In Marketing
Multi-channel marketing communications - all in one!
Benefits of Integrated Marketing
Posted by 
on Friday, March 12, 2010 
at 9:12 AM 
in A recent article in DMNews helped put the spotlight on the benefits of integrated marketing.
The article, which is a great read, focused on non-profits. However, the challenges they face are quite similar to those of businesses both large and small.
Does this sound familiar to you at all? —- “…databases can be cumbersome, and accessing constituent information in real time isn’t something many organizations can do, Regen adds, noting that many nonprofits also aren’t organized for integrated marketing, with their structures, cultures and communications inhibiting cohesion“.
While some of those challenges may seem daunting to overcome, an integrated marketing approach can absolutely help. Here are 3 of the main benefits listed in the article that come from integrating marketing activities:
- Access Data in Real-Time
- Wisely Invest Your Money & Resources
- Produce a Higher ROI
Do those types of benefits sound familiar? Are they, perhaps, on your wish-list?
If so, an article like the one in DMNews may be just the inspiration you need to start integrating your marketing activities — from direct mail to e-mail to SMS to QR Codes and more.
Tags What Social Media is To Me
I am certainly a huge fan of Social Media. Over the past few years, it has helped increase awareness of our company, its employees, and our products. I recently commented on a post in PrintJunkie.net, and I wanted to share those sentiments here as well:
The core to Social Media for me is this: Trust is earned, and relationships are built over time. So in this sphere of marketing I try and use the tools to gain trust and build a relationship. I try my hardest to put information out there to help others grow their business.
I’m a marketer and a business fanatic. I greatly enjoy the prospect and opportunity of helping others as well.
I’m posting and sharing information that is not always about me or my company, (99% not) but rather information that may be relevant to people that matter. Even the 1% or so is about sharing information that I still think is relevant even though another employee wrote it on behalf of the company. I’m hoping the information I share exposes my knowledge, and also our employees knowledge which can be picked up over time. If folks want to learn more about my company so be it. But they do know firsthand my thoughts on the subject matter, who is behind the company, what our employees do, the inner workings of who we are, and yes, interested folks can go find out what we do.
So it is myself and these folks… The employees in our company are empowered to use Social Media. NO policies either! This is not a leap of faith, this is part of today’s business. Iit is not discretionary in my mind. The funny part is we have been doing this all along in other marketing channels and using different medias. Yes before these tools came along, it was never sell – sell – sell for us. The difference is this environment allows us to possibly build more relationships in a broader and more meaningful way.
So — use social media to build relationships trust. And as @chrisbrogan put it, “Stop talking about yourself!”
Have a great, productive day folks!
If you wish – follow me on twitter
http://www.twitter.com/johnfoleyjr or @johnfoleyjr
QR Codes: Reporting Capabilities
We recently recorded a new video that walks through the features and benefits available to registered users of QReate & Track.
Everyone can create QR Codes for free… However, only registered users have access to the real-time reporting dashboards.
Here is a quick video that walks through the features available to registered users:
QR Codes at Dscoop
It’s been about three days since we’ve returned home from the Dscoop convention in Dallas, Texas. Without a doubt, it was one of the best shows that interlinkONE has ever attended.
At Dscoop, we made it our mission to ensure that everyone there would be exposed to a QR Code.
Here are a few ways that QR Codes made their presence known at Dscoop 5:
Show Entrance
- As people walked into the convention center, there was a Floor Decal with a huge QR Code. If someone scanned the QR Code, they were directed to a video that gave them reasons to come to the interlinkONE booth. We have a little video of the decal here.
QR Code Floor Decal
Brochures
- We created an updated interlinkONE “Company & Product Overview” brochure. On nearly each page, people were presented with a unique QR Code. Some of the codes directed people to specific pages on our website; others went to videos.
For example, scanning the QR Code on the Software page in our booklet directed people to more information about our products on interlinkONE.com. If they scanned the QR Code on the page that talks about our online storefronts, people were directed to a YouTube video that actually demonstrates what our storefronts actually look and feel like to use.
Cookies
While the Dscoop staff certainly ensured that there was plenty of food available for the conference attendees, people could pick up free dessert at the interlinkONE booth. Yes, that’s right —- we had QR Code cookies. Here is a picture of the QR Code cookie:
QR Code Cookies
Here is a picture of our good friend Jim Olsen, from Great Reach Communications, helping to spread the word about QR Codes.
Clothing
- At the closing reception of Dscoop 5, we proudly wore QR Code t-shirts! Thank you to all the people that asked for permission to scan my (100% of pure muscle) chest.
QR Code T-Shirts from interlinkONE
Business Cards
- We handed out our latest QR Code Business Cards. On the front of the card, the QR Code presented our contact information. The back of the card had a QR Code that went directly to our corporate website.
QR Code Business Cards
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If you’d like to try to create your own QR Codes, and measure their success, you can do so easily at QReate & Track.
The Value of a QR Code
QR codes are appearing every where. While the two-dimensional bar codes have been popular in Japan and Europe for years, it’s taken the move towards smartphones in the U.S. to make them useful here. You can download a reader for just about any smartphone with a camera: when you take a photo of the QR code, your phone interprets the website address hidden in the pattern and takes you to it. That website can have anything on it: a coupon for the store you might be standing in, more information for an ad you passed by or something else entirely. A QR code can contain other information, as well, from phone numbers to an event. It depends on what the person who generated the QR code wants.
Creating Your Own QR Code
There are a wide variety of uses for QR codes. You can print them on just about anything: t-shirts, signs, postcards. If you can print an image on it, you can put a QR code on it. That means that you can direct attention to a piece of information in a variety of offline settings, without expecting passers-by to write down the details. And while creating a standard bar code can require some work, creating a QR code is just a matter of having a piece of information, such as a web address where you want to send visitors, in mind. With a QR code generator, such as the free tool at http://www.QReateandtrack.com, you just plug in your information and the code is spit out. You can download your code as a high quality file, ready to run off on your own printer or send off to a professional printer.
You’re not just limited to one QR code, either. If, for instance, you’re running two separate advertising campaigns with different deals, you can set up separate pages for each on your website. Using those separate pages, you can create two different QR codes — one for each advertising campaigns.
Determining the Success of a QR Code
It may be relatively easy to determine just how successful a QR code containing a website address is. It’s just a matter of checking the increase in traffic at your site. You can also check whether you conversions have increased — if viewers of the code have followed up in the way you want (like making a purchase). However, having hard numbers on how many people have scanned in your code can help you tweak your campaigns to improve the ROI. If you’ve created your code through http://www.QReateandtrack.com, you have the option of choosing a premium plan that will track how often your code is scanned. Such an approach can help you determine which codes are more effective, especially if you create separate codes for different locations. Tracking is also useful if you’re taking a broader approach to marketing with QR codes: locating a certain code could be the goal of a contest meant to give away a prize. Knowing how many times a code has been scanned could be crucial in such an approach.
Happy Scanning!
- John
