The answer to increasing the impact and results of your advertising can be found when you integrate your marketing. Combining traditional and new media helps businesses reach their potential consumers by leveraging the different ways they consume media. In a recent study, 82% of participating agencies use paid social media, 77% use radio, and 74% use search engine marketing. Investing in ads across multiple platforms delivers greater ROI than any single platform. Not only that, but the results don't change materially by age group. 

If that isn't enough to convince you, consider what happened when Pepsi tried to move away from traditional media completely after 23 years of traditional ads, while their rival Coca Cola doubled down to lead the way in a combined marketing strategy of traditional offline and online channels. It didn't take long before Pepsi learned the hard way that relying only on social media for their marketing strategy was not the wave of the future. They watched their closest direct competitor implement their wildly successful share a Coke campaign that combined traditional and digital techniques to increase brand engagement and product sales. If you’re wondering how to implement a successful integrated campaign, we've compiled some tips to help guide you.

Find Your Sweet Spot

Advertising with traditional media works. In fact, it works so well that it returns $12 for every $1 spent. However, digital spending is still increasing. CMOs in the U.S indicated they'd increased their digital spend by 14.3%.

Not only can you reach the largest possible audience with radio, but you can reinforce that message across digital platforms where the consumer can easily research your brand by comparing your products and services with others or by reviewing other customers' experiences with your company and brand. Essentially, you’re trying to make your brand top of mind and emerge as an obvious choice for potential customers. To do that, you need to find the optimal balance of ad spend between digital and traditional channels. The sweet spot for the best ROI is spending 78% on traditional media and 22% on digital. 

Why Traditional Media is Still King

There’s plenty of evidence that supports why traditional media still dominates. Americans each month spend an average of 245 minutes watching television per day, more time than mobile, laptops, and desktops. However, radio reaches the most people, reaching 240 million people each month compared to only 226 million for television. Radio listeners are not distracted and can focus on the ads, resulting in memory encoding that is 220% greater with a radio ad than a TV message.

Combining digital with radio is great for hyper-targeting. Hyper-targeting allows you to identify a target customer clearly and deliver interest-based content where they are most likely to consume it. What this means for marketers is that you can track consumers with unique URLs that track the activity back to the radio station that aired your ad. 

More Touchpoints Create More Opportunity

Radio advertising in the digital age means you can experience widespread brand awareness and better ROI when you combine radio with digital. An industry analyst confirmed that the synergy of integrated campaigns generates 20% more ROI than single-channel campaigns. That advantage comes by creating multiple touchpoints where you can influence your customers' decisions. For instance, make radio your first touchpoint, digital display ads the second, and preroll the third. 

The key is to create a funnel by building awareness with radio at the top then following through with targeted messaging as consumers move down the line. The awareness and branding accomplished at the top of the funnel with radio will continue to pay benefits as far down as in paid search. Your clicks will go up as brand recognition increases. Your organic search results will also increase for the same reason. 

Increase Your Marketing Results With Integrated Campaigns 

Radio advertising in the digital age creates the perfect opportunity to optimize the incredible reach and influence of traditional channels with digital media's unique targeting opportunities. Of the traditional media platforms, radio has a larger average monthly audience than television and is more than twice as memorable, as measured by the experts. Digital marketing allows businesses to leverage inbound marketing where the customer seeks them out. It provides businesses an in-depth look at customer buying behaviors that lead to a more personalized relationship with the customer, solving their problems more quickly and creating more meaningful interaction. 

Using multiple channels to get your brand's message to your ideal audience is a winning strategy. Integrated marketing provides the opportunity for more touchpoints and provides a  greater ROI than single-channel campaigns. To learn more about integrated marketing and how you can implement your multi-channel campaign, please follow our blog.