Integrated Marketing
The marketer's task is to devise marketing activities and assemble fully integrated marketing programs to create, communicate, and deliver value for consumers. The marketing program consists of numerous decisions on value-enhancing marketing activities to use. Marketing activities come in all forms. One traditional depiction of marketing activities is in terms of the marketing mix, which has been defined as the set of marketing tools the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives. McCarthy classified these tools into four broad groups, which he called the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.
Marketing-mix decisions must be made for influencing the trade channels as well as the final consumers.

The firm can change its price, sales force size, and advertising expenditures in the short run. It can develop new products and modify its distribution channels only in the long run. Thus the firm typically makes fewer period-to-period marketing-mix changes in the short run than the number of marketing-mix decision variables might suggest.

The four Ps represent the sellers' view of the marketing tools available for influencing buyers. From a buyer's point of view, each marketing tool is designed to deliver a customer benefit. Robert Lauterborn suggested that the sellers' four Ps correspond to the customers' four CS.
Winning companies will be those that can meet customer needs economically and conveniently and with effective communication.

Two key themes of integrated marketing are that

1) many different marketing activities are employed to communicate and deliver value and
2) all marketing activities are coordinated to maximize their joint effects. In other words, the design and implementation of any one marketing activity is done with all other activities in mind. Businesses must integrate their systems for demand management, resource management, and network management.

For example, an integrated communication strategy involves choosing communication options that reinforce and complement each other. A marketer might selectively employ television, radio, and print advertising, public relations and events, and PR and Web site communications so that each contributes on its own as well as improves the effectiveness of others. Because there was already a buzz for its remake of the cult 1974 film The Texas Chain saw Massacre New Line Cinema relied on a combination of both traditional TV ads and trailers, as well as interactive marketing via AOL’s Instant Messenger and "bots"-robot agents-to help spread the word and get teens talking about the film. Their goal was to create a peer-to-peer communication that is, getting teens to do the marketing for them. Integrated channel strategy involves ensuring that direct (e.g., online sales) and indirect channels (e.g., retail sales) work together to maximize sales and brand equity.