What is Needed is an Integrated Marketing Plan

In a recent survey, 56% of decision makers plan to increase their content marketing spending for 2009. The top six content tactics are social media (other than blogs), e-newsletters, blogs, case studies and online video.

Joe Pulizzi, the survey’s author says, "More and more marketing professionals now realize that tomorrow's marketing is all about developing a conversation with customers. Without valuable, relevant and compelling content, that's pretty much impossible. The numbers show that."

So should you follow the pack and put your resources into the new social media marketing? Your team may want to because they are busy Twittering, Facebooking, MySpacing and living in a virtual world. But are your customers?

In the old days we would talk about full-contact marketing or 360-degree marketing. It was all really just following the principles of reach and frequency to optimize the message delivery to compel customers to take the most desired action and to achieve business objectives.

Today, organizations are no longer in a position to just push the message at the consumer and determine when the message will be delivered and how. Many, but not all, customers are now self-serving, choosing to access information when and where they want via a range of channels – from online to offline, from social media to video.

What is needed is an integrated marketing plan that optimizes the mix of customer contacts with a consistent message in alignment with business objectives. The results must be measurable to ensure that business results are delivered and not just outstanding creative designs or fun new ways to communicate.

By managing the marketing process holistically it facilitates the development of best practices that not only ensures consistency, but also drives down the cost and time required for devising and managing new campaigns across the organization.