Integration is key to success in any marketing campaign, as you want your brand to appear with a consistent tone of voice, image and stance, no matter which channel your consumers see you on.

Integrating your campaigns ensures they all work in conjunction with one another, driving results for a common goal, whether this is increased stakeholder engagement, sales of a product or enquiries about a service.

Whatever your brand, you can integrate campaigns easily across a range of different content types, platforms and media.

Know your audience(s)

Knowing your audience is invaluable to any well-executed campaign, but especially so when you’re integrating a campaign across multiple channels.

It may be that your audience differs between different platforms, and you should understand what the differences are and how to communicate with each audience respectively. This can be tricky where tone of voice is concerned, as you may need to replicate some content across different channels.

However, researching your audiences, understanding the key demographics and what works for each group will stand you in good stead to begin integrating campaigns cross-channel.

Plan your creative direction

As with any campaign, planning is an integral step in the process of executing an integrated campaign. You’ll need to thoroughly plan which direction you’ll take with your campaign, the content involved and the overall ‘look and feel’ of it.

This means planning your visuals and any supporting graphics, clearly setting out which platforms you’ll be using and adopting a tone for the content you’ll be creating.

Once you have a comprehensive plan laid out, you can start on your assets, set up your campaigns and create content.

Creating your campaign

Creating your campaign is where the bulk of the work will be done in the process. You’ll need to create a bank of content which will last for the duration of the campaign, including copy, assets and any graphics, such as social banners and videos.

Along with producing content, here is where you will set up your campaign on all channels. For example, if you are using paid search as a channel, you will have to set up your PPC campaigns with your budget and live dates and times.

Pushing your campaign live

How you choose to roll out your campaign is your own decision. You can choose to have a ‘lead’ channel, for example social media or native ads, where you will place content first, with other channels to follow.

Alternatively, you can push the content out across all your channels simultaneously. It’s often useful to begin your campaigns all at once, as you can keep a consistent theme around each of your marketing channels, leading to familiarity with your brand and its communications.

Tim Hyde is founder of social media marketing agency, TWH Media.