Integrated marketing is not just a popular buzz word that has an empty meaning. Integrated marketing is actually the way that most smart companies implement their marketing strategies these days. Integrated marketing means that a company brings all of the marketing roles, resources and responsibilities sunder one umbrella so they all work together to deliver marketing, promotional and customer service activities aimed at internal, external, existing and potential customers. If your company still has separate departments for advertising, public relations, marketing and sales, then you really are living with a business model from decades ago. Similarly, if your company has decentralized marketing, where each department does their own promotion, your company is at a huge disadvantage in today's business world, and at the very least you are costing yourself a fortune in expenses that will be doubled and tripled up.

The need of the hour is to have a centralized department that will take care of all your advertising, public relations, marketing and sales requirements. This centralization is very much the modern pattern giving you a cost effective edge over your competition. However, if your country is not following then pattern then there are strong chances that you are wasting a lot of energy and money is an age-old decadent pattern no longer prevalent.

Integrated marketing works best when all departments work jointly towards a common aim. In such a scenario, you can be sure of success in achieving all your targets, be it business or marketing ones. It is very important to focus all your marketing energies and resources in one direction otherwise, you can be sure you have wasted them. Be very careful that your unit works well cohesively or your brand identity may get adversely affected.

This new strategy of having integrated marketing set up, where all aspects of marketing are clubbed under one department ensures that there is one common strategic marketing plan which is being followed. Since there is one marketing department for all the divisions, the marketing plan will be driven, led, monitored and the responsibility of few select professionals. In a scenario where each division of the company has its own marketing plan and activities, it is difficult to measure and evaluate the results and effectiveness of each divisions plans. At times in these kind of scenarios, it is difficult to hire marketing professionals, specially if the amount of marketing activity for that division does not permit the hiring of an extra professional. In these situations say for an accounts division, an accountant will be given the additional responsibility of handling the marketing activities for that division. There is no point in getting marketing activities handled by the accounts people and vice-versa. Marketing should be done by marketing professionals and Accounting should be done by accountants, period. It makes good business sense to get certain professionals to do the jobs they are trained for.

Integrated marketing helps the company to project a unified message and image of the company, and help to keep a strong brand image. Different divisions handling there own marketing activities will lead to sales people giving out a different a marketing message and the corporate department giving out another message. This kind of a chaos will lead to scattered effort, unclear messages and ultimately ineffective marketing campaigns. If this kind of situation is there in your company then you need to take corrective steps now - integrate the marketing activities of your company as soon as possible.

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