Marketing Integration. Integrated marketing is a simple but very effective concept. It’s a holistic approach to marketing, which makes it easy to connect with consumers and educate them about your products. Mastering integrated marketing can help you increase awareness, brand loyalty, and ultimately sales.
Marketing integration is a plan for providing a consistent message across all of your brand’s marketing media. It ensures uniformity regardless of where customers choose to interact with a brand. You risk sending contradictory signals or talking in a disconnected voice if you don’t have an integrated marketing plan.
Marketing Integration
Market integration is about seamlessly integrating everything from ads and sales promotions to PR and social media to target customers. Integrated marketing works by creating a consistent message and experience across channels, increasing the likelihood of a conversion.
Companies with an integrated marketing strategy strive to show customers the same visual aesthetic, the same slogans, the same promotions, and the same overall tone across multiple channels. Having known all about what marketing integration is, kindly read on to know more about the types of marketing integration.
Types of Marketing Integration
There are five common types of marketing integration based on the buying company’s position in the supply chain:
Horizontal Integration
This is a business approach that involves one company expanding its operations within a certain industry at the same rate. Horizontal integrations assist businesses in increasing their size and revenue, entering new markets, diversifying their product lines, and lowering competition.
Horizontal integrations help companies grow in size and revenue, expand into new markets, diversify product offerings, and reduce competition. A company can horizontally integrate by merging with another company, acquiring another company, or internally expanding its operations.
Types of Horizontal Integration
There are three primary forms of horizontal integration, and they include
- Acquisitions
- Internal expansions.
- Merger
Vertical Integration
Vertical integration is a term that describes the arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Companies utilize horizontal and vertical integration as growth strategies to strengthen their positions and differentiate themselves from rivals. Both entail buying out other companies. Although both strategies can aid in business growth, there are significant distinctions between them.
In vertical integration, a business that relies on another for its supplies may find that it is unreliable, which affects business. In turn, it may vertically integrate with its supplier in order to reduce late deliveries and increase efficiencies.
Vertical integration allows a company to reduce costs across various parts of production, ensure tighter quality control, and ensure a better flow and control of information across the supply chain. The goal of vertical integration is typically to increase sales, eliminate costs, and improve profits through better control over business operations.
Types of vertical integration
There are three main types of vertical integration, and they include
- Backward integration
- Balanced integration
- Forward integration
Backward Integration
This is when a company buys another company that supplies the products or services needed for production. Backward integration is a form of vertical integration in which a company expands its role to fulfill tasks formerly completed by businesses up the supply chain.
A business that implements backward integration attempts to move backward in the supply chain to control raw materials. The supply chain process starts with the sourcing and delivery of raw materials to the manufacturer’s warehouse and ends when the final product gets to the end consumer.
The following are some of the benefits that companies enjoy when they implement backward integration:
- Better control
- Competitive advantage
- Cost control
- Securing a supply of needed raw materials for a product
- Eliminating inefficiencies.
Forward Integration
Forward integration is a business strategy that entails a type of downstream vertical integration in which the firm owns and controls commercial activities that are in front of its industry’s value chain, such as direct distribution or supply of the company’s products.
In many industries, the major components of the supply chain include raw materials, intermediate goods, manufacturing, marketing and sales, and after-sales service. An example of forward integration is when a manufacturer purchases its retailer to secure control over the distribution channels.
Companies can maintain profits by utilizing forward integration to cut down on profit losses to intermediary parties. There are several reasons to use the method, and they include the following:
- It increases the company’s market share.
- It helps companies gain control over distribution channels.
- Competitive advantage
- It helps create barriers for potential competitors.
If you’re involved in an organization’s strategic planning, understanding the key elements and benefits of forward integration can help you determine if it’s the right decision for the company.
FAQs
What does integration mean in marketing?
Integrated marketing allows you to use the same content and assets in different formats. For example, you can post a video ad on multiple social media platforms. Instead of relying on separate ad agencies, PR firms, and sales departments, you can merge all your efforts into one marketing group.
What are the three levels of integration?
Fortunately, there are three different levels of integration that are applicable to any technology stack and provide immense efficiency increases.
- API
- FSTP
- File transfer.
- Understanding your technology
Why is marketing integration important?
Integrated marketing communication plays an integral role in communicating a brand message to a larger audience. Integrated marketing communication helps integrate all essential components of marketing to communicate a similar message to potential and existing end-users.
What are the seven stages of integration?
Specialists in this area define seven stages of economic integration: a preferential trading area, a free trade area, a customs union, a common market, an economic union, an economic and monetary union, and complete economic integration.
How does market integration occur?
Market integration occurs when prices among different locations or related goods follow similar patterns over a long period of time. Groups of goods often move proportionally to each other, and when this relation is very clear among different markets, it is said that the markets are integrated.
What is B2B integration?
Business-to-business (B2B) integration is the automation of business processes and communication between two or more organizations. It allows them to work and trade more effectively with their customers, suppliers, and business partners by automating key business processes.
