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 percent. 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 still good enough, but in my experience, career success isn't determined by how hard you work or how many hours you put in or even how experienced you are in your functional area. It's determined by 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? If so, you won't even have to ask for that raise or promotion. It will just happen.

But it will only happen if you can distinguish yourself by taking a little less ownership of your domain and more ownership of results. Instead of clinging to your silo, take a leadership role in moving your company toward integrated marketing – that is, taking a holistic view of all marketing activities and channels, including your back-end processes. Begin where you are and rally your marketing colleagues behind you – no matter what your current position is on the org chart.

Starting a Bottom-Up Revolution

Unless you're a department of one, you're probably an expert in at least one thing – email, banner advertising, PPC, web analytics – 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. You might not think it's worth your effort to find out what the email person is doing or what the creative designer is working on or what the Web-analytics guru does with those cool-looking spreadsheets. But it is worth your time. Truly integrated marketing campaigns require everyone working together for the ultimate goal of boosting results.

I'm not saying you should tear down the silos on your own; integrated marketing is not about the job titles anyway. I'm urging you to start a bottom-up revolution.

It's not as arduous as it sounds, really. Nudging your organization toward integration can be done one conversation at a time, by encouraging your colleagues (even if you don't lead a formal team) to step outside their silos and share ideas. People generally like to talk about themselves and what they do. So get them talking about their tasks before you launch into the big-picture stuff.

Suggest some creative ways you can work together to test some of your theories about what will boost campaign results. (Or for extra credit, get your colleagues to come up with their own ideas.) What would it take for the Web-analytics guy to delve more deeply into the conversion behavior of visitors who click-through from your email campaigns? Have you asked your Web guru for her ideas on how to create more effective email templates?

Small Steps Work

Pushing marketing toward greater integration doesn't require disrupting daily activities, spending a lot of money or stepping on toes. Come together with your team members to take baby steps through some small proof-of-concept initiatives.

Here's an example: 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 more conversions.

If you're the marketing manager, don't assume that a great Excel spreadsheet with tabs means that your campaign is truly integrated. Do a little 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 extra stats from your Google account and then ask him what he thinks they really mean. You could chat with the analytics guru to find out how many people visited which Web pages and from which sources, and then 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 could also go the extra mile by translating the cold, hard facts into sound bites that your creative team can grasp. Together, you could 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 the email – and then work with the creative team to test different design approaches next time.

Again, you don't have to reinvent the entire marketing department and you don't need to encroach on your co-workers' domains. You just need to begin looking at the bigger picture and encouraging your team members to do the same. 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 the company. Demonstrate your contribution to the bottom line, and your unofficial job title could be ... Hero.

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About the Author

Blaine Mathieu is chief marketing officer for Lyris. Blaine is responsible for Lyris' brand and product strategy, including driving marketing initiatives for the company's Lyris HQ™ integrated-marketing suite and its Lyris ListManager™ email-marketing software.

Related Resources:

• Subscribe to Inside Lyris HQ our monthly online-marketing newsletter.
• Download free online-marketing guides, tools and webinars in the Lyris Online-Marketing Resource Center.

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