How to Integrate Traditional & Digital Marketing

How to Integrate Traditional & Digital Marketing

It's October 26, 1985. The top song in the United States is Whitney Houston's "Saving All My Love for You." The top weekend movie at the US box office is "Jagged Edge," starring Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges. And Marty McFly was about to travel back in time in "Back to the Future."

Yes, for any Mozzers who do not know, Back to the Future Day—the exact date when Marty went to the future in the sequel to the original film—is today!

Also in the mid-1980s, the Internet was largely confined to the US military and large higher-education institutions. Most marketing at the time, of course, occurred via print, magazine, TV, and radio mediums and channels in what is now often called "outbound marketing."

Why, then, is this relevant in 2015? One problem in digital marketing company is that many digital marketers do not have much education or experience in traditional marketing and communications. If you mention the 4 Ps or ask about the promotion mix at most SEO conferences, you'll probably receive blank stares in response.

It's important to know what marketers did before the Internet because many of the strategies that had been developed and honed since the early twentieth century are still applicable today. So, to help the community, I wanted to give a high-level overview of traditional marketing and communications and then provide discussion topics for the comments below, as well as actionable tasks for readers to start integrating traditional marketing principles into their digital strategies.

By the end of this post, you'll have a solid sense of the following:

• What is the difference between marketing and communications?
• What is the integrated discipline "marcom?"
• What are the 4 Ps?
• What parts comprise the promotion mix (within the 4 Ps)?
• When should I do outbound and inbound marketing?
• How do the Internet and digital marketing company fit into all of this?
• What about SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, growth hacking, and linkbuilding?
• What actionable things can I do?
• Why did Marty McFly's mom and dad not recognize him from the 1950s when he had grown into a teenager in the 1980s?

This post is related to an earlier Moz post of mine on the marketing department of the future—I will address the connection between the two essays below. I hope you're excited! Where we're going, we don't need roads—just a little bit of time.

Marketing does not really change that much because people do not change—and anyone who says differently is selling something. Countless gurus, writers, and keynote speakers have proclaimed that "inbound marketing is the future," "social media has changed everything (a parody of TED talks)," and "advertising is dead."

But some examples from Hoffman prove otherwise: Traditional live TV viewing is not "dying" at all, and most people are not using DVRs to skip TV ads. Traditional "outbound" TV advertising is often still important enough that in one example, Pepsi lost a lost of money and dropped to third place in terms of market share when the company moved its entire ad spend from television ads to social media.

The point is that no marketing strategy or tactic is always best for every purpose, product, brand, or industry. Sometimes TV advertising should be a part of the promotion mix; sometimes not. Sometimes content marketing is the best way to go; sometimes not. Sometimes modern "inbound" methods deliver the greatest value; sometimes it's traditional "outbound" ones. More on that below.

Here, I wanted to take us back—back to the past to show the future where we have been, why it matters, and how we should incorporate it into digital marketing company.

Marketing vs. communications

Traditionally, marketing and communications had been entirely different functions that each had their own departments. Marketing focused on issues such as customers, sales, and brand awareness. Communications (often called public relations or external relations) dealt with everyone else in the outside world with whom the company interacted, such as the government, community, media, and financial analysts.

In other words, communications (another word for PR) as a whole is the act of communicating with any relevant external group of people. Obviously, companies would usually not want to say the exact same thing to customers, influencers, the media, the government, and the local community.

Today, however, more and more companies are combining Marketing and Communications under a single department (often called "marketing communications" or "marcom") to become more efficient and ensure that all messages are consistent among all audiences and across all channels.

The key to understand: Publish and transmit unified, integrated messaging on and across all online and offline marcom channels including websites, social networks, advertising campaigns, online content, news releases, product brochures, and sales catalogues.

SEO pro tip: When relevant, include your desired keywords—using natural language rather than keyword stuffing, of course—in your messaging everywhere (for the co-occurrence benefits; websites seem to rank more highly for search terms when links to those sites appear on pages that also mention those terms!).