Marketing is interconnected.
What do I mean by that? It means that no longer can individual aspects of marketing be thought of as fitting into a silo. Traditionally, marketing covers a whole slew of things from public relations to social media to search engine marketing to driving retail sales to branding. In fact, I’ve used the analogy before of a carpenter and his or her toolkit. A great carpenter has many tools in the toolkit, and he or she knows how to use every tool and importantly knows when to use every tool.
So it goes for a marketer, too. A marketer has many communication platforms and tools at his or her disposal. Sometimes, it makes sense to use social media or display advertising or an event to get the desired impact, and great marketers know how and when to use certain tools.
Having said that, all of a marketers tools are linked and, in fact, interconnected. Consider the following, abbreviated list:
Public Relations
Social Media
Advertising
Direct Mail
Search
Like I said, this is a very abbreviated list. But let’s say you are embarking on a public relations campaign for your business. Wouldn’t the four things listed beneath PR be tools one could use? Wouldn’t all five of these things impact sales and/or your brand?
Consider another example. Let’s say your business doesn’t know the first thing about social media, and has no social media presence to speak of, and you’re ready to get started. You dutifully put up a page on Facebook, create a Twitter account, list your business on LinkedIn, and you’re feeling pretty good about it. This is where the interconnectedness of marketing comes in. By taking these specific steps, you are not only impacting this area of marketing called social media, you’re impacting search. Why? Because social media is highly ranked in all the major search engines. So if someone searches Google for your business or brand, it is likely social media channels will show up in the top search listings. Likewise, social media is a PR haven (or disaster, either one depending on the circumstances). By putting your brand or business on social media, you’re opening up engagement with customers, prospects and users which engages people but also opens up a discussion, or dialogue. All comments, good or bad, that show up in social media then impact search engine results, public relations and the like.
See where I’m going with this?
Let’s say you begin a direct mail campaign or an offline/print ad campaign. Well, it is highly likely someone will use a search engine to find out more about your brand or business. It is also quite likely someone will head to social media to see what others are saying about your brand or business. And, if your public relations persona is up to snuff or not, people will see that in a variety of areas.
I could go on and on. If there are dozens of aspects of marketing (which, there are), I could make a case that in some way they are all interconnected and all impact your business, your sales efforts and your brand.
This is why business owners and companies need to think about marketing differently than they ever have before. They need to think about marketing as they would dominoes. When you push one domino over, what others dominoes will fall over too? When you pull one marketing lever, what other levers follow?
I will have plenty more to say about this topic in the coming weeks when I unveil a few new things. But for now, consider how you think about marketing, or how your business utilizes marketing, and consider how your marketing endeavors might be more interconnected than you realized.
