With the ever-rising shifts in the marketing world, firms must change their tactics and strategies. Since sociocultural, technological, economic, political-legal and competitive factors are subject to change with time, marketers should be ready to adapt to these changes to survive. Also, with the firms undergoing privatization, they develop a new way of regulating. These changes give customers and companies new means to make contact.
This evolved world of marketing acts as a push for the marketers to drop the old and adopt the new. Some of the ‘New world’ strategies include integration and personalization, essential to make a brand strong for the customer.
So, what is Integration marketing?
The marketers in today’s world have access to a mix of channels and strategies to attract customer attention to their product and services. These can either place your brand at the top or bring it back to the ground. According to the customer-based brand equity model, what matters is the effect, creativity, and positivity of the brand affiliations.
For better understanding, if, for the customers, Apple is equivalent of the concepts of design, innovation and quality, based on touchpoints like experience with the product, a commercial, a customer review for the product etc., makes an impact. This effect should be similar except if some new affiliations are made or the old ones are influenced in some way.
Therefore, marketers need to assess all possible ways to impart information, based not on just budget and efficiency but also on its effect. But the crux of it is always the product or service offered. Marketing operations with the product at its core are crucial as the brand is integrated into it.
‘Contacts’, an aspect of integrating marketing, is any knowledge-imparting experience a customer has with the brand and product. These are achieved in several ways. It may be something said by family or friends, packaging of the product, newspaper or magazine articles, TV commercial, the in-store experience offered by the brand, the product placement in the store or signages. But this doesn’t end here, anything others say about the person who uses the product and post-purchase services offered by the brand all count as customer contact with the brand and hence form the base of customer-brand relationships.
What is significant is how creative and unique your attempt is because that is the only way for a brand to stand out from the competition. One such example is Moosejaw Mountaineering, a brand that offers outdoor gear and believes in “Love the madness”. It is unconventional branding ideas like offering discounts to customers replying to their ‘Break-up service’, winners of their digital version of ‘Rock, paper, scissors’ game and ‘May 6th sucks’ ad, keeps their contacts with them strong.
As we say, creativity is the key. It must not cost the overall goal of the brand. Thus, a brand must be consistent with its ways of providing a seamless experience to the customers.
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