At Flywheel, integration is at the core of all we do.
In our article, Scott made reference to our focus on integration. Integration gives us the ability to impress a client by taking their initial issue, probe and dig deeper into the core of it, and provide a solution that not only solves that issue, but enhances other marketing or business related activities.
We wanted to share how this way of thinking manifests itself and what the problem solving steps look like, in hopes that you can apply this same logic to your business needs.
Before we get into some examples, I realized that we use the term integration, or an integrated mindset, as a catch all with regards to defining our thoughts and activities for clients. We use it like a mantra, a ‘way of agency life’, to remind us how to attack client issues holistically not as siloes.
Integration means ensuring brand continuity, using brand guidelines and keeping your colours, fonts, logos, and images looking consistent across all marketing platforms. Integration also means aligning marketing activities and complimenting each other to achieve a common objective for your company. Integration includes creating activities and effort that can be used across platforms, throughout all communications, that compliment and play off each other, leading to a single objective. Finally, integration is directly related to your website, not in a technical sense but rather incorporating all of your marketing efforts with the objective of driving customers back to your site. Your website IS the core of your business: your introduction, your sales team, your customer service, everything you do. When we concentrate on our clients’ marketing efforts, we focus on the integration of all those aspects, surrounding the hub of your business – your website.
How does this mantra manifest itself into our daily work? Well, let’s say a potential client is struggling with content for a social media platform. We would first start by focusing on their core objective: driving customers to their website. How? Perhaps through a series of blog posts with content related to their customers’ interests or needs that could be broadcast to ALL social media platforms, driving all social traffic back to the site. This is now a clear communication strategy that will lead to other objectives to turn those new visitors into conversions, and so forth.
Integration is not a new word or concept, but when it becomes your way of developing strategies, handling client issues, the walk you walk, it can shape your marketing and really increase effectiveness throughout your business as a whole.
Author: Shane Davis
Digital