Every profession is subject to a litany of buzzwords and acronyms that will eventually be tossed around by some executive as proof that they’re earning that six-figure salary. Suddenly your job has shifted from Marketing Specialist to MySpace Guru because Newsweek just did an article on social media. Most of these buzzwords are simply fluff we add to our resumes, but occasionally they are the critical factor to proving the value of marketing to a company and ultimately legitimizing your own, albeit much smaller, paycheck. Integrated marketing is definitely the latter and that’s great news for us. In practical terms, integrated marketing is simply balancing customization and targeted messaging with consistency of branding. That’s simple enough to say but how do you take that definition and apply it to your overall marketing strategy and execute it on a daily basis? A couple of simple rules to always keep in mind:

1. Know what’s going on (and that means outside of your department too!).
2. Targeting and branding are equal.

As I’ve been frustratingly vague and simplistic here, let’s attack these one by one.

1. Know what’s going on.

The sad truth about most marketing departments is that we exist in a world of our own. Blissfully unaware of the problems (and occasionally great things) that are happening over in the operations department, we run off with our creative gusto and hope for the best. Even more dismal is the number of online marketers who are relegated to some dark corner only to be brought into the meeting when the sales team wants to batch and blast an email. Planning for integrated marketing requires time and information. The only way to get either one of those is to be nosy and ask to be part of the process from the start. If you know about the latest product updates your engineering team is working on or the updated timeline on the new promotional campaign you have all the tools to be the marketing hero. Know what the marketing department is planning long before they begin execute and demand that online channels be considered from the onset instead of being tacked on at the end.

Too often we wait for information to come to us or for our services to be called upon. To be the integrated marketing evangelist in your organization, you need to be the internal journalist and big picture strategist. Besides, being the smartest person in the room is pretty satisfying.

2. Targeting and branding are equal.

Classic conundrum: is it more important that the message be targeted and personalized to the consumer or that the message convey the brand and vet out the correct consumer? The answer is neither (I know, big shocker given the title of this section). The best approach is to determine the branding then evaluate each messaging channel and the consumers it reaches to decide how to best convey that brand message. Decide what pieces of the brand are absolutes regardless of the medium. Then decide what areas are open to personalization. Too much customization could dilute your brand and too little risks losing the customer connection. Find that balance and pursue it relentlessly. Doing this well should earn you at least a 3% bonus.

Playing Nice

Integrated marketing looks different for each organization but at the end of the day it is like all marketing; remarkably logical. It uses the same skills we employ everyday to tell three different people the same story. The facts of the story remain consistent but they are presented differently when you tell your mother versus your best friend. We all have the friends that can only communicate via text message and the person who insists on a phone call. The way a message is conveyed to each of these people varies because of the medium to which we’re confined. This is simply the integrated marketing of our everyday lives. It’s not rocket science…unless you work for Boeing.