Selective or all-out marketing? What’s your best option?

How then, do you negotiate the increasingly complex landscape of marketing? Given the amount of books out there on the subject, clearly there is no one way to do it correctly, rather picking and choosing the parts that work for you.

That doesn’t however mean that you can’t deliver integrated campaigns that take in several platforms and strategies all at once. For example, a time existed up until recently that there were questions raised if you didn’t have a presence on every social media platform, regardless of whether it suited your business or not. Marketing managers were piled on by CEOs and Directors alike, being asked ‘Why aren’t we on X platform?’ 

This may have been through fear, but you can see how this played out, a company that wants to maintain a Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn and other social media platforms is likely to spread itself thin without a dedicated team to tend to the demands of these often time-consuming ways of marketing. 

In recent years, a more strategic method has been arrived at. Rather than exhausting all energies on multiple routes to market, SMEs and even larger corporations have decided to rethink their actions. Finding out where your target audience subsides is key to understanding how to market to them.

But what about integrated campaigns? This is where the truly clever and functional campaigns shine. Rather than ploughing the same content to different audiences, thought and preparation have made it possible to approach several platforms simultaneously, but with an emphasis on content. For example, a campaign to promote accountancy services could encompass a digital PR campaign that looks at excuses given for late tax returns. That same information could spill into video form via YouTube, advert content for targeted social media platforms and long-form blog content for websites and for the likes of LinkedIn for repurposed content. Using the same data or idea, but adapting it into shape for the relevant audience and platform can make it invaluable. The touchpoints many will have with your company are made all the more memorable and effective if they are specifically tailored for their medium. 

Therefore you need to ensure some basic tenets for an ongoing strategy, a unique idea that’s tailored only for one platform will simply not translate into another. It may seem like more effort, but there’s certainly something to be said for seeing a campaign rolled out across physical, digital marketing and PR strands all at once. Blanketing channels is one thing, but having a presence wherever people look is truly special.