print, direct mail, and outdoor advertising
• Digital/Online Marketing – Email marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, online display, remarketing, and geofencing advertising
• Social Media Marketing – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
• Content Marketing – Blogs, newsletters, news releases, marketing automation and other media that directly link relevant senior living provider content with the expressed needs of target audiences.

When these marketing tactics are properly coordinated in a cohesive strategy that addresses message consistency and sequencing, you can create an effective campaign that delivers an overall impact that is greater than that provided by each medium individually.

In our next article in this three-part series, we will review ways of creating an effective integrated marketing campaign.