The Integrated Marketing Mess

Amid a chaos of marketing tactics, how do you know what to pursue, whom to hire, and how to coordinate it all? Steve McKee offers three pointers

By Steve McKee

What do a public relations firm in Boston, a digital shop in Minneapolis, and an ad agency in Albuquerque have in common? A small client in St. Louis. At first glance, relying on three businesses for specialized marketing services might seem odd, but it's not.

More and more businesses are relying on multiple firms for their marketing needs in this digital age, particularly smaller companies that want a sophisticated plan but don't have the big bucks to hire a huge agency. They may have to look beyond their immediate geography to get their unique needs met, and they're increasingly able to do so as technology continues to shrink the distance between clients and contractors.

There is, however, a downside, from which many company leaders I have spoken with lately are suffering. I call it the integrated marketing mess.

Integrated marketing used to be fairly simple. If your television and radio ads were tied to your newspaper and direct mail campaign, you had an "integrated" plan. Today it's a bit more complicated. Traditional media vehicles still need to be tied together, but they also must integrate with point-of-sale materials and PR efforts. And Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. Plus website content and search engine optimization, and in some cases YouTube (GOOG) channels and LinkedIn profiles. Not to mention customer service and internal communications. It's downright dizzying the number of things we now have to keep track of.

It gets worse. Most marketers don't know that an epic struggle is going on just beneath the surface of the marketing communications industry. Digital agencies are starting to offer more traditional services. Traditional agencies are adding digital capabilities. Ad agencies are offering PR. PR firms are selling graphic design. Design firms are calling themselves ad agencies. And every one is staking a claim to the new ground of social media. It's a mess out there, with each company kicking the others under the table like too many siblings vying for too few pieces of pie. Somebody has to manage the chaos, and unfortunately, that's you.

As much of a headache as it may be, integrating your efforts is more vital than ever as the world grows more complex. How should you approach it? Whom can you trust? Where should you even begin? Here are three suggestions to help you get (and keep) your marketing house in order.

1. Strategy first. You may employ a host of companies to implement a variety of tactics, but to be effective they all must serve a singular strategy. If that's in place, make sure your vendor partners understand both it and their role in its execution. If you're lacking a clear strategy, that's where you need to begin. (If you're unsure, it's a safe bet you need work in this area.)

Find a resource that specializes in branding (and whose form of compensation ensures they'll be tactic-agnostic) and do the heavy lifting of figuring out where your brand needs to go. Beware the siren songs in pitches from the latest and greatest tacticians, especially from anybody who claims to be an "expert" or "guru" in new media. Yes, there are those who have demonstrated success in this arena, but nobody on the planet is an expert yet—it's too new and changing too rapidly.

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