What Does “Integrated Marketing” Mean?

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

The Business Dictonairy provides a pretty good summary definition of Integrated Marketing as “Strategy aimed at unifying different marketing methods such as mass marketing, one-to-one marketing, and direct marketing. Its objective is to complement and reinforce the market impact of each method, and to employ the market data generated by these efforts in product development, pricing, distribution, customer service, etc”

Although fairly comprehensive in scope, that definition lacks one key component of Integrated Marketing that really brings home the ROI.  Not only should it employ the market data generated by efforts for the benefit of sales, pricing, etc – the data should funnel back into the overall campaign elements to better inform targeting efforts overall – creating a continuous cycle of campaign improvement and a very long run-on sentence.

Integrated Marketing is about better leveraging your Marketing budget investment for improved results across the communication channels and beyond.  It’s a single message broadcast in many channels – online and offline – in the social, sales, marketing and PR spaces.  It requires customizing that message to suit the medium – and it requires intelligent design to incorporate measurement throughout.  It’s often complicated – and it’s always worth the effort.

The State of Telepresence

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Business-class Telepresence Environment

A telepresence system is a high-end videoconferencing system and service usually employed by enterprise-level corporate offices. Telepresence conference rooms use state-of-the art room designs, video cameras, displays, sound-systems and processors, coupled with high-to-very-high capacity bandwidth transmissions.

Typical uses of the various technologies described above include videocalling or videoconferencing on a one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many basis for personal, business, educational, deaf Tele-Relay and tele-medical, diagnostic and rehabilitative use or services. New services utilizing videocalling and videoconferencing, such as personal videocalls to inmates incarcerated in penitentiaries, and videoconferencing to resolve airline engineering issues at maintenance facilities, are being created or evolving on an on-going basis

Is Video Replacing Facetime With Clients?

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Advances made in technology, particularly over the past decade, have no doubt revolutionized much of the way we do business. It’s now so easy to handle most tasks from behind a computer that it almost seems as if there’s no point wasting energy on “face time.”

However, business at its heart is all about relationships, and there’s still no substitute for face-to-face contact when it comes to building those ties. Not only are you missing out on potential revenue by staying behind the desk, you’re also robbing yourself of continuing education, moral support, industry intelligence, personal fulfillment, and the serendipitous business opportunities that only arise when you take a few moments to meet someone new.

I’ll be curious to see how many business exchanges take place via the new iPhone 4 Facetime video feature – will that become the new ‘commonplace’ occurance in every Starbucks? Video in any form is a great supplement to personal meetings – but for my relationship dollar, you just can’t beat being there.