Key Insights
- A well-integrated PESO Model® marketing operating system is like the perfect latte
- Even with paid, earned, shared, and owned present at once, it won’t work unless they’re working together as an integrated marketing system
- To move from coordinated to integrated marketing, you need all of the teams to be on the same page
TL;DR
An integrated marketing system is like a perfectly crafted iced coffee—having all the right ingredients (paid, earned, shared, and owned media) isn’t enough unless they work seamlessly together. Many teams mistake coordination for integration, but true success comes when every channel aligns toward a shared goal and guides audiences to a clear destination. Without that alignment, efforts feel disjointed and fail to deliver strong results, much like a poorly balanced drink. The key is intentional collaboration across teams so each element supports and amplifies the others.
Integrated Marketing Is Like the Perfect Iced Coffee Order
Much like many other basic millennials of my kind, my favorite time of day is my coffee. It gets me out of bed in the morning, starting things off strong (literally) and a little sweet.
I usually make my coffee at home, and here I will share my truly groundbreaking recipe with you.
First, I make a Doppio Nespresso pod (not sponsored), aka a double shot of regular espresso, and a single shot of decaf. Stay with me.
Then, I put the coffee in the fridge to chill while I brush my teeth, get dressed, work out, and play with Buca.
When the coffee is perfectly chilled, I pour it over at least 16 mini ice cubes. I am someone who absolutely refuses to pour hot espresso over ice. I get frustrated when I order a latte at a cafe and watch them do this. It waters down the espresso and melts the ice cubes.
Then, I add a splash (A LITERAL SPLASH) of oat milk, a squirt of Trader Joe’s vanilla cold foam, and top it all off with a dusting of cinnamon.
You may be wondering what the purpose of a single decaf shot is. Well, just two shots of espresso is not enough volume for the small amount of milk I like to add. The latte disappears quickly, and then my favorite part of the day is over. Three caffeinated shots are too many. So my husband and I found this workaround.
This is Going Somewhere, I Promise
Only I (and maybe my husband) really understand what it takes to bring my coffee to life. Sure, I can order a half-sweet cortado with cold foam at any old cafe, but it’s never really integrated perfectly. Often there’s too much milk, not enough ice, and too much syrup. The team of baristas behind the counter at any random cafe is not my husband and me, so I can’t expect them to know how to execute every part perfectly. Not unless I sat down with them and explained it in great detail, and the person in line behind me might kick me if I do that.
This is a lot like your marketing system. You may have your paid, owned, shared, and earned all showing up at the same time, but your team needs to work together to fully integrate them. So sit down with the team and align on how your earned can support your owned, your paid can support your shared, etc. There’s no one in line behind you pressuring you to finish up your order, so take the time to get on the same page.
You Can Have All the Ingredients, and Still No Success
Even with the right espresso, milk, flavor, cold foam, and ice, if they’re not integrated properly, your ice could melt, your coffee could be too sweet, or, worse, too milky.
Likewise, you can have all the parts of the PESO Model®—paid ads, earned hits, shared posts, and owned content, but if you don’t integrate the strategy, you’ll miss out on compounding results.
PESO shouldn’t appear as four separate tactics—it should be an integrated marketing operating system. No one wants a glass of milk and two shots of espresso, with ice on the side.
Coordinated vs Integrated Marketing
Many marketing teams get stuck in coordination and never actually reach integrated marketing. This is the difference: coordinated means your paid, earned, shared, and owned show up at the same time. Integrated marketing means all aspects of PESO operate as a system to point buyers to a specific location.
Here’s an example.
Say you’re launching a campaign to sell a new beauty product. All on the day of launch:
- Your owned team launches an optimized landing page that outlines all the product’s benefits, with a link to purchase.
- Your paid media team works with Mr. Beast to create content that showcases the product and encourages viewers to follow your handle. You then boost the content.
- Your social team creates a variety of memes to share across social platforms and joins in on conversations, posting a link to your website in the r/SkincareAddiction forum on Reddit.
- Your earned team pulls off a feature in Allure and links to your website.
Role call: all of PESO showed up! Huge success, right?
Why did the influencers not direct their audience to that fabulous landing page? Could it be because the paid media team didn’t know about it? What’s more… what the heck does Mr. Beast know about skincare? Maybe the shared team didn’t provide a list of relevant, niche influencers who share your audience.
Why didn’t the Allure feature get posted across socials and then boosted? (Did anyone outside of the earned team even know it was happening?)
Why is the landing page nowhere to be found in the Reddit conversations? Why are there so many links to your homepage?!
You can see where the integration broke down and that buyers were not pointed to the right place.
Sounds a lot like an overly milky, lukewarm latte to me.
An Integrated Marketing Campaign, On the Other Hand
An integrated marketing campaign might look more like this:
- Your owned team creates an optimized landing page that outlines all the product’s benefits, with a link to buy.
- Your paid media team works with Lab Muffin Beauty Science on TikTok (thanks for the tip, shared team!) to create content showing off the product. You guarantee placement of your landing page at the top of their Link in Bio for the remainder of the campaign. You incentivize them to drive link clicks by offering a small rev share, determined by a trackable UTM.
- Your shared team creates a variety of memes to share across social platforms and participates in conversations on the r/SkincareAddiction forum on Reddit. When people ask a question in the thread that’s directly related to the skincare problem your product solves, you organically direct them to the landing page, encouraging them to learn more.
- Your earned team pulls off a feature in Allure, and it links to your landing page. Your shared team creates a variety of social posts surrounding the article. If they perform well, your paid team boosts.
In this example, you can see how paid, earned, shared, and owned work together. No melted ice, just the perfect latte.
Stop Settling for Bad Lattes (and Bad Marketing)
Life is too short to settle for watery lattes and marketing systems that don’t yield results. (One might argue that the two go hand in hand.) To ensure neither happens ever again, here are the key components of both an integrated marketing system and a great latte:
- The Right Timing: Just like you’ll chill your espresso in the fridge for the appropriate amount of time before putting it over ice, you’ll want to give your shared media the right amount of time to get seen before putting dollars behind a boost (to make sure your audience is interested in the content)
- The Right Foundation: If you don’t start your latte with the right amount of espresso (which, in my case, is 2 caf: 1 decaf), no amount of oat, almond, pistachio, or other milk will save it. An integrated marketing system is the same: your owned media—especially your anchor hub—has to be strong before shared, earned, or paid can do their jobs.
And, of course…
- The Right Balance (Integration): A latte only works when espresso, milk, foam, flavor, and temperature are in balance. Too much of one element throws off the whole drink. In PESO, owned, shared, earned, and paid crave the same kind of balance. Shared content should amplify owned content, earned content should reinforce authority, and paid content should boost what is already working—not overpower the system.
(PS: We take campaigns like this and run them through the PESO Model operating system to find where integration breaks down in our new monthly series, The PESO Model® Diagnostic. Last month was Budweiser.)