I came across an interesting article in Bloomberg Business Week this morning regarding how fragmentation is ‘shredding what once was a healthy marketing budget,’ and how integrated marketing can help you overcome these budget defaults. As a renowned Scottsdale marketing firm, fragmentation is part of the process and a key element in targeting your audience and running successful advertising and marketing campaigns, but so is integration.
Integration is not simply slapping a common tagline onto all your ads, using a single color palette, or force-fitting a message that’s suited for one medium into another (great television commercials rarely translate well to outdoor billboards, which in turn are very different from online banners). – BusinessWeek.com
Fragmentation
Fragmentation is the ability to break down your audience into smaller segments based on income, sex, school, location, shopping preferences, and much more, and marketing to those segments on ‘fragmented’ mediums such as mobile apps, mobile websites, video, TV, print, radio, billboards, and much more. The paths to advertise a product or service has fragmented into hundreds of advertising possibilities, each medium needing a specific marketing plan and goal and targeting a specific segment of audience.
This can indeed take a tool on your marketing budget, as the Business Week article suggests, but it can also give you the greatest advantage to target a specifically segmented audience with highly effective advertisements that speak to that person’s interests.
Fragmentation and Brand Messaging
A crucial factor to remember with fragmentation is to remain consistent with all advertising. Whether you are targeting women who shop at Target on Saturdays to men who play golf on Sunday mornings, while you’re advertisement should be highly targeted it should also remain consistent to your brand message. Your brand message should be woven into every single aspect of every single campaign you run, no matter how fragmented.
Integrated Advertising
This is where an expert Scottsdale marketing firm should be counseled, as integrated advertising should be handled by professionals. Integration involves lacing every single advertising opportunity with a consistent brand message, from that ad you placed in a mobile app to hit women at Target on Saturday to the ad you placed on the golf course of the men for Sunday morning. No matter how fragmented your advertising becomes, a seamless integration of your brand message is paramount.
Long-Term Integration
When you embark on this journey to integrate all of your advertising, consistency in brand messaging is not the only key element; time, dedication, perseverance, and a relentless commitment to your brand message will make or break this form of marketing.
If you’re interested in learning more about fragmentation and integration in advertising and marketing, give us a call!