Integrating your online marketing tools can be difficult, but the benefits are sizeable. Done correctly, not only does it allow for a more efficient use of time and resources, but also offers the potential for deeper insights and greater ROI.
As Google’s Enhanced Campaigns announcement news has reminded us, it’s critical for SEM practitioners to make sure the tools they use grow with them. When Google makes a change like this, the impact is felt far downstream.
Most major SEM platforms will adapt to these changes. But that doesn’t necessarily take into account how something like this affects other channels or how you need to look at your data.
For marketers looking to bust out of individual channel silos and reap the advantages of integrated marketing, this makes it even more critical to plan ahead for growth and change.
The first step is being able to understand the benefits of simplifying the chaos that is multichannel online marketing.
This leads to consistency throughout efforts. The ability to see paid search, display and social marketing data, for example, in a single dashboard and with detailed reporting creates huge workflow efficiencies, as marketers only need to log into, and understand in detail how to use, a single platform.
Whether each channel is managed by a different user, a separate agency or by the same team, this continuity in data and workflow ensures smoother and more reliable work. It also means not having to switch between browser tabs or applications to see data for different channels.
A single platform is less confusing, more efficient, and also cuts down on the opportunity for errors introduced by forgetting which system someone is working in or how to accomplish the same task between different systems.
Even little things, like whether you have to hit “submit” after making a change, can differ between platforms and can result in changes a marketer thought they had made never going through.
A single platform also means that the data that lives within a given channel is already de-duped and attributed without going through a maze of technology, such as going through an API to a separate system for attribution against another channel’s data, which is coming in from yet a third platform, to be processed and then sent back to the original system.
Having this data together opens the door to innovative ways to understand users, their actions and the effect of media on them – such as optimizing based on engagement levels.
A single system also cuts down on potential points of failure or lag between disparate solutions as well as potential for delays or errors in one system creating problems downstream that then have to be fixed by multiple partners.
Properly-aligned technology results in a single – and consistent – source for training, technical support, and best practices. It also cuts down on the wild goose chase that results from different vendors pointing to one another for answers or fixes.
With these insights, budgets can be more intelligently, and even automatically, managed and returns on investment can reach new heights.
For marketers working toward true integrated online marketing, the biggest obstacle in the way of reaching this goal is often their technology and tools. The current arena of marketing management technologies is oversaturated with single point solutions with multiple platforms existing for every aspect of digital marketing.
Navigating this complex landscape is a daunting task and presents numerous challenges to managing integrated marketing. What is most frustrating for many marketers is that the technology they sought to make their lives easier is actually the piece of the puzzle that will hold them back from integrating their marketing in an effective way.
Integrating your online marketing tools can be difficult, but the benefits are sizeable. Done correctly, not only does it allow for a more efficient use of time and resources, but also offers the potential for deeper insights and greater returns on marketing investments.