While some local business owners purposely limit growth so that scale does not outpace capacity, others hope to eventually build their companies from small, local businesses into regional powerhouses. Yet that doesn’t happen by accident. Scaling up requires an intentional shift in strategy. From a marketing perspective, the shift in strategy includes how available tools are utilized.
For so many small businesses, digital marketing exists as a small group of separate projects. Somebody throws up a Facebook post here and pays for a Google Ad there. The marketing team occasionally sends out an email blast. But there is no cohesion. There was no integration between digital channels for marketing purposes.
Real growth starts to occur when management comes to the realization that integrated marketing is a powerful tool for scaling local brands. Integrated marketing acts as a force multiplier in the digital world, ensuring that every dollar spent on marketing works as hard as possible.
The Basics of Integrated Marketing
The principle of integrated marketing is not difficult to understand. San Diego-based Pixsan Solutions, a web development agency, explains it as the practice of aligning all marketing channels to deliver a single, cohesive message. Rather than operating as separate entities, channels like Facebook, YouTube, email, and the company website work together to create a unified brand experience.
Imagine a San Diego consumer seeing an ad for a local business on a billboard. She sees the same ad on Instagram. She might even receive a promotional email from the brand. In all three cases, the offer and call-to-action are the same. They are consistent, cohesive, and unified.
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Traditional marketing services are aligned with the siloed approach of keeping each channel separate. The result is what our industry refers to as ‘random acts of marketing’. But these random acts don’t produce much by way of tangible results in a world in which consumers are exposed to so many message sources.
Scaling Through Integration
All of this brings us to the idea of scaling a local brand to create a regional powerhouse. Scaling through marketing integration isn’t just about using the same logo everywhere. It is about synchronizing data and messaging. Here’s how digital marketing teams do it:
1. Content Adaptation
High-impact videos are great marketing tools for small businesses. But a new video should not remain an entity unto itself. It should be adapted for other marketing channels as well. It can be chopped up into 15-second clips for TikTok, quoted and summarized for a Facebook post, and converted into written content for a landing page.
2. Cross-Channel Retargeting
Retargeting is the golden goose of digital marketing. When properly set up, a single click on an external SEO link adds that user’s browser to a related audience on Facebook and a target audience for Google Ads. Now the user isn’t just seeing random ads as he moves around the net. He sees ads the data suggests he’s interested in.
3. Attribution
Scaling relies heavily on unified tracking and CRM integration. Integrated marketing feeds by playing to each channel’s strengths to create a complete journey from offer to conversion to followup.
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Integrated marketing benefits local brands through cost efficiency, increased brand trust, and measurable results. At a time when internet users are more likely to check multiple sources before making any kind of purchase decision, it is important that companies meet them where they are. The best way to do that is through integrated marketing that creates a cohesive message capable of leading customers all the way through to the end of the journey.
