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What Is Holistic Marketing?

M. Walker
M. Walker

Holistic marketing is an integrated marketing approach that focuses on bringing together all aspects of marketing and uniting the various marketing strategies. This often involves taking a holistic view of all internal processes, including the structure of various company departments, manufacturing processes, and other products created by a company, but it can often include evaluating the competition as well. Holistic marketing generally requires a broader view of the situation that factors in details as well as the long-term goals of a company.

Within a given company, a holistic marketing program will help connect the various teams and departments, which could include product development teams, branding teams, and salespeople. These different groups are frequently individually managed and do not experience a large degree of contact with each other. This could potentially result in incongruities for the marketing strategy, especially if teams are being given different instructions, creating different goals for themselves, or inadvertently compromising other sectors of development with certain actions. Holistic marketing attempts to bridge gaps between these different sections of product development to ensure that all those involved in marketing a specific product will have the same goals.

A holistic marketing program often includes a product development team.
A holistic marketing program often includes a product development team.

The holistic marketing concept also focuses on other products that are created by any given company. If certain products are too similar to each other or too different and unrelated, sales could potentially decrease, even if each individual product has optimized marketing. Companies must take into account the estimated customer response to new products in order to determine their projected sales and success.

For example, if a popular company released a new and improved product but kept the old product on the market, they could inadvertently cause confusion among consumers. Not only would this cause the public to question the quality of the old product but it would also greatly decrease sales in the old product as well, especially if the new product was incredibly similar. In contrast, a company releasing two completely unrelated products will struggle to form an integrated branding strategy, which could make it difficult for customers to remember them and return in the future.

Holistic marketing also takes into account the competition. Releasing products that are too similar to competitors, or marketing products in a similar way as competitors, will decrease the strength of a company’s reputation. In contrast, launching unrealistic marketing campaigns that are inconsistent with the public’s idea of the company could also reduce sales. For example, getting a certain celebrity to endorse a product will generally be successful, but only if the endorsement is believable. If the public does not believe that the celebrity would actually support the product in real life, then the marketing campaign is not likely to succeed.

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    • A holistic marketing program often includes a product development team.
      By: WavebreakMediaMicro
      A holistic marketing program often includes a product development team.