• by Blaine Mathieu , April 7, 2009

Your company's last marketing campaign had everything going for it. All the elements were in place, yet too many visitors bailed from the landing page after a few seconds and the conversion rate was only 1%. What went wrong? It's hard to say, but surely it wasn't your fault; you're really good at your job and everyone knows it.

I wish being good at your job was enough, but it's really all about how you help your company succeed. Can you increase the effectiveness of an integrated campaign and prove it? Can you show that some idea you had led directly to a sales increase?

Starting a Bottom-Up Revolution

Unless you're a department of one, you're probably an expert in at least one thing -- email, display advertising, PPC, social media, Web analytics, mobile marketing -- and you're primarily motivated to do more of that thing, rather than broaden your domain. With everyone working in silos, the atmosphere can be more like disintegrated marketing than integrated marketing and, unfortunately, the results can be campaigns that miss the mark.

I'm not saying tear down silos on your own overnight; integrated marketing is not about the job titles anyway. I'm urging you to start a bottom-up revolution -- nudging your organization toward integration one conversation at a time. Integrated marketing technology coupled with associated best practices should help businesses and their marketing teams improve core business processes that everyone can get behind.

Small Steps Work

To start off, come together with your team members to attempt small proof-of-concept initiatives. If you're developing an email campaign, you can test its effectiveness by creating and running a B version of the email. Then, check with your Web-analytics expert to see which campaign was more effective at actually driving conversions after they reached the landing page. In other words, don't just stop at the email click-through. Go the extra step to learn what's leading to conversions.

If you're the marketing manager, don't assume that a great Excel spreadsheet with tabs means that your campaign is integrated. Do the legwork to determine, for example, the ROI for Google AdWords versus an email blast versus a banner ad -- or how much more effective the campaign is when two or all three are running at the same time. Ask your department's PPC expert to dig up a few stats from your Google account and ask him what he thinks they really mean. Chat with the analytics guru to find out how many people visited which Web pages from which sources and ask why one source may be generating more visitors than the others.

If your expertise is Web analytics, you're in the catbird seat. You already have the reports and results at your fingertips. But you can also go the extra mile by translating the cold, hard facts into sound bites that your creative team can grasp. Together, you can come up with theories about why visitors from the Google ad bailed from the landing page at a much higher rate than visitors who came from email -- and then work with the creative team to test different design approaches next time.

No matter what your job descriptions say, you're all idea people, first and foremost. Even if you're not technically accountable for results outside of your domain, demonstrating leadership in adjacent areas could have positive benefits for you, for your team and for your company. Demonstrate your contribution to the bottom line and your unofficial job title could be ... Hero.

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