Integrating Communication Channels

Name: Integrating Communication Channels
Author: Mark Preising

This course explores structuring an integrated marketing plan and crafting effective messaging. It then identifies the advantages of integration and shows how…

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With all the marketing channels currently in play, how should you structure your plan and your messaging for maximum impact? Let's explore the advantages of various channels you can use and how to integrate them. These include email marketing, social media, and most importantly, digital marketing. Before we examine how to integrate mass media, we need to define some of the key terminology most relevant to the discussion. These include data analytics, scaling and scalability, market share, clicks per sale, ROI and performance metrics, and marketing strategy. To understand data analysis, you first have to understand the difference between data and information. Data is pretty easy to capture with today's computer technology and web enabled applications. Data is just numbers and words. What transforms data into information is usability. One million TV viewers sounds like an impressive number. But what are they watching and why? Data for the sake of data does nothing to help your marketing gain a better understanding of its target market. Knowing what the numbers and words mean when organized into a form that helps you understand the data does. You need research and analytics to organize your data into meaningful information you can use to make smart marketing decisions. Context and parameters for the data are necessary to help make it useful. Gathering pure data is not the strategy. With modern techniques like bots, applications, and information technology, data can be captured from cash registers, post-purchase consumer surveys, point of sale kiosks, and a multitude of other sources. Gathering specific and relevant data that can be converted into useful information is the goal. As an organization, you want to be paying for data gathering that is specific to the needs of your marketing plan. That data must fit into relevant categories of information that can help you better understand your market and target audience. Market research organizations will gather specific data and answers from survey respondents, using the questions you give them to define your market or audience. This information is usually tabulated in Excel spreadsheets or similar tools. The overall answers are then analyzed for trends and similarities. Questions that can result in useful data capture include, do they like your product or service? What is it that they like best? Will they buy it at a higher price? Do they prefer your competitor's features and benefits? How much can you raise the price before they'll search for alternatives? How well does your customer service respond to their needs and wants? These are just a few examples. Remember, there may be up to 50 questions on your surveys. Ideally, the data will reveal patterns that begin to form usable information. Tying together the relatable data and patterns that lead to information is key to learning about how your product or service interacts with your audience. Of your audience, your target market is the 20% who consistently support you. That's the audience whose information you want to gather. You may not reach all of them, but you do need to reach enough of them with each communication to create or maintain a meaningful connection. So, consider the scale of your market and design a strategy that will reach as much of your target segment as possible according to the marketing budget you can afford. Today, clicks are one of the best measurements of audience interest. Do consumers click to read your messages on smartphones, social media, or your website? How long do they stay on your site or your page? Do they read the content or click away? All of these answers matter and can be analyzed through today's data metrics. Most of the analytics measure how many clicks your website, offer, message, ad, or image get. This date can then be turned into information once you analyze the patterns. Return on investment or ROI measures the cost of a given marketing activity when compared the return income it generated for your company. For example, if you're organization spends $1,000 to create an advertisement that reaches 1000 potential customers, and you then sell $10,000 in merchandise from it, the ROI would be 10 to one. ROI is what your organization should consider when discussing advertising or paid marketing communication in general. Now, if you invest $1,000 in an ad campaign, only reach 100 consumers, and only net $500 in sales, your ROI is negative. Meaning you lost money on that investment. Labor, production, marketing, advertising, and everything else in business have an ROI because everything has a cost and a return. ROI is how costs and profits are measured. Performance metrics are similar to ROI. These are driven by whether the performance of a marketing or advertising campaign earns the company a profit or sell more of the company's products and services. They also help you see the amount of resources expended to increase sales, and if costs are too high to realize profit. All of these items tie into your overall marketing strategy, which is usually broken into long-term strategies and short term tactics. Tactics are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly yearly targets you set to inspire your marketing team to engage your end users. Strategies are long-term, usually a one-year, five-year or even 10-year plan the organization has to reach markets you don't yet have the capacity to reach. Marketing strategy itself is a long-term proposition. And it's important to monitor over time. It's your organization's growth model. Where do you want to be in the future? You'll need a good marketing strategy to get there.

Beginner Provider : Mark Preising 4 Lessons · 23m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

This course explores structuring an integrated marketing plan and crafting effective messaging. It then identifies the advantages of integration and shows how to integrate channels, such as email, social media, and other digital media. Finally, it covers the roles that email, social media, and digital marketing can play in your overall marketing mix by expanding your outreach to potential customers.

What You'll Learn

Structure an integrated marketing plan and craft effective messaging
Integrate channels such as email, social media, and other digital media
Leverage digital tools to maximize a marketing plan
Use blogging, social media, and other digital marketing tools
Apply email marketing, digital marketing, and social media marketing within your overall marketing mix

Key Takeaways

The course explains how to structure an integrated marketing plan and craft effective messaging.
It identifies the advantages of integration and shows how to integrate channels such as email, social media, and other digital media.
It covers the roles email, social media, and digital marketing can play in your overall marketing mix to expand outreach to potential customers.
It teaches how leveraging digital tools can maximize a marketing plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this course cover?

It explores structuring an integrated marketing plan and crafting effective messaging, identifies the advantages of integration, and shows how to integrate channels such as email, social media, and other digital media. It also covers the roles email, social media, and digital marketing can play in your overall marketing mix.

What will I learn in this course?

You will understand how leveraging digital tools can maximize a marketing plan and learn how to use blogging, social media, and other digital marketing tools.

What topics or lessons are included?

The lessons are Integrating Mass Communications, Email Marketing, Digital Marketing, and Social Media Marketing.

What skills will I gain?

The course builds skills in integrated content, integrated marketing communications, marketing channels, marketing communications, messaging strategy, and multi-channel marketing.

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