How to Make Integrated Marketing Strategy

1. User Insights and Journey Analysis

Before formulating any integrated marketing strategy, in-depth user insights and journey analysis are indispensable foundational work. They help the brand truly understand who the target users are, their needs and pain points, as well as their behavior patterns along the purchase path, thus providing a scientific basis for subsequent strategy formulation.

What is User Insight?

User insight is a deep understanding of the target users, covering their basic profiles (age, gender, region, occupation, etc.), behavior habits, interests and preferences, purchasing motivations, and barriers. It is obtained through data analysis (website behavior data, social interaction data, CRM data, etc.), user interviews, surveys, and market research, providing a comprehensive and multidimensional user perspective.

User profile construction includes:

• Target segment division: Clearly defining the characteristics of new and existing customers, differentiating the behavior habits, needs, and consumption preferences of different user groups.
• Demographic characteristics: Basic information such as age, gender, region, occupation.
• Behavioral characteristics: Purchase frequency, channel preference, content consumption habits, brand interaction habits.
• Psychological characteristics: Values, purchase motivation, pain points, and barriers.
• Data sources: Customer databases, CRM, social media data, third-party data services, etc.

User profile construction varies depending on the industry and the definitions of “new” and “existing” customers. For example:

What is User Journey Analysis?

User journey analysis breaks down the entire process from brand awareness to final purchase and repurchase, focusing on the key behaviors, psychological changes, and touchpoints at each stage. Typical user journey stages include:

• Awareness: Users first learn about the brand or product through ads, content, or word of mouth and develop interest.
• Consideration: Users actively search for information, compare brands, and evaluate if the product meets their needs.
• Decision: Users make the purchase decision and convert.
• Repurchase/Loyalty: Users become loyal customers, repurchase, or recommend the brand.

Taking a summer promotion on an e-commerce platform as an example, aiming to acquire new customers and increase repurchase:

2. Competitor and Market Environment Analysis

Competitor Channel Layout

• Channel coverage: Outline competitors’ main active paid and owned media channels, including social ads, search engines, programmatic ads, email marketing, and community management.
• Advertising strategy and content: Analyze competitors’ focus in each channel, such as brand building, promotional campaigns, or user conversion, paying attention to ad creative style, frequency, and interaction performance.
• Investment intensity evaluation: Using industry data and competitor performance, estimate their budget allocation and investment intensity in different channels to inform own budget planning.
• Multi-channel synergy paths: Identify how competitors integrate different channels to create a complete user reach and conversion path, improving conversion rate and loyalty.

Market Trend Observation

• Industry developments: Monitor new changes, policies, and market size changes in the industry to timely adjust marketing strategies.
• Emerging marketing tools: Explore new digital marketing technologies and tools such as AI-driven precise targeting, personalized recommendations, and automated marketing platforms.
• Changes in consumer behavior: Track shifts in media preferences, purchasing habits, and content consumption trends of target users to ensure marketing content matches user needs.

Opportunity and Risk Assessment

• Market gaps and differentiation opportunities: Through competitor blind-spot analysis and user research, uncover underserved market segments or pain points, seeking differentiation breakthroughs.
• Potential challenges and threats: Identify risks that may affect marketing effectiveness such as new entrants, substitute products, market saturation, or regulatory changes.
• Macro-environment impact: Consider economic, technological, social, and other macro factors affecting market and user behavior, preparing proactive strategies.

3. Clarify Marketing Goals and Metrics

Define Primary Target Audience: New Customers vs Existing Customers

Before any marketing strategy, clarify whether the primary target audience is new or existing customers. This is crucial because different audiences have distinct needs, behaviors, and conversion paths, directly affecting goal setting, channel selection, content creation, and budget allocation.

• New Customers: Expand Market, Stimulate Interest New customers are potential users who have not been exposed to or just learned about the brand. This group needs broad exposure and effective guidance to move from “strangers” to “followers” and gradually into the purchase process. New customer marketing focuses on brand awareness building and lead acquisition.

• Existing Customers: Deepen Relationships, Promote Repurchase Existing customers have already purchased products or services and have some brand recognition and trust. Marketing focuses on increasing user engagement, brand loyalty, and encouraging repurchase.

• Why distinguish new vs existing customers?

  • Different decision paths: New customers rely more on awareness and interest, existing customers focus on value experience and trust maintenance.
  • Content tone differences: New customer content emphasizes attraction and education, existing customer content focuses on care and incentives.
  • Channel efficiency differences: Paid media is better at reaching new customers; owned media excels in maintaining existing customers.
  • Budget allocation: Marketing cost and ROI cycles differ by audience, requiring targeted budget distribution.

Set Marketing Goals and Strategies Based on Target Audience

When formulating integrated marketing strategies, different audiences (new vs existing) and goals (brand building, lead acquisition, sales conversion) correspond to different core values and media strategies. Paid media mainly undertakes efficient reach and precise targeting, while owned media focuses on content accumulation, user relationship maintenance, and long-term value.

4. Current Channels and Resource Inventory

Channel Status Evaluation

• Channel panorama review List all currently used channel types, including:

  • Paid media: Social ads (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn), search engine ads (Google Ads, Bing Ads), programmatic platforms (DV360, The Trade Desk), etc.
  • Owned media: Official website, blog, email marketing system, communities (WeChat groups, Telegram), instant messaging (WhatsApp, Messenger), etc.

• Core metric in-depth analysis

  • Traffic metrics: Unique visitors, new user ratio, depth of visit (page views, session duration)
  • Conversion metrics: Conversion rates (registration, lead, purchase), conversion path and channel attribution
  • Cost efficiency: CPC, CPA, ROAS, etc.

• Channel lifecycle and stability

  • Evaluate maturity of channels, whether mature delivery, optimization, and monitoring mechanisms are established
  • Stability of channels, dependency on single ad accounts or traffic sources, risk concentration issues

• Channel innovation and experimentation ability

  • Whether continuous testing is done on some channels (new ad formats, new audience targeting, new creative content)
  • Whether experiment feedback and application mechanisms are in place

Content Resource Inventory

• Content asset classification and quantity

  • Text content: Blog posts, press releases, whitepapers, product descriptions, FAQs
  • Visual content: Image libraries, product images, ad creatives, user-generated content (UGC)
  • Video content: Short videos, long videos, live replays, tutorial demonstrations
  • Interactive content: Quizzes, surveys, mini-games

• Content coverage and fit

  • Whether content covers key user journey stages (awareness, interest, consideration, decision, repurchase)
  • Whether content fits different channel formats and style requirements, e.g., social media prefers short videos, emails need mixed text and images, websites need detailed explanations

• Content quality and update frequency

  • Assess originality, professionalism, and attractiveness of existing content
  • Whether update cycles are stable, with seasonal or event-based support

• Content management and distribution mechanisms

  • Whether there is a unified content library or asset management system (DAM)
  • Whether content distribution processes are standardized and cross-channel coordination is smooth

5. Budget Allocation and KPI Design

Budget Allocation Principles

• New customer marketing: Focus investment on paid media for exposure and precise traffic acquisition, with relatively high budgets. Owned media is mainly for lead nurturing and conversion guidance.
• Existing customer marketing: More investment in owned media to deepen customer relationships and activate repurchase; paid media budget is lower but used for precise retargeting.
• Marketing goal-driven: More exposure-type ads during brand building stage; increased conversion efficiency investment and owned media operation in lead acquisition and sales conversion stages.

KPI Design Key Points

• Brand building: Focus on breadth metrics such as impressions, engagement rates, brand search volume.
• Lead acquisition: Monitor lead quantity, lead quality (scoring), form conversion rate, CPL.
• Sales conversion: Focus on conversion rate, ROAS, CPA, repurchase rate, CLV.