Have you ever spent a morning rushing around and failing to locate what you needed? You discover your phone, but then remember you lost your car keys? Where did you put your phone when you found your car keys? How are you going to get somewhere on time when the parts are all over the place? This little philosophy can be expanded upon to include a company’s marketing plan. Customers are basically rushing around looking at small portions of a much larger picture without all the pieces, and they never arrive at your door on time!

 

Your website, social media accounts, direct mail, emails, radio, and television are all being used to advertise your company, but for some reason, the dial just isn’t turning. You’re not getting the outcomes you require to expand your company. Each marketing channel, including those mentioned above, is made up of a few components that must work together to get customers to your place of business. Going back to the phone and vehicle keys example, if you had found both items while looking for your phone, you could have left the house more quickly. The same applies to your marketing plan. If your strategy is in sync, you can generate leads and close sales more quickly.

 

Let’s take Norm Reeves Honda Superstore in Cerritos, California, one of the largest Honda dealerships, as an example of how to put all the various components together.

 

Facebook and Norm Reeves in “The Pieces”

It was expected that Norm Reeves would have a significant footprint in California given that he owned one of the biggest Honda dealerships. The surprise came when their online performance, particularly on social media, dropped off significantly. Norm Reeves contacted SimpSocial to help resolve the issue and put the digital puzzle pieces together in order to address this challenge.

 

By responding to the following questions, each participant established a baseline. What do they enjoy? How much dialogue are we having? From there, Norm Reeves and SimpSocial were able to understand what components they would need to start connecting to form an integrated marketing strategy.  Their marketing objective was to boost their Facebook presence. In order to better integrate Norm Reeve’s online presence and Facebook fans, they developed a procedure.

 

Approach to Integrated Marketing

The development of the integrated marketing approach didn’t take place overnight; it required some time to figure out how to best combine all the elements, but once they did, it was wonderful. More compact parts were made to fit between the two bulky things, connecting digital presence and Facebook followers. Here is how they achieved it:

 

Norm Reeves assigned one employee to serve as the dealership’s social ambassador.

The Ambassador was in charge of capturing pictures of the vehicles, automobile buyers, dealership staff, and any interesting events before sending them to SimpSocial coordinator.

All communication on Facebook had to be posted, promoted, and addressed by the social media coordinator.

Finally, Norm Reeves increased their online presence and is still growing.

 

Bringing everything together

Like selecting the ideal location to store your phone and keys so that you can quickly locate them, establishing the ideal marketing balance can be challenging. We advise determining your existing position with regard to your online presence before creating an integrated plan to bring you where you need to be in order to achieve your company objectives.

---

Back to Blog