Integrated marketing: How to create a cohesive campaign across channels

Gone are the days of simple point A to point B marketing. Chances are, you’ve had an experience that goes something like this: You discover a brand on your favourite social media platform, sign up for their email marketing newsletter to learn more, hear a compelling ad from the brand while listening to one of your go-to Spotify playlists, and finally make a purchase on their website.

For advertisers, this tangled web of interactions may seem like a lot to juggle. But engaging customers and making sales is all about syncing marketing messages across multiple platforms to build a unified and intuitive customer journey—in other words, an integrated marketing campaign.

Read on to learn about the various benefits, and how you Spotify can fit into your brand's integrated marketing strategy.

What is integrated marketing?

Integrated marketing is the process of creating campaigns that deliver unified messaging and consistent customer experiences across channels. Say a brand runs social media ads, email marketing content, display ads, and audio or video ads, for example. While each of those ad formats and platforms is unique, the content should work together to form a cohesive customer journey.

Integrated marketing communications might involve using the same logos, brand colors, slogans, message phrasing, and calls to action. This way, customers can better recognize and recall the brand as they engage with new content on each channel.

Why is integrated marketing so important?

There are more channels than ever before for customers to discover brands and learn about new products. That means brands have more opportunities to tell their stories and build customer relationships.

The challenge lies in delivering a seamless and unified experience that motivates customers to stay engaged—instead of a fragmented one that leaves them frustrated or confused.

That's why integrated marketing is so important. With a successfully integrated marketing plan, brands can:

1. Stay top of mind.

Make your brand easier to recognize and remember by delivering consistent imagery and messaging on each platform.

2. Boost revenue.

Reach customers at each stage of the buyer journey and help them make purchasing decisions with engaging content. Studies have found that omnichannel customers shop and spend more than customers who use a single channel.¹

3. Reduce costs.

Save marketing teams the hassle of creating brand-new content for each platform. Instead, use your resources more efficiently by repurposing top-performing creative assets and messaging.

Where Spotify fits into an integrated marketing strategy

When it comes to launching an integrated campaign across channels, Spotify can play a key role in your media mix. After all, Spotify is a big part of listeners’ day to day, whether they’re hitting the gym with their workout playlist or catching up with a new video podcast after they get home from work. In fact, 92% of our users say they use Spotify as part of their daily routine.²

Spotify’s unique and personalized platform can complement other channels like social media, rounding out full-funnel campaigns. As our Customer Decision Journey study found, Spotify impacts listeners at every stage of the buying process—from the moment they first learn about a brand until they decide to make a purchase.³

Even within the Spotify platform, advertisers can diversify their marketing efforts with a range of ad formats. These include audio or podcast ads, as well as video ads. Brands can use video ads, for instance, to capture people’s attention when they’re focused on their screens. And they can use audio ads to create a personal connection with users during screenless moments, when they’re tuned into their favorite playlists and going about their day.

Together, these compelling ad formats can be used to create engaging, integrated marketing campaigns that reach people at key moments.

How to create an integrated marketing campaign on Spotify

Creating ads for an integrated marketing campaign is simple with Spotify Ads Manager—an easy-to-use platform that gives brands complete control over their ad creation and campaign management. With Ads Manager, you can create audio ads from scratch, customize campaigns to your specific goals, and measure in real time.

Try these best practices to make the most of Spotify's integrated marketing solutions:

1. Run audio and video ads together

Multi-format campaigns deliver better results across the entire purchase funnel. Our data shows that campaigns incorporating both audio and video ad formats drive 7% higher Awareness,⁴ 27% higher Purchase Intent,⁵ and 66% more Incremental Sales⁶ than audio-only campaigns.

2. Repurpose existing creative

Upload existing creative assets to Ads Manager to ensure a cohesive marketing campaign across all platforms—and save time and resources. For example, you might use social ad videos to launch a Video Takeover shown to users when they’re actively browsing and using their screens.

3. Track results to boost performance

Use Ads Manager to track audience metrics and customer data. With this information at your fingertips, you can understand how the ads within your integrated campaign are performing, and tweak your strategy accordingly to improve results.

Integrated marketing examples on Spotify

Want to see these strategies in action? Take inspiration from three integrated marketing campaign examples on Spotify.