Intro to the Integral Marketing System™

The Integral Marketing System™ is a completely new way of looking at your small business. A mistake a lot of companies make regarding their marketing program is to look for the one magic technique they need to implement for increased profits.

This type of thinking is reinforced by all the get-rich-quick websites promoting endless profits overnight if you just buy their product. Successful marketing is a bit more involved than this.

Marketing can be broken down into five critical steps. They are:

1. Create a product or service that solves a problem.

2. Attract prospects that are looking to solve this same problem.

3. Communicate how your product or service solves this problem.

4. Create trust and an open mindset to purchase.

5. After the transaction, retain the customer for future purchases.

Sounds fairly simple, right? Many companies are good at one or two of the points above, but it's rare to find a company that excels in all five. This is where the Integral Marketing System™ comes in. This system was specifically designed to address all five areas and allow you to build sustained long-term growth.

The Integral Marketing System™ is comprised of the Four Marketing Quadrants. Each quadrant addresses a specific role in helping build your business profits. But, when all four quadrants are integrated in a comprehensive marketing strategy, the sum is much more than the individual parts. This is the basic premise behind the Integral Marketing System™.

A Brief Tour Around The Quadrants

Tools & Technology
This quadrant deals with the tools and technologies that help ensure you deliver the most relevant content at the point of maximum impact. It's really the underpinning upon which your entire marketing program rests. If you don't have the proper marketing infrastructure set up, it will be difficult for you to monitor your marketing programs. This quadrant focuses on setting up your customer database, picking the right business website technologies, designing your monetization models, and market testing your ads and promos for maximum response.

Content & Delivery
This quadrant focuses on delivering high-value relevant content to your target markets through a variety of direct marketing channels. This includes any type of communication to your customers whether it's an email, a direct mail piece, a special report, an ebook or information delivered through CD's, DVD's and MP3's.

Customers & Image
This quadrant deals with defining how you stand apart from your competition by adding unique value to your target markets. This includes creating your value proposition and core marketing messages. Anything that deals with your company's "look and feel" goes here - such as your business website, your logos, and the design of all outgoing communications including email templates, stationary and business cards.

Growth & Loyalty
There are only two ways to grow your business; get more out of your current customers and bring brand new customers into the fold. This quadrant focuses on both. How many of your customers come back to purchase from you a second time? If you're like most companies, you have a high percentage of one-timers. This quadrant deals with programs to help increase customer retention and growth. Examples include using your customer database to build retention programs, creating information that builds trust and confidence, and developing compelling offers based on past customer behavior.

Most companies spend the majority of their time working within a single quadrant or two, ignoring the others. By refocusing and redesigning your marketing program to maintain key activities in all four quadrants, you will increase your response rates, attract new clients, and most important of all, increase your business profits.

It's incorrect to think of these four quadrants as separate entities. They are all interrelated and support one another so that ignoring one of them lessens the effectiveness of the others.

Using The Integral Marketing System™

The easiest way for you to utilize the Integral Marketing System™ and the four quadrants is to simply make sure they are all addressed in your marketing plan. It's not necessary to try and split your resources and budget at 25% per quadrant but it's equally important to ensure you're not top heavy in any particular area.

Start by focusing on one particular area in each quadrant. Pick programs that you feel will have the greatest impact and then add additional programs as you have the time. If you try and start several programs within each quadrant simultaneously, you're simply going to end up giving yourself a marketing hernia. In the beginning, it's critical you focus deeply on a few areas rather than try and start a dozen programs only to get discouraged when you can't keep all the balls in the air.

With time, you can develop strong and focused programs in all four quadrants. If you would like a systemized step-by-step guide to starting profit-driven marketing programs in all four quadrants, then I highly recommend my book The Integral Marketing System™.

Future articles on this site and in my newsletter SmallBiz Marketing Tips will focus on the best programs to implement in each quadrant.