Some businesses view digital and traditional marketing in a black-and-white manner, a one vs. the other kind of way. It’s easy to side with digital, considering we’re living in the digital era, and it’s also somewhat understandable when some companies are sceptical and choose to keep their focus on traditional methods.

Preferences aside, combining the best of both worlds can be a truly brilliant strategy in many scenarios. The integration of digital and traditional means businesses have more channels, and hence, greater exposure. The integration itself can be a challenge, but it can also be fruitful.

If you’ve already determined that the integration of traditional and digital marketing is suitable for your own company and brand image, then read on, we’ve listed below the necessary steps to make the process a lot easier:

Planning from Beginning to End

  • Goals

To quote Benjamin Franklin: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”. Indeed, regardless of what your ultimate objective is, planning is key to see you through an integrated campaign with success.

Outlining goals is pivotal to streamline each activity, and it will enable you to better calculate resource allocation, set key performance indicators and determine your return on investment.

An in-depth account of your goals will also give you clarity to see how digital can intertwine with traditional marketing in the best possible ways. This can save time ahead by helping to notice problems early on, like cutting out unnecessary activities, or simply tweaking others.   

Reports

Reports allow you to keep note of the efficient methods needed to achieve the established goals, and they are also incredibly useful to document projects, keep things on track, and help bring out the best performance possible from your team.


Being organised does pay off. Without reports, you run the risk of drifting off into redundant initiatives, which can take a toll on your branding.

Open & Clear Communication

Miscommunication is nothing new, we’ve all experienced it in the workplace in one way or another, and in the worst-case scenarios, it can set in motion a chain of problems.

You should always aim to keep communication flowing nice and clearly in every marketing initiative, but a successful integrated campaign requires even more open communication.

You can encourage open dialogue and cross-collaboration with office messaging systems and weekly debriefings, so the whole team can always be up-to-date and know where they stand in the project.

The digital and traditional marketing teams should also exchange insights and share samples of tried-and-tested images and content types, that proved either effective or in many cases not. This exercise is useful to avoid the same mistakes, and perhaps implement the same successful formulas in the future.  

Consistency

Inconsistency is an easy trap to fall in, it can easily happen when there isn’t enough communication and cross collaboration, especially if your office has separate traditional and digital marketing departments. However, if you work hard to achieve the objectives set out above, then you should be armed with the right tools to keep things consistent for your brand.

The brand’s tone of voice and identity are the key elements that need to be completely consistent. On that note, unless the audience changes, the tone in the print advert must be the same as the one in the email campaign, enabling a solid connection between the two worlds. When your website, TV advertisement, and even your out of office email manage to pin down the exact same essence and tone of voice, then you’ll know you’ve done a great job.  

Conclusion

Traditional marketing isn’t going anywhere, so it’s interesting to see how it co-exists in harmony with digital, how the former can enhance the latter, and vice-versa.

An integrated campaign takes a combination of the right ingredients: the right team, the right leadership, and the right acumen to make it a worthwhile effort in the long run.

If you have any opinions you’d like to share on the topic, feel free to leave a comment or send us an email!