What are some factors you consider when determining whether an integrated approach is the best campaign strategy?

Let's first define an 'integrated campaign' approach. 

• At its core, the 'Integrated' approach implies three things - knowing and using the buyer's journey as the premise to building the marketing strategy, aiming for consistency in marketing across touchpoints & sequencing your messaging across these touchpoints
• A 'campaign' is nothing but a coordinated set of assets & tactics to help your buyers progress from Awareness to Consideration to Decision. The other underrated impact of a campaign is its ability to corral organizational focus, time, and efforts toward a single goal and theme (sales, product, customer success, marketing) 

An Integrated Campaign strategy is an amalgam of these concepts. So do all businesses need an integrated campaign strategy? Yes. But does an integrated campaign strategy look the same for all businesses? No. 

The need for a Series A startup to craft an integrated campaign strategy is as much as it is for a Series C & Post-IPO business. The nature and scope of integration, however, vary significantly. 

These factors might help as you think through this.

1. Have you achieved Product-Channel(s) fit? 

• If are a Seed stage startup and have reliably managed to scale one or two acquisition channels, you have other things on your mind than 'integrating' these two channels. That is because, today, you do not have the channel width to capture a large part of the buyer's journey (community, email, in-app, review sites). 
• If you have a larger business, you might already have the channel width that covers a large proportion of your buyer's journey. This is the right time to think about an 'integrated campaign' strategy. Some of the questions to ask are - a) Do I know my buyer's journey with a fair degree of confidence b) Are they experiencing the same 'messaging theme' across touchpoints c) How can I sequence my tactics & messaging based on the demand funnel 

2. What is your GTM motion? 

• Are you PLG or Sales-led or both? If you are PLG, you focus on specific channels that drive inbound demand - SEO, Paid Search, Content, In-app virality, Community, Review sites & Emails. If you have a Sales-led motion, you (mostly) focus on channels that go beyond these to also include Webinars, Events, SDR messaging, & Content. In both scenarios, your buyers want to experience your business in a way that is consistent across these touchpoints and takes them through a journey (sequencing in messaging) irrespective of whichever touchpoint they are in.

3. Do you have an established Brand marketing strategy within your organization?

• If your org runs brand marketing campaigns, you'll need to redefine the architecture of your demand-gen-led integrated campaigns. In this new scenario, you'll have to view the buyer's journey together and build out common areas of leverage. For example, a Brand marketing campaign usually targets a large proportion of 'Problem unaware' buyers. So how can your demand-gen team nudge these buyers down the funnel via an integrated approach? Here, the role of demand-gen shifts to nudging these buyers to the 'Consideration' & 'Decision' stages using the same messaging theme and leveraging tactics (such as collecting a retargeting pool of qualified intent, etc.) that capture their engagement and intent for your category or business. 

Its important to note, every company seems to have a different definition of integrated campaigns, and can be an overused term in a lot of SaaS companies - few actually run integrated campaigns. I typically look at the end goal for the campaign. If you have large pipeline, or MQL goals often running integrated campaigns can be the only way to achieve that target. Depends the channel mix you have at your disposal and the performance you can squeeze out of those channels based on the budget you have for the given campaign.

Keys:

- Size of the goal (leads, mqls, pipeline, revenue)
- Audience size
- Budget
- Channel Performance

When determining whether an integrated approach is the best campaign strategy for your org, I recommend considering the following aside from the standard factors such as budget:

• What are the desired outcomes? An integrated campaign may help accelerate the impact you are trying to drive. Would this fit into the mix?
• Do you know what your ideal customer profile (ICP) is? If this is clearly defined, you could better target the mix of tactics that can get you to your desired outcomes, faster.
• What does your team look like? Depending on the scope of the integrated campaign, you may need additional headcount or you’ll have to manage the workload of those executing and reporting on this campaign.