Multi-platform marketing

In-store displays, direct-mail pieces, newspaper advertising and social media are just a few ways to market a message. Increasingly, businesses will need to find ways to deliver the same message across all platforms.

“You are going to see increased integration,” said Lore McManus Solo, principal and vice president of public relations at Strategic America Inc. “(Businesses are) wanting to use the whole mix of whatever is available to them, that brand consistency, to really reach the consumer wherever he or she is at.”

Solo said marketers are starting to think of integrated marketing as an ecosystem, which speaks to “making sure you’ve got the content, the search, the social media and all the traditional elements in alignment.”

To help businesses better integrate their marketing strategies, Strategic America is unveiling a new suite of digital services to help companies ensure that their corporate campaigns are unified across different platforms.

It can be a challenge to find the best way to target different audiences across different platforms, which makes analytics crucial, Solo said.

Own your media coverage

More businesses are starting to publish their own media as a public relations and marketing tool, one agency leader says.

Tom Flynn III, president of Lessing-Flynn Advertising, has noticed that more businesses are utilizing what is known as “owned media,” such as company blogs or print magazines.

“Those are really kind of platforms that marketers are developing themselves, and that they own, and that they’re using to bring their own clients and customers back,” Flynn said. “It’s a lot more information, content-driven types of tools. And those I think can be online or offline.”

Traditionally, businesses have relied on earned media in the form of public relations and paid media in the form of advertising. Companies are now finding it beneficial to have their own information sources to be able to go more in-depth with products or services and what they can do – or even just to better control their own message.

As an example, Flynn cited PepsiCo Inc.’s Refresh Project, a charitable campaign that has an informational and promotional website that encourages people to interact.

“They are driving more eyeballs to their own platform than they were to the (traditional media) they were advertising on,” he said. “It starts to make you think, are there things we should be doing as marketers to attract people to things we control, rather than traditional media where we might not have as much control?”

How do you handle social media?

As businesses learn more about social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, they are trying to figure out how to handle the tools from a personnel standpoint.

Typically, social media is seen as a marketing tool first and public relations tool second, and is staffed as such within companies, said Nathan Wright, founder of social media consulting firm Lava Row Inc.

“There’s opportunity to layer it into every part of the organization,” he said. “We’re going to see in the next five years that that’s what is going to start to fill in, where it doesn’t just live in marketing anymore. We’re seeing over time that it’s going to be layered across the board.”

Social media can be used in ways beyond marketing and advertising. Businesses are starting to employ it as a customer service tool.

Lore McManus Solo, principal and vice president of public relations at Strategic America Inc., said she expects social media to increasingly become the responsibility of many people within a company, not just one social media specialist. She compared the evolution to the use of a telephone; at first, mastering the new technology seems like a daunting task, but increasingly people learn how to use it.

“Everyone is going to increasingly need to know, and frankly, there are huge numbers that show various ages are very well-established in using online media,” Solo said.