Marketing as a discipline is full of terms that make obvious good sense to larger businesses but might seem a bit excessive for the smaller business. Not necessarily so. 

Integrate Marketing Communications refers to the practice of planning promotional campaigns across a range of media and using a range of tools to ensure consistency of marketing message and brand. It works by being based on insights into how customers behave, what media they consume, who they trust, and what message will appeal to them. The campaign will be effective because each element of it strengthens the other – the consistency of message ensures greater impact.

The Centre for Integrated Marketing, part of the University of Bedfordshire, reckons that businesses can see a 10-25% improvement in their marketing performance by following an approach to marketing communications that integrates their efforts rather than relying on the fragmented approach to promotion that so many small businesses take.

Integrate marketing communications does require planning and a concentrated effort which could explain why small business owners haven’t taken to the idea – too often marketing is something that they do in a bit of a panic when sales fall rather than a systematic part of how they run their business.

The good news is that bad marketing habits can be broken and that, once you’ve got better marketing habits in place, you’ll see the benefits.

An associated marketing concept is that of Media Neutral Planning, something that has caused debate in the big-business world as to how simple it is to implement and perhaps it is when you’ve got big budgets and complex marketing needs. 

In essence, it means not making assumptions about which media and techniques you’ll use for a promotional campaign before the campaign planning has even started. Rather than assuming you’ll be doing a print advertising campaign or focusing on direct mail/email or whatever, you start from the customer’s point of view and plan from there.

Personally, I think it’s plain common sense for the small business but experience tells me that far too many business owners make quick assumptions about what to spend their money on and only then worry about whether the money they’ve spent will prove to be a good investment. Too often, I hear “I’ve got these brochures printed, what shall I do with them?”, “I sent out some letters and got no response”, “I spent all that money on an advert and got no sales from it.” The marketing budget’s been spent with no return.

The other concept to bear in mind when planning a campaign is that people rarely make an instant decision to buy from you the first time they hear from you. They need a number of touchpoints with your brand in order to better understand what you’re offering, develop trust in your business, and then make the decision to buy. Hence the need to use a number of tools and techniques to create a touchpoints that they will experience. But, don’t forget, don’t make assumptions about the type of tools you’ll be using – think about it from your customer’s point of view. Some tools will be better for some types of customer and business than others.

A bit of time spent planning a campaign from the customer’s perspective, using a mix of tools, ensuring a consistent message across an appropriate choice of media will ensure you pull the pieces together rather than asking the customer to work at putting the whole picture together for themselves.