How long does it take for a prospect to go from total indifference to your product or service to calling your 800 number, visiting your web site or responding to an offer? Even if your prospect wasn’t exposed to thousands of other messages each day, your advertising message has to be repeated more than twenty times in a newspaper, TV commercial or online -- before it has any influence on a prospect. But it can take much longer! Running one big ad two or three times a year generally is a total waste of money.

What can you do to better your odds of being heard? Integrated marketing communications. When you integrate all your marketing messages – advertising, sales promotion, direct mail and public relations – each message reinforces and increases the impact of the others.

To begin with, the colors, typefaces and design used in all your materials should be consistent and complimentary. For example, your web site, business card, letterhead, invoices, sales receipts and the sign on your door, trucks and uniforms should be consistent in color, font, and relative sizes. In some cases it may be necessary to start from scratch and re-design all these elements, but the coordinated image that results will be worth the expense.

Let’s say that you own a hardware store chain. Your basic selling message is that your business was built by pleasing the customer – asking them what they wanted and then giving it them. Your grandfather grew his tiny store into a bigger one, your father built it into two stores and you have made it into a chain. All of the company’s growth has been based on customer service.

Your web site and your advertising says: "If you need it, we have it – or we’ll get it in 24 hours." Your direct mail, business card, letterhead, invoices, sales receipts, signs, trade show booths, trucks and uniforms all carry the same message. Your public relations program tells of the great lengths to which you have gone to obtain unusual items customers have requested. Your sales promotion says "Ask us for something we don’t have or can’t get in 24 hours and we’ll give you $100."

Your message is integrated into all of your communications. And that way all of your communications have more impact.