Chicago Marketing Agency GDMI: Results Prove Integrated Marketing Approach Necessary

The key to the successful launch of a business online is fully integrating it into the offline efforts according to Doreen Domask, Senior Vice President of Internet Marketing Services with GDMI of Chicago. “Any attempt at marketing online is pretty much guaranteed to fail if it is conducted in isolation with no thought to what made the original brick and mortar business successful in the first place. We have seen it time and again; a successful established business decides the time is right to launch online, but whereas they may have spent many years carefully and methodically building a brand offline, the expectation is often that all you need to do to succeed online is to throw up a simple website and turn on an Adwords account. The sad reality is that while this may generate some results, this is an extremely inefficient way to do it and over the long term this approach will suffer ever diminishing returns.”

She continues, “Our experience has shown that there are five components to a truly successful online marketing campaign. First, do not forget the fundamentals that made your brick and mortar business successful in the first place. If your unique selling feature is a highly developed sales process, you need to mirror that in your online efforts. If your offline sales process involves a significant amount of educating the client so that they can see the value of your product or service and not commoditize it, you have to make sure that this process is replicated online.”

“The second component of a successful online marketing campaign is to combine tactical and strategic elements. Simply tweaking an Adwords campaign on a daily basis will yield very modest results. Thinking strategically in terms of the business and modifying your tactics accordingly will yield far greater long term results.”

“The third component is to remember that all your prospects may not be ready to buy immediately. This is true in the real world as it is online. However, businesses often have mechanisms to deal with this offline but have not considered the possibility to do so online. Give your prospects a variety of options and think about the entire user experience from their perspective.”

“The fourth component is to take an integrated approach. Vary and integrate your online tactics. Do not focus exclusively on a single tactic, but rather combine ppc campaign management and natural search with social media and viral marketing. By combining what is in effect lead generation and branding efforts, you will realize much greater returns. Integrating your online and offline efforts will further enhance the user experience and help generate significant profits.”

“Finally, remember that this is a moving target. Your audience and the media are continuously changing and so must you. What worked six months ago is probably not as effective today. Your website is key in this. A website is a verb, not a noun and as such must evolve to stay ahead of the curve.”
Doreen refers to the online success that established brick and mortar businesses such as Acton Mobile and Carrier Cooling have enjoyed as a result of the integrated marketing approach that GDMI has taken on their behalf.

“These two businesses, while very different in their respective target markets and backgrounds had something in common. They were both well established businesses that were looking to make the leap online and our integrated approach helped them do that in a profitable and sustainable manner.”

GDMI is a 28-year-old marketing company based in Chicago, with offices in Los Angeles, St. Louis, West Palm Beach and Toronto.