How You Can Use Traditional And Social Media For Integrated Marketing

An idea that's slowly catching on in traditional media is implementing social media for an integrated marketing style. While social media regularly references traditional media, they often have to resort to using more social media such as YouTube to draw attention to the traditional media event.

In many cases, it seems that truly serious integrated marketing strategies aren't going to happen in the near future. There even seems to be a bit of antagonism there, in some cases. Bloggers are treated by law as journalists, but you can bet that traditional journalists won't acknowledge many bloggers as actual journalists.

Some elements of fully integrated marketing are already in place, but not being used to their full advantage. Nearly every major company, and many smaller ones, have Web addresses that they advertise in their traditional media markets. Every so often, you might actually hear a news anchor almost begrudgingly say, "...or you can visit our blog at..."

What can be the advantages of integrated marketing? Well, let's look at the advantages that the traditional media and the social media types have. Traditional media is the type that is piped into your TV, your radio, and posted on buildings and billboards. This is traditionally someone talking at you. It's a mostly non-interactive sales pitch.

Let's compare that to social media and what it has to offer to an integrated marketing approach. This is the arena of the blogs, online articles and Web videos. Here, people can write reviews, post comments and ask questions. Here, the sales line becomes someone talking to you, instead of at you. It's interactive, and definitely more personal.

How many ways do you think the two types of media can interrelate into an integrated marketing form? The possibilities are virtually endless, and are left up to the imagination of the marketer.

For instance, let's reference a now relatively arcane integrated marketing strategy. Once upon a time, Batman had a second Robin sidekick that was less popular than the original. The writer of a storyline called "A Death In the Family" proposed an audacious media ploy for the conclusion of the story. He proposed a cliffhanger, and the inclusion of a hotline at the climax of the story. The idea was to let the fans decide whether The Joker killed this Robin. By a narrow margin of fan opinion, Robin died, and the issue that confirmed it broke sales records for comic books.

This same concept can be used when considering blending traditional media with social media into an integrated marketing strategy. Online contests can be announced on television. Game shows can be interactive by way of the Internet. Radio deejays can amuse their fans with Craigslist advertisements. The same radio deejays can create online scavenger hunts.

Integrated marketing can also work from social media to traditional media. Sometime back, there was this online contest that was essentially a scavenger hunt of Pink Floyd's "Division Bell" media called the "Publius Enigma." Even though nothing conclusive was found with this phenomenon, it gave rise to a similar scavenger hunt surrounding Nine Inch Nails' "Year Zero" album.

As you can see, the possibilities of integrated marketing represent a new and exciting way to raise the bar on your campaign.

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