Why one + one is not proper integrated sales and marketing

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

“Integration” is a hot term driven by a combination of seven environmental factors. I contend that “integration” means creating a consistent experience across the customer’s interaction with the brand. The challenge is that it is often siloed into one-on-one situations that aren’t tracked. For example, a customer service agent on the phone might not know that a customer has tried to return an item to the store three times.

The true catalyst of integration evolves around understanding and embracing the value of a customer’s engagement. Experience and evidence shows us that the fully engaged digital and social B2B and B2C brands are the only ones that can fully deliver the promise of integration. Without embracing this philosophy, organizations appear somewhat doomed to poke around the promise of integration.

Digital and social brands that embrace integration reap far more benefits from customer journey-based integration because they get the double-edged opportunity to react faster to market changes, and gain insights ahead of the competition. This is based on managing the customer’s journey and leveraging social and digital as the engagement mechanism.

A Set of POVs to Drive Your Future

In a series of points of views over the next few months we are going to walk through what it takes to be truly integrated, and not just with one or two functions, but across a wide range. We have seen evidence in best practices that the pressure to do social and digital “right” is even greater than before. A limited perspective (one + one) will miss the wider and more effective opportunity.

One + One is Not Really Integration

Integrated online and offline, integrated online and social, integrated sales and channel, integrated media and marketing, integrated communications and brand: These are the marketing (and sometimes sales-based) marriages, especially inside B2B, we increasingly hear about. We call this integration, the integration of one + one. One function plus another bonding together at some point in the customer’s journey. This is a start, but it really is an old world way of thinking and taking advantage of integration.

Integration + Engagement is the Secret Sauce for Highly-Productive Marketing

Integration is the key stepping-stone to making marketing the cornerstone of the growth model for the organization. Great integration leads to the fully engaged and ongoing dialogue with customers through the purchase journey. The engaged social and digital integrated model delivers amazing opportunities for the brand, both in new solution offerings, as well as the opportunity to respond and react faster to market shifts.

In part 2 of this series, we’ll explore the seven drivers of integration. For now, it’s important to recognize that interactions with customers need to be aligned, and companies need to create systems and processes that let managers of different engagement points share insights and knowledge.