Weekly Campaign Idea: Integrated Marketing Campaign

Each week we feature a social media marketing Campaign to inspire marketers and ShortStack users.

Social media has become a fundamental part of integrated marketing campaigns for all sorts of businesses.

This post includes key tips and best practices for any business, including a non-profit, wanting to run an integrated marketing campaign.

Wait! What is an integrated marketing campaign?

An integrated marketing campaign is a marketing effort that uses a consistent message across traditional and non-traditional marketing channels.

Ultimately all the messages should reinforce each other.

Integrated marketing campaigns enable brands to reach new audiences and gain mass exposure to their marketing promotions.

This week's campaign idea is unique because we have an example from a group of non-profits that has launched the Give the Gift of Hope, Annual Rescue Missions "Summer Challenge."

This integrated campaign spans across seven rescue missions and includes custom branded Facebook posts, a custom targeted Facebook PPC campaign, and newsletter/email blasts.

By the way, even though the example we share below is from a non-profit, the principles apply to any kind of business.

Here are 6 Things to Remember When Building an Integrated Marketing Campaign

1. Be Consistent: Did you know that custom-branded "donate" pages nested inside a nonprofit’s website raise 6X more money? Whether you're a non-profit with multiple branches that all come together on the same campaign, or you're a brand that's partnered up with another business, every piece of creative you design for your campaign must be consistent. The Rescue Missions Summer Challenge included seven different local and regional Rescue Missions, yet each rescue mission has their own logo, unique brand and preferred fonts. For this reason the various Rescue Missions needed to build a campaign that would fit each individual branch's profile but have an overall consistency.As you can see in the examples below, the difference for each campaign is some basic colors, unique brand font and the Rescue Missions logo. When you look at these campaigns, there is no question that they're all related. The Rescue Missions also maintained the design colors and theme throughout their other marketing materials, like their ads and social media images, displayed here.

‍2. Add a hashtag: When you're working with multiple campaigns, multiple platforms and multiple businesses, a hashtag can be the one thing that pulls it all together! Rescue Missions chose two hashtags to include with their Summer Challenge, #GiveHope and #SummerChallenge. This allows them to track everyone who is talking about and sharing their campaign online.

‍3. Use the same form to collect entry information: Even though these Rescue Missions have their campaign published to a variety of Facebook pages and websites, they have one consistent goal: to raise $10,000 during the month of May. With ShortStack you can build a single form to collect entrants' information and use it across as many campaigns as you need. This will help keep your entries organized. If you're interested in knowing how many people entered each campaign, you can create and use a different form for each campaign.

‍4. Have a strong call-to-action: If you're running an integrated marketing campaign, it's important that your campaign design emphasize the actions that will help you achieve your goals. In the Rescue Missions' campaigns, the goal is to raise $10,000. On each campaign there's a large, red, Donate Now button and a meter that lets fans know details about fundraising goals. If your goal is to get people to enter your promotion, for example, put emphasis on your Submit button. If you're offering a valuable download, put the emphasis on where your visitors can download that resource.

‍5. Have an advertising plan: Integrated marketing campaigns are meant to gain mass exposure and the way to help achieve that is to create an ad campaign that will run alongside your promotion. This will allow you to reach a larger audience and drive traffic back to the variety of places your campaign is published. There are a variety of advertising options on social media.

‍6. Add multiple promotion channels: The more places you can have your campaign, the better. Using ShortStack you can publish your campaign to Facebook or embed it on your website, in addition to having it published as a stand alone landing page. These Rescue Missions took advantage of all of these options which means their integrated marketing campaign can be found on all seven of the Rescue Mission Facebook Pages, all seven websites and as landing pages. That's 21 different places that they're able to collect data and drive traffic from! On top of that they're using Facebook posts, newsletter/email blasts and a Facebook PPC campaign to promote their fundraiser.