What Integrated Marketing Means to Me -- Rick Christ
	Posted by at Jan 26, 2012 04:17 PM CST

When an organization’s marketing is integrated, it goes way past the coordination of direct mail and online communications. It means:

• The fundraising department and the communications department are using the same words to describe the organization’s current mission;


• The people who answer the phone know the current mission and have the talking points ready to discuss with anyone who calls;


• The cocktail napkins at the special event carry the same branding (graphics and message) as the business card of the head of maintenance;


• Email messages, FaceBook posts, and print newsletters discuss the same current mission in the same terms;


• The home page of the website has some prime real estate devoted to the current mission, and that space is linked to a section of the website that describes the mission and has up-to-date status of the efforts related to that mission;


• Direct mail fundraising materials convey the same message and raise funds for the same effort, and contain a QR code or at least a URL to the mission page;


• Staff who blog and tweet personally are empowered to mention their organization’s mission and talk intelligently about it, and have a short URL to the mission page;


• Outdoor and transit ads support the message, and have QR codes that track the success of those ads and point users to mobile-friendly web pages that engage the users and get them talking about it;


• Social media engage followers and friends and empower them to talk about their shared mission;


• Personal fundraising pages encourage supporters to build their own teams of fundraisers for this mission;


• Google Adwords drive anyone who’s searching on this topic to the key page on your site, which has a compelling call to action;


• Press releases highlight the mission’s “human interest” stories and contain links to the key page;


• Board members are enthusiastic supporters and articulate spokespeople for the mission at their outside business and social events;


• Wristbands, tee-shirts, visors and other trinkets discuss the mission and direct the public to the key web page or mobile short-code;


• Advocacy efforts secure pledges of support for needed legislation or public action;


• Appropriate celebrities are recruited and supplied with the facts and the compelling story.

So, how do you get there? It’s a lot more than coordination. It requires your organization’s real leaders (whether they have the title or not) to know your organization’s overall mission, identify a lasting opportunity that will brand your organization in the public’s mind, and uncover, distill, or create a simple story that will capture the hearts and minds of the public. Sometimes that “opportunity” is an act of God, like a hurricane, a swarm of tornados, or a tsunami. Other times it’s a news event that is perceived to have more depth than the media have allocated (for example, a major sports star is embroiled in accusations of cruelty to animals). Sometimes it’s a compelling story that personalizes a universal or systemic problem, like health care, hunger, or peace.

Once the opportunity is identified and embraced by your organization, the story is told and re-told in photographs, video, words and images that fit the format of every medium, from FaceBook to business cards. Internal education is conducted so that everyone is singing the same tune and is empowered to tell everyone they know.

That’s integrated marketing, and the few times it has been executed that completely, the results have been fundraising tsunamis and action plans that created real change.