Aristotle once said, “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”
Your business is just like the human body. A human will always be greater than the sum of ears, eyes, mouth, nose, legs, hands, etc. Holistic marketing integrates this philosophy of holism of systems where a business and its parts are considered as one interconnected entity where all its activities are directed towards one specified goal.
So, What’s Holistic Marketing?
Holistic marketing is a marketing philosophy that an all-encompassing and unified perspective is essential for businesses to attain the most desired results. It considers all parts of a business as one single entity and gives a shared purpose to every individual and activity related to it. While your business has different parts, it’s only able to function well when all those parts join forces to achieve the same objective.
The following features encompass the holistic marketing philosophy:
A Common Goal
Holistic marketing considers that the business, along with the sum of all its parts must centre its efforts towards a sole goal, which is improving customer experience.
Aligned Activities
All the operations of a business, including the processes, services, sales, communication and many others must focus on that common goal.
Integrated Activities
The business must design and integrate all its activities in such a way that it creates a cohesive, reliable and all-in-one customer experience.
With a 360-degree view, you are inclined to focus on ideas and suggestions from all individuals and groups that have a direct or indirect involvement in your business. This makes holistic marketing an efficient strategy that gives equal importance to all stakeholders to contribute to the success of various products and services by integrating their ideas with shifting market trends.
Components of Holistic Marketing
Did you know that today, intangible assets (brands, quality processes, relationships, etc.) represent 83% of a company’s market value, which is a downright contrast to the 1970’s, when it stood at only 17%?
Holistic marketing helps businesses to come up with strategies aimed at enhancing brand awareness to every individual associated with it. This includes:
- Building relationships with potential and existing customers;
- Ensuring employees follow quality processes;
- Communicating to all stakeholders in an integrated manner; and
- Undertaking corporate social responsibility.
Therefore, the holistic marketing approach takes account of four components as explained below:
Relationship Marketing
This stands out as the most important charm of holistic marketing that leads to a “marketing network”. Relationship marketing reveals the extent to which stakeholders have formed mutually profitable business relationships. Instead of focussing on short-term goals, such as individual sales and gaining new customers, it focuses on a long-term customer relationships and engagement.
Furthermore, relationship marketing helps businesses use strategic targeting marketing processes on existing customers to generate a strong, emotional, and perpetual customer networks. These connections play a significant role in acquiring unrestricted word-of-mouth marketing, repeat sales, and extra leads. With a strong marketing network, businesses can improve their positions in their respective industries due to long-standing relationships.
Integrated Marketing
Integrated marketing means how efficient businesses deliver message to prospective customers to create a seamless experience for consumers to interact with the brand. All activities within integrated marketing include:
- Advertising;
- Digital marketing
- Direct marketing;
- Online communications;
- Public relations; and
- Sales promotion.
These activities must be synchronized to ensure that all customers and business partners enjoy similar experiences and perception of the company. The integrated marketing component helps businesses to make valuable marketing decisions for all stakeholders through a clear, concise marketing message. Therefore, all tools of communication must provide genuine and reliable information to customers.
Internal Marketing
Every business has two types of customers: internal and external. While many businesses focus on external customers, it is important to prioritize the needs of internal customers because they are your employees. This is because employees play a vital role in marketing your brand and products to the external customers. Internal marketing ensures that you hire, train, motivate and instil your core values to your employees to enable them to serve external customers well.
Generally, the internal marketing approach acknowledges that if employees have insufficient product information, then they will be unable to convince customers to make a purchase. It aims at providing specific needs to internal employees of the business. Greater satisfaction among employees results in increased customer satisfaction over time, making internal marketing a key aspect of the holistic approach.
Performance Marketing
Performance marketing focuses on the returns to the business from the marketing activities undertaken as well as the effects of the same on the society as a whole. It ensures your business conducts marketing initiatives based on ethically sound business practices, such as environmentally-friendly production or meaningful interaction with the surrounding community.
This component extends a company’s reach beyond the customers consuming its product or service to society in general. It ensures that activities undertaken to promote the product do not harm the sentiments of customers and should be real in every sense. Generally, your business is considered as a part of the society and is required to pay back to its immediate communities.
Why Does Holistic Marketing Matter?
Consistency
Holistic marketing enhances consistency because it seamlessly relates to customer touch points and allows your business to maintain a long-term presence in the market. Consistency is maintained as you constantly market your brand to all the stakeholders and through unified communication strategies.
Effectiveness
If your business can keep all stakeholders focussed on the bigger picture and eliminate individualized priorities, you can create powerful synergies that deeply reinforce your brand message. Holistic marketing philosophy effectively strengthens your brand message, brand image, and uniquely embeds your brand in the minds of the customers.
Efficiency
Holistic marketing ensures efficient workflows to achieve established and shared goals. It facilitates the allocation of resources to where the most effective areas through improved communication and collaboration to save your company time and money. The efficiency can also be seen in tapping opportunities and spotting potential threats.
Conclusion
The strength of holistic marketing is in seeing all perspectives of a product or service. It looks at the challenges and opportunities not only from the brand’s perspective, but also from the consumer perspective, which is one of the most important viewpoints.
Generally, a combination of good marketing and genuine creativity needs a collision of ideas from all different angles. This usually happens with lateral thinking: when an idea travels in one direction and is suddenly detoured by another travelling in a different one.