The Halo Effect

What I love about integrated marketing campaigns is the halo effect (which I mentioned in Chapter 1). A halo effect occurs when the positive effect of one marketing tactic provides a performance boost for other marketing tactics.

Time and again, marketers have proven that when it comes to marketing tactics, 1 + 1 = 3, not 2. The more you target your customers through different marketing mediums, the more you create an impression of your brand and company in the target customers’ minds. And the more inclined they are to seriously consider your products or services as a solution to their needs.

For example, say target customers read an article about one of your company’s executives (e.g., your vice president of sales) in a newspaper or trade magazine. A few days later, they see a display ad for your company on a website. A couple of weeks go by, and they get a call from one of your salespeople. They remember seeing your company name in the article they read, and in the display ad they saw online. So they listen to the salesperson and sign up as a lead.

In this example, your use of several integrated tactics created a halo effect that added value to your lead-generation marketing campaign. At first glance, you might think your display ads didn’t work because the cold call captured the lead. But the display ads and the article about your executive caught the target customers’ attention, and helped to create an initial impression of your brand and company in their minds. When your salesperson called, this initial impression was enough to spark interest in their minds. (Remember the AIDA curve from Chapter 2.)

This is how an integrated campaign gives momentum to your brand and company, and how it can help to make your lead-generation efforts more successful. If customers had not seen your display ads, they might have dismissed an out-of-the-blue sales call from you with a “Thanks, but I’m not interested.” But because they had heard of your company and seen your brand, the customer was more inclined to listen to the salesperson’s offer. The first or second touch you make with the customer—in this case, a display ad—may reap benefits in future touches, such as the cold call.

When I combine multiple lead-generation tactics, I often see a quantitative, measurable lift in overall performance. For instance, an SEM campaign may be humming along at a 2% CTR. Then I do an e-mail marketing push, sending out 50,000 marketing e-mails. In addition to the traffic generated from the e-mail campaign, I’ll also see at least a 50% increase in my SEM performance. People who received the e-mail may not have clicked on it. But some of those people will search for the company on Google and Bing to find out more about it. A percentage of those people will click on the search engine ad.

You can also build momentum for your brand using nurturing campaigns. In Chapter 5, I mentioned the concept of the “drip bucket.” Using this strategy, you keep sending e-mails to qualified leads over time, keeping them informed about special offers and company events. Again, the more they see of your brand, the more they will take you seriously. Using a variety of lead-generation tactics in an integrated marketing campaign helps to accomplish this same goal, and integrated lead-generation marketing works as well, if not better, than nurture marketing.