How to Create an Integrated Marketing Plan That Converts Customers

When the constant barrage of promotional messaging has consumers scrambling to install ad blockers, brands need a better way of getting noticed. One standout strategy is integrated marketing communications (IMC), pioneered by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.

Integrated marketing is a data-driven framework focused on creating a customer-first, brand-unique multichannel strategy. While more conventional marketing casts a wide net, IMC cultivates brand trust with meaningful customized touchpoints. In a competitive landscape, these experiences create brand equity that is crucial to conversion.

This post will walk you through how to create an integrated marketing plan. You’ll learn how to use your understanding of your audience to build a core message and strategy-based campaigns that convert.

Step 1: Define Your Audience

Today’s consumers want to feel relevant to a brand, yet 40% say brands don’t understand them as individuals.¹ The solution is to learn what your customers need and why they turn to you, and to use that knowledge to craft targeted messaging.

The first step is to identify your customer segments. A segment is a group of customers who share certain characteristics or behavioral patterns, which your brand can leverage to send targeted marketing messages.²

Once you have defined your current customer segments, you can develop corresponding buyer personas to direct your digital marketing efforts. A persona is a hypothetical consumer with a certain set of needs, buying behaviors and pain points.³

By aligning your messaging with those needs and pain points, you can increase the relevance of your outreach and lay the foundation for long-term customer relationships.

Step 2: Establish Clear Marketing Goals

An integrated marketing plan and program should advance your brand in a meaningful way, aligning goals with your broader business strategy.

For example, suppose a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) brand offers project management software and wants to increase its market share within its small-team price point. The integrated marketing team aims to increase sales-qualified leads from small-business managers by 15% before year’s end.

You can use SMART goals to be more effective with your goal-setting. SMART goals are:⁴

• Specific: Clearly defined and unambiguous
• Measurable: Includes a target metric
• Achievable: Attainable given resources and constraints
• Relevant: Meaningful and aligned with the organization’s purpose
• Timely: Has a target date

SMART goals for integrated marketing plans should target engagement and conversion, with sub-goals for individual campaigns.

Step 3: Build Your Core Brand Message

An integrated marketing communication plan crosses channels, so a cohesive brand identity is essential. Consistency increases trust and boosts the creative quality of marketing assets, according to a recent study from the UK. Of the 20% most consistent brands in the study:⁵

• Forty-five percent reported better brand differentiation, compared to 27% in the least consistent group.
• Fifty-five percent established recognizable brand values, compared to 36% in the least consistent group.
• Forty-five percent changed consumer perception, compared to 18% in the least consistent group.

Consistency must be noticeable across all creative elements, including brand voice, visuals and core messaging. The best results come from a clear core value proposition, defined as how the brand intends to benefit customers.6 This benefit becomes the core of your brand marketing strategy and informs each campaign.

Step 4: Select the Right Marketing Channels

Part of developing an integrated marketing plan is identifying where your audiences are active. Some are most responsive to social media or content. Others engage more readily with email or find you through a Google search.

Use customer data to find where your audiences engage and how they find your website. Focus on the digital platforms where you see the most activity and make them the core of your strategy.

Some potential customers are active on platforms you don’t use yet. Subscribing to newsletters and keeping up with industry trends will help you stay relevant in digital marketing, which gives you an advantage in channel selection.

One key trend to know is “analog living,” which has consumers pushing back against excessive screen time.⁷ In this era, traditional advertising channels like print, radio, and live events are more likely to get attention.

Step 5: Develop a Multi-Channel Content Strategy

The next step is to develop a posting cadence. Dive into the data to learn when your audience is most active and how often they engage. Consider how frequently you can produce high-quality, shareable content and use that information to guide your cadence.

Consider enhancing your efficiency by repurposing content across platforms. Repurposing is the process of reshaping existing content into new formats for different channels. For example, if a blog post has significant traffic, you might turn it into an infographic or image carousel and post it on Instagram or Facebook. This process ideally suits a multichannel approach because it reinforces your message without being noticeably repetitive.

Add personalization to your content, repurposed and new, whenever possible. Use your identified customer segments to target your content, and create new material based on pain points and needs as they arise.

Step 6: Coordinate Campaign Execution

An efficient workflow is crucial to any integrated marketing campaign. The multichannel format requires ongoing cross-team collaboration and a tech stack that makes documentation and creative assets easy to access. Teams thrive with a set of connected tools, including:

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems
• Marketing automation platforms
• Analytics software
• Project management tools 

Connected collaboration allows your marketing team to ensure brand and message consistency across touchpoints.

Step 7: Track Performance and Optimize

Data-informed optimization is one of the core principles of integrated marketing communications. By analyzing campaign results, you learn what resonates with audiences and refine messaging accordingly. Analytics also indicate which channels get the best results, allowing you to focus on those with the best return on investment.

Analytics can be time-consuming. Instead of analyzing every metric possible, focus on those that track conversions. Those include:

• Conversion rate: The percentage of a campaign or asset’s audience who takes a desired action.
• Click-through rate: The percentage of an audience who clicked on a CTA, which is the first step to conversion.
• Cost per acquisition: Total spent per converted customer.

When you identify a problem, run A/B testing to compare the effectiveness of a potential fix. Advanced study, such as the Master of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Professional program from Northwestern, can prepare you even more effectively to optimize your campaigns.

Take Your Next Career Step With an Online Master’s in IMC

The IMC Professional program is geared toward aspiring marketing executives. Northwestern’s faculty will challenge you and prepare you for the demands of real-world leadership.

The IMC Professional program balances theory and practice through comprehensive courses and top-tier research. Our students become members of a creative and collaborative community that supports their goals and helps them advance their careers. What’s more, the program can be completed in two years, live online, with optional in-person visits, so busy professionals don’t need to give up their current engagements.

Explore our admissions process today or contact us to learn more about the program. Schedule a call with one of our helpful admissions outreach advisors to learn more about what this program can do for you.