Introduction To The Concept of Holistic Marketing

According to the holistic marketing concept, every aspect of the business comes under one single entity. Every activity is being done to achieve a common goal. In this type of marketing, it is expected that each department and resource work to achieve a single goal. The end result for any business is to sell its products. Businesses have realised that they can take the lead ahead of their competitors by adopting a holistic marketing approach. In this article, we will try to help you develop a detailed understanding of holistic marketing since many businesses are adopting this approach these days.

Table of Concepts

• About Holistic Marketing
• Phases of Holistic Marketing
• Benefits
• Components of Holistic Marketing
• Real-Life Implementation of Holistic Marketing
• Impact on Overall Organizational Performance
• Importance

About Holistic Marketing

Unlike traditional marketing, it ensures that synergy is created among departments within the organisation. Once each resource is put to use to achieve a single goal, the results are often better than the expectations. When an organisation adopts this approach, they start working on marketing strategy considering everyone in the workflow. This includes stakeholders, customers, employees, vendors, suppliers, etc. The holistic marketing concept encourages becoming inclusive as it prevents unnecessary conflicts that may prevent achieving the goal. 

The following are the features of holistic marketing concept:

• Having a common goal: This is one of the important features of this type of marketing. Each department and employee should work towards achieving a common goal. 
• Goal-aligned activities: Every activity and marketing process must be aligned with the goal. The actionable items should be favourable for achieving the goal. 

Phases of Holistic Marketing

The structure of holistic marketing concept includes the following three phases:

1. Analysis

Companies analyse how their actions can align with their end goal. This involves doing research on how to maintain work-life balance, customer needs and availability of resources. Once the analysis is done, the company can move ahead toward building strategies. They also assess the image of the company in the industry and consumers to further work on their strategies.

2. Building Strategy

The next phase is building strategies to achieve the common goal. Based on the market research, available data and trends, the company builds strategies. They choose strategies that can be implemented in terms of budget, availability of resources and market conditions. These strategies should be in line with the short term and long term goals of the company.

3. Implementation

At this stage, the company starts implementing strategies so that it can achieve the common goal. The team has to be in sync to work in the same direction.

Benefits of The Concept of Holistic Marketing

The following are the most visible benefits of holistic marketing:

1. Attracting New Clients

As the company dedicates all of its resources for gaining more clients, the results are much more optimistic. There is a higher chance of gaining leads, converting them into clients and improving sales.

2. Efficient Use of Resources

Businesses can plan more suitable strategies since they have more resources to use for achieving the end goal. The company can choose resources that can make the entire process more efficient. This increases the productivity and efficiency of the workflow as well.

3. Faster Goal Achievement

Lags in the processes are eliminated and workflow becomes more streamlined as resources are dedicatedly used for achieving a single goal. This expedites the entire process of getting to the final product.

Components of Holistic Marketing

Holistic marketing includes the following components:

1. Relationship Marketing

It is a marketing strategy that aims at building long term relationships with customers. It focuses on developing brand loyalty among customers by offering them satisfactory products and services. Customer satisfaction is one of the most important factors for successful relationship marketing. Businesses can achieve customer satisfaction through:

• Retention initiatives
• Personalised services
• Loyalty benefits
• Valuable products
• After-sales services

According to Adobe Analytics for Q1 2021, it has been identified that retained customers spend more than new customers. This is because of their experience with the brand. 

Customers have retained since the company has been able to offer them the above-mentioned benefits. It is an important component of holistic marketing since it ensures that customers stay. Overall, relationship marketing has the following benefits.

• Ensuring customer retention
• Generating brand awareness
• Increasing the opportunities for cross-selling and upselling

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2. Integrated Marketing

Suppose a brand delivers a ‘cruelty-free’ message through its social media platforms. However, it does not deliver the same message through its website. This will create confusion about whether the brand is actually cruelty-free or not. 

Integrated marketing aims to deliver the same message to customers through every marketing channel. This is an important marketing strategy since customers must have a single yet very strong idea about what the business does. Multiple messages may confuse the customers about the brand’s services. That is why integrated marketing is important.

Either through digital marketing or print media, customers should paint the same idea about the brand image. Integrated marketing work toward presenting a unified marketing front. These marketing campaigns are quite effective due to the following reasons:

• Wider audience reach due to the use of different channels of promotion.
• Long-lasting impression and trust among customers due to consistent message delivery.
• Lesser investment on marketing campaigns since companies can use the same approach for different platforms.

Read traditional marketing vs. digital marketing

3. Internal Marketing

This is a marketing concept where the products and services are promoted within the organisation itself. The aim is to create brand awareness among employees and facilitate them to sync their ideology with the company’s goals. It is expected that employees will promote their company’s products and goals with their social network. 

The aim of internal marketing is to increase employee engagement by treating them as internal customers. The human resource department executes these internal marketing programs since they educate employees about the company’s objectives. In such programs, the HR department does the following:

• Educating employees about their responsibilities and expectations towards meeting company goals.
• Ensuring that employees have knowledge about the company’s products and services.
• Reinforcing the idea that acquiring and retaining customers is the end goal.
• Informing employees about opportunities related to professional development, appraisals and promotions. 

4. Societal Marketing

This is the component of holistic marketing that considers the long-term interest of the business, its customers and society. This is a holistic approach in the true sense. The company focuses on providing services that satisfy customers without causing any harm to society as a whole. 

This is a part of corporate social responsibility(CSR) and sustainable development. Ethical marketing strategies are the main focus of this holistic marketing concept. Following are the benefits of this marketing approach:

• Saving the environment by creating environmental-friendly products.
• Contributing to the responsibility of building a better society.
• Serving better and safe products to consumers while ensuring their satisfaction.

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5. Performance Marketing

As the name suggests, performance marketing is a campaign in which marketers are only when the end result is achieved. This may include getting leads, sales, bookings and even downloads. This prevents unnecessary expenditure on campaigns that otherwise might not work. Unlike affiliate marketing, this marketing process aims at improving the company’s performance. 

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Implementation of Holistic Marketing

1. Coca Cola: Let us take a real-life example to understand the implementation of the holistic marketing concept. Coca Cola is an example of the holistic marketing concept. They have rebranded themselves over the years while delivering the same message such as ‘real magic’ or ‘zero’. They use the same themes across all marketing channels. 

• Consistency With The Brand Image: Coca-Cola has maintained the same logo and bottle shape except for the change of the initial in Cola (from K to C)
• CSR Initiatives: The brand has been actively taking CSR related initiatives. The company has partnered with the Fundación Defensores de la Naturaleza and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on projects to address issues related to water, agriculture and water. The following data represents the vision of the company toward reducing water challenges.

Check out the Coca-cola digital marketing strategy

2. Starbucks: Another example of holistic marketing is Starbucks. The brand is great at relationship marketing as its customers receive their packages with their names on them. The brand plays a part in societal marketing as it uses biodegradable cups instead of plastic ones.

Impact of Holistic Marketing on Organizational Performance

In 2016, research was conducted by the Cairo University on holistic marketing’s impact on organizational performance. According to the research, there is a positive direct correlation between holistic marketing and its dimensions on organizational performance. No direct correlation could be established in the case of socially responsible marketing. The rest of the four dimensions have the following impacts:

• Increase in market share
• Improvement in customer retention
• Increase in new customers
• Increase in loyal customer base
• More profits
• Increase rate of ROI
• Positive brand image among customers
• Increase in cash flows
• Enhanced customer satisfaction

Conclusion

The concept of holistic marketing helps in optimizing resources and preventing any wastage. The company invests every resource to achieve a common goal. This ensures maximum return on investments, more customer acquisition and a stronger brand image than ever before. Overall, this strategy helps in building an inclusive business to cater its customers, employees, stakeholders and society.