About six weeks ago, we launched an integrated campaign for a client (for this post, they’ll remain anonymous since their campaign is still active), and I’m happy to report that our early results are looking very positive. I believe that the early success we are seeing and, ultimately, the overall success of the campaign can be directly linked to two factors – great creative featuring credible, emotional stories and a placement strategy that reflects a disciplined integrated marketing approach. For this post, I’m going to focus on our integrated marketing approach. I’ll let our creative director add a post about the creative – he really likes to talk about that.
For those late to class, “integrated marketing” is an approach that achieves the objectives of a marketing campaign through a well coordinated use of different promotional methods that are intended to reinforce each other. At Gravity Group, we use this approach to leverage the significant power of complementary media to reach our target audiences through multiple channels.
For this campaign, we kicked off with television messages and, in the weeks that followed, we added other media such as Digital, Radio, Outdoor, Email, Cost per Click, Facebook Ads and a companion Social Engagement strategy. Week after week, as each new media channel was added, the campaign continued to gain momentum. Our early campaign results are very encouraging – overall visits to our client’s website are up by 53% with visitor time on site increasing by 27%. Our early social results are also looking strong with a 288% increase in Facebook ‘fans’ and a very encouraging social engagement measure of over 80%.
The most rewarding part of the work we produce with our clients is watching an integrated marketing campaign like this unfold – hearing buzz in the community, seeing the stats take off and knowing positive brand impressions are being made. It’s too early in the campaign for more complex ROI measurements, but our experience has shown that positive early indicators of campaign momentum are a good sign. And the early signs for this campaign show that the careful integration of the outbound ‘push’ marketing channels with inbound ‘pull’ social and content strategies present a powerful and effective marketing mix.