Ending the marketing silo: Why businesses need an integrated approach to promotions

Silo working can be a problem in any kind of organisation, but it has become increasingly common in recent years. This is especially problematic in marketing teams when direct colleagues are focusing on their own area of a “pipeline” without considering how other roles can contribute to the overall success or failure of a shared project.

When it comes to promotions, an integrated approach is vital so that B2B promotions and B2C promotions do not become sunk cost. But what is an integrating marketing approach and how exactly can it benefit your promotions? Read on to break free from the marketing silo and become a real team. 

Taking an integrated marketing approach

Silos are seen as the enemy of a successful marketing campaign. Different functions within a marketing team are all essential in reaching the same end goal - engaging customers and optimising your spending with a better return on investment (ROI). To achieve this, silos must be broken down and an integrated approach should be adopted.

When we talk about integrated marketing, we refer to more than just sharing the same information on various channels. Truly integrated marketing means that your social media team, content team, email team, SEO team and design team are all aligned, and connected with your sales function as a unified workforce. 

Benefits of integrated marketing

While an integrated promotion can involve sending the same messages and information through various different marketing channels, it also means that you have a better idea of which marketing channel is most effective in reaching your audience. This increases the accessibility of your promotion while ensuring that your team isn’t working at cross-purposes. 

Integration ensures there will be clear communication of responsibilities when delivering a promotion, improving productivity and ensuring consumers don’t miss out, no matter which channel they frequent.

Most of your consumers won't interact with your company on only one platform or through a single channel. Ensuring that your promotion is either consistently advertised and run across all channels or focuses on a special offer aimed at the consumers who frequent one channel is much easier when you have the experience of every member of your marketing team. This knowledge can support your efforts to draw more customers to your brand. 

Integrated promotions

When you begin to use an integrated marketing approach, you should first think about what your campaign is for and how you are going to measure the success of your promotion. Thinking in detail about who your target demographic is and where they will interact with the promotion will help you to understand which channels should be most heavily targeted.

All the separate individuals within your marketing team, and also your sales team, should have common goals when it comes to the promotion and they should collectively work to outline how each team member will work towards achieving a smooth promotion. 

Gathering reliable data across all channels and being able to understand the impact of different channels on your ROI can be highly beneficial, and encouraging each team member to learn more about the roles of others can have communication benefits, which results in a more coherent vision. You will also have a deeper understanding of which channels have natural crossover and which will take more work.

Practical ways to utilise the integrated approach

The integrated marketing approach to promotions sounds great in theory, but it can be even better in practice. For example, if you are running a promotion through your email list but have not been getting the return on investment that you would want, then working with your social media professional could help. You could embed posts from your social feeds in emails and on your website, making it a simple click-through process, and add information about signing up to your newsletter for automatic inclusion in a given promotion - say, a giveaway or discount code. 

If you find that your social media platforms are where you get the most positive responses and interactions with your customers, you can then use some of their feedback around promotions in an email campaign or blog post, perhaps even asking them for quotes. Some consumers are uncertain about promotions and this can help to ease these concerns and encourage interaction. 

Do you usually run promotions through targeted emails? Then have your content marketing team create some dynamic and unique content that can act as a reminder and encouragement, rather than just a wall of text or a direct call to action. 

Ensure consistency and effectiveness

By using an integrated marketing approach towards promotions, you can limit the amount of risk associated with silo working. By working together as a cohesive unit on a promotion, you can be sure that what you are offering and showing to customers is consistent across all platforms and channels. 

You will have previously agreed upon the defined metrics that will illustrate how successful your promotion has been. This can be financial, an increased conversion rate, traffic to your site, customers showing up to a promoted event, or even just social media engagement and overall customer satisfaction. 

Once your promotion is over and you have all the information (potentially including customer satisfaction surveys and feedback forms), gather this data and assess which platforms have been the most successful, and which might need more attention next time. You can use this data to create more effective, productive and successful promotions in the future.

Taking an integrated approach to marketing and promotions is the best way to see better ROI and overall better reception to your promotions. Ending silo working within marketing teams can be challenging, but the results of an integrated approach can pay dividends in the long run. Better still, working with a full-service promotions provider like iGo ensures a coordinated approach from concept through to fulfilment.  

Trust iGo today

If you are considering running a promotion and want to make sure that you are covered for the duration of your campaign, iGo can help. We can provide you with the concept creation, execution, analysis, and promotion insurance you need that can ensure your promotions run smoothly and securely. Discover how we can help you grow.