Integrated
Marketing Deconstructed
CPA Marketing Insider: Harvey, you’ve written and spoken a lot about integrated marketing. What are the biggest misconceptions that b-to-b marketing professionals seem to have about integrated marketing programs?
CPA Marketing Insider: So how should we gauge how much to spend? Most marketing people look at advertising as an expense, not an investment. They’re used to the traditional "advertising spend to create awareness” model, as opposed to the “advertising investment to create response model.” Also, they might look at taking a dot.com on their awareness ads and think they are integrating. Or they might spam e-mail without placing it in the context of a completely integrated campaign. Then they wonder why it’s not working. They miss the point of the marketing science that can help them test, test, test. CPA Marketing Insider: When it comes to marketing, is the Web best for branding, direct response, selling, e-commerce or something else entirely? Hank, that’s a pretty loaded question. I’ll tell you this: The Web must be part of the integrated campaign. The worst thing that happens is that the marketer’s use of the Web is to create a dot-com site that just provides information in tones of "it’s all about me, the site owner" as opposed to "what’s in it for me", the customer who’s visiting your site. Change the orientation to consumer-centric and the marketer has the most powerful tool that is absolutely great for all branding, direct response, selling or e-commerce and creating a long term loyal relationship with the customer. CPA Marketing Insider: How can integrated marketing help sales and marketing work together more effectively? I wish I had a quick sound bite for you, but there’s no cookie cutter solution. The first thing marketers must do is define what makes the buyer buy and what are your key customer segments. Not just in terms of demographics, but also psychographics. Develop the marketing plan and then define the proper mix based on the allocated marketing investment your firm wants to make. There are new media channels opening every day. Your organization must test the new media and measure the response. It costs a lot less to use media than direct sales. But, often the firm needs the sales team to close the sales and the other media to enhance the ability to close the sale. CPA Marketing Insider: I understand you are teaching direct marketing at the undergraduate level? How are your students different from seasoned marketing professionals you work with? Students have no status quo and their minds are open to think outside the box for developing solutions to real marketing challenges. They have no preconceptions of what works. However, they are skeptical about the effectiveness of traditional media, but very quickly see how integrated marketing plans can generate double digit response rates to relevant marketing messages. We’ll talk more about this next month.” Questions? E-mail Harvey at hbm@hbmassociates.com |
As
many of you put the finishing touches on your 2008 budgets, we’re
guessing you spent a little time wrestling with the concept of integrated
marketing, especially how to introduce the Web into the equation,
not to mention the overall marketing-to-sales continuum. To shed
some light on the subject, we caught up with Harvey Markovitz, CEO
of HBM Associates Inc., a New York-based marketing advisory firm
and professor of marketing at Pace University. Harvey has over 40
years experience as a marketing, sales and business development
professional. He has counseled many entrepreneurial businesses as
well as directed strategic planning, marketing and sales activities
at corporate titans like JC Penney and CBS, Inc. 
HM:
“Many still don’t get it. They don’t understand
how to integrate various media that they’re relying upon,
or why they should do it. Again and again, they’re more concerned
about the cost of the integration, rather than the goals of the
investment. If they understood the science of integrated interactive
marketing, then they would be looking more that the ROI on their
marketing investments than the actual upfront layout of money.