Today, of course, marketing is a different environment. Compared to a 1960s ad blitz, a modern campaign can incorporate elements such as traditional print advertising, search engine buys, ongoing two-way conversations on numerous social media channels, a contest, special website landing page, blog, trade show experience, video, and so on.

How does a client today manage all of these activities? The answer is to work with an agency that offers marketing synergy.

The benefit of partnering with a synergistic marketing agency, which offers more than one marketing discipline, is simple: it’s the ability to handle multiple marketing tasks, put strategic thinking behind each initiative, and blend the tactics together to increase the overall value of each component. This saves clients the time and energy of coordinating separate agencies and juggling various budgets with a number of firms.

Working with a one-stop shop is different than with a single-disciplined firm, so here are three tips to keep in mind when looking for a partner that can handle all your marketing needs:

Be open to concept extensions: Sometimes clients come to us with a singular request, such as a website, a video or a special event. Because we are a synergistic agency, we tend to look at how the other components in our toolkit of capabilities could support that singular idea and grow it into a complete campaign. We have found that in many cases, it’s that extension of a concept that the client is really after.

Define success: Before embarking on any campaign, understand what success means to your organization. If you don’t know, we won’t know. Success comes in many different forms. For an integrated campaign, each tactic should have a goal, such as total number of downloads, registrations, purchases, etc. That success definition should always be a point of reference when a tactic is being considered and developed.

Be honest and collaborate: Last year we worked with a new client who had a high-visibility product launch and a short time frame. Sound familiar? While a traditional approach may have worked fine in the past, this job required a constant flow of communication between us and the client in order to fulfill all the various campaign elements. This took the client’s honest feedback and commitment to daily engagement, and it got them what they wanted—a successful project.

At the end of the day, marketing synergy brings simplicity to today’s multifaceted marketing world. Simple. Done. Pass the Scotch.

Every day, it’s a fight for marketshare, to keep up and stay ahead of the competition. It’s a battle for position, voice and influence among internal and external audiences alike. So much of what’s been known, standard and familiar, is in the process of reinventing itself right before our eyes.

We get it, because we’ve based our entire business model on helping clients meet these challenges from day one. For 30 years, CMD has built its service around what businesses and brands have needed to create market demand by being media agnostic, willing to transform, evolve and stay ahead of trends to focus tirelessly on solutions that work for today’s markets with the deep tactical expertise to get there. We like to think we have the smarts of the bigger guys, with the stealth of a boutique and the good sense to listen without getting distracted by egos, bandwagons and flash-in-the-pan fads. Because the truth is that these are the days, and markets, that call for a humble, realistic and an effective no-nonsense approach.

In that spirit, we want to welcome you to our blog, where we hope you’ll learn more about what makes us tick, how we’ve helped clients succeed day in and day out, and meaningful perspectives that you can use. We also would love to gain your insights, opinions and ideas, as that’s what we believe true collaboration is all about.

This quarter, we’re focusing on the hottest subject around: social media. For more than two years, we’ve concentrated on honing our skills, approach and practical experience in this area, driven first and foremost by strategy. At each turn, we’ve learned more and have built a track record we’re pretty proud of. And we’ve gained some insight we hope you might find useful too. For the next several weeks, we’ll provide our perspectives on what we think some of the most effective approaches are in this space, and publish the insights we’ve gained around a few of the most popular social media channels.

Our team is also happy to share deeper perspectives, market trends, and ideas for how to apply the latest marketing tools especially related to social media since it’s on everyone’s minds these days not just because the tools are the latest shiny objects, but because they can and do work to generate demand and ROI if the approach is smart and thoughtful.

We know it’s a battle out there. We’re ready to help arm you with ideas and perspectives you need to navigate it. Tell us what keeps you up at night, and please don’t hesitate to contact us to find out more or to meet with our experts personally.

Until then, welcome to our blog and thanks for reading.