Super Model Series: Integrated Marketing

This is the first of a series of diagrams that I will post. I call them "Super Models(TM): Powerful Principles of Marketng." Each diagram represents a model for solving a marketing problem.

This model shows how to integrate different marketing disciplines to increase their effectiveness in achieving bottom line results. With any marketing process, an organization must take customers through the AIDA process. You must first make your customers "Aware," then you must develop "Interest." This is followed by a "Desire" on the part of the customer and finally they take "Action." Traditionally advertising agencies were only concerned with building awareness and this is how they defined their success. Thus the famous line, "I know half my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half." If you are only concerned with building awareness, the rest of the steps are left to chance. This method helps one to think about taking the customer all the way to the final action. The small circles are points where the goal is to measure the hand-off from one medium to another. If you can measure the effectiveness of each effort, improvements can be made. If you can measure the whole process, success can be improved. It's not easy to measure some of these points, but the industry is making progress with things like Personal URLs, unique 800 numbers and other methods to improve measurement of advertising. A company called InsideSales.com is doing some really interesting work in this area.

Thanks to Ken Foster and Tim Larson of the Communications Department at the University of Utah for developing this model. I am fortunate enough to know these gentlemen and have the opportunity to redesign the visual diagram.