What is integrated marketing?

Integrated marketing, in its purest form, is the coupling of various marketing channels together, leveraging the individual benefits of each one. And when combined together, those channels deliver a more profound impact than if used individually.

Integrated marketing started to gain traction in the early 1990s. At that time, the 4As defined integrated marketing as “a comprehensive plan to further evaluate the strategic roles of a range of communications disciplines.” That’s where the problem began. It’s not about communication, discipline or channel. It’s about the customer!

Different disciplines. Over the last 25 years, the solution was to accumulate a group of agencies, each with their own specialty, to deliver an integrated offering. Absent data, that was all fine and dandy since everyone was reading from the same sheet of music, clients felt the message was integrated.

Enter AdScience®.

When clients accumulate agencies to combine these disciplines, they often create silos. And these silos inevitably conflict with one another, each competing for their own share of client budget and their own bottom line. More importantly, this approach completely ignores the customer.

The customer journey. The clear path to integrated marketing begins with the customer.

When a marketer focuses on the customer journey, they get alignment with the customer’s path. Because the reality of consumer behavior today is a multi-channel, multi-touch point experience. Marketers that treat these touch points individually often miss the mark.

A successful integrated marketing strategy takes into account which channels the customer is using at a specific point on their journey, and in what order and frequency. Above all, a successful integrated marketing strategy takes into account what information the customer needs and when. Otherwise, marketing money could be spent driving a customer right into the tempting arms of a competitor.

Science is the answer. These necessary insights would be impossible to gain without the help of data. But not all data management solutions are made equal, and few are designed to address these specific needs and concerns. That’s where AdScience® comes into the picture.

At Calise Partners, we pioneered the modern practice of Advertising Science and created the AdScience® Data Management Platform that profiles current customer data to more effectively mine for new customers.

The AdScience® Data Management Platform is advertising science in action. It’s an extremely powerful platform that allows brands to reach high-potential customers where they are most likely to be influenced, thus taking out much of the guesswork.

All the data. With AdScience®, we are able to visualize advertising across multiple media types, giving users the ability to quantify its effect on new customer conversion. The platform is capable of measuring customer journey in both offline and online channels and takes all data into account — not just the kind created by customer response.

  • Online media
  • Offline media
  • Marketing schedules
  • Customer demographics
  • Response, conversion
  • Sales
  • Impressions
  • Attribution
  • Affinity
  • And More


State of the art. AdScience® uses both structured and unstructured data to create robust, high-value customer profiles. This allows clients to gain new insights about the customer base and empowers them to target prospects that look identical to high-value customers.

By tracking the customer journey across offline and online channels, AdScience® identifies opportunities to orchestrate the integrated marketing channels in a way that improves new customer conversions.

And AdScience® is transparent. It enables clients to visualize the results of every dollar spent, delivering new customers both efficiently, and cost-effectively. With AdScience® at work, integrated marketing communications succeed in a way in which a collection of siloed agencies simply cannot.

About the author:

Imaginuity

For over 20 years, Imaginuity has been combining imaginative thinking and innovative technology to create transformative results for our clients, their customers, and our people. Our services and platforms manage complexity to improve marketing outcomes.