Why you can’t create award winning campaigns in silos

Written by Ryan Nofal | January 10, 2019 at 5:10 PM

All of your departments need to work together to create strong, integrated campaigns - here's why and how to do it better.

A truly successful integrated marketing campaign can’t exist without integration from multiple departments in the business. Integration allows for consistency across multiple platforms and a seamless execution.

According to Smart Insights, a digital marketing website, “A successful marketing strategy must have a coherent approach. Without this, there is no chance of properly identifying your target audience, or which market is best suited for your campaign.”

Our team at Penquin definitely agrees! It’s for this precise reason we won a silver at the New Generation Social Media and Digital Awards for the Best Integrated Marketing Campaign for the Suzuki Ignis Vehicle Launch.

Read our Case Study: The Ignis Launch - An Integrated Marketing Success

How we achieved success with the Suzuki Ignis Vehicle Launch

The Suzuki Ignis Vehicle Launch involved all our departments and was clearly a huge success. Our client service team was responsible for any client service related queries whereas our strategy team clearly defined the journey people would take when buying a Suzuki Ignis. Our media and social media teams were responsible for the platforms used to reach people and our inbound marketing department defined the buyer’s journey.

Neill Robertson, one of our Account Directors, says, “Every aspect of the business was involved, from leadership for strategy input to the finance and operations team with ensuring all partners were paid on time. What helped with pulling the campaign together was having a key person in each department to report on progress and taking additional briefs to their teams.”

Melissa Mays, another Account Director, says, “I think it is underestimated how many touch points are actually involved in an integrated campaign. Every department in the agency has a part to play to pull together an effective execution.”

Below are some key tips and insights from our team to create award winning campaigns - together:

1.Work together to create stronger campaigns
When departments don’t work closely together, it is very easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and end goals. During a big campaign, like the Suzuki Ignis Vehicle Launch, every department is under pressure to deliver on all their respective elements. In such busy times, it’s very easy to lose touch with what other departments are doing and how your efforts should compliment each other.

However, to make this a seamless effort, you need to truly conceptualise and receive input from across the business to understand your audience, their purchasing journey, where to reach them and what creative message you should be crafting.

My advice is to always start with a clear brief, goals and expectations before creating your integrated campaigns. It’s also important to gather insights from your clients to help you sell more products, more often. Wrike, a project management solution software says, “When marketing efforts are fragmented, and marketers are executing campaigns without unified goals or even tactics, there will be problems that will affect your organisation as a whole.”

2. Your strategy is a key component of your campaign

Your campaign strategy is the backbone of your integrated campaign. When, where and how we should be talking to our target market and buyer personas should be established before deciding which platforms to utilise. Your strategy explains what you want your campaign to achieve, what elements are needed to achieve this, and how to seamlessly integrate all these elements into one campaign.

3. Get rid of the silos in your business

Melissa believes, “Silos do not effectively allow for a single conversation and often not all team members are aligned.”

Every single department in your business has their own specialties and, although the silos these specialities create are frowned upon, they don’t have to work independently from each other. Knowing you’re good at executing something and specialising in it is never a bad thing, but it’s important to know your responsibilities and work together to achieve a common goal.

It’s important to remember that each department adds structure to the business and should be held accountable for their piece of the puzzle. Everyone must work together to create a successful integrated campaign and expertise and skills should always be respected in order to achieve results.

If you’d also like to create award winning integrated campaigns, download our Integrated Marketing eBook below:

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