Integrated marketing communications is the process of developing a unified, cohesive message to promote your company’s products or services. It can be difficult to create this type of message if you are not sure what types of advertising methods will best reach your target audience. You may have heard this term thrown around before but maybe we’re not quite sure what it meant. This article will break down integrated IMC marketing communication and show you how it can help your business grow by reaching more customers with the same consistent message.
What is it:
- What is Integrated Marketing Communications
- Tools of the trade
- The difference between marketing and communications
- How to create an integrated marketing plan
- A few examples of how it can be used in business
- Challenges that come with this type of marketing campaign
1. What is Integrated Marketing Communications
Integrated marketing communications is the synergistic application of marketing methodologies in order to get an objective. It can be viewed as a strategic plan that creates IMC marketing programs that will get the company’s message out into the marketplace using various media.
Integrated marketing communications refers to the way that companies combine many types of advertising methods into one cohesive message. This includes things like social media, television ads, door-to-door canvassing, and billboards for one purpose “to increase brand awareness and build customer relationships for sustainable business growth”.
2. Tools of the trade
There are many different kinds of media that companies use to express their integrated marketing messages. The most common types include print, digital and social media. Businesses can also increase their message’s scope by using different forms of press releases or holding live events to interact with customers on a face-to-face level.
The Difference Between Marketing Communications and Communications Since the definition of integrated marketing communications is so broad, one might get confused trying to tell the difference between what a typical public relations campaign would look like versus an integrated marketing communications. The main difference is that PR focuses on using media to inform whereas IMC marketing seeks to actively engage customers with different types of media.
3. The difference between marketing and communications
Marketing refers to all of the activities that a business performs to promote its products. This includes advertising, public relations, promotions, and product development. Communications on the other hand is a subset of marketing that involves messages sent from companies to consumers or other businesses.
While both terms use messages to promote their products, marketing typically covers all the activities a business performs to sell its goods and services while communications refers to messages sent from the company.
4. How do you create an integrated marketing plan?
An integrated marketing plan is created by identifying your target market and matching that information with your message. You should identify who you want to reach with your message and then create a strategy that will reach them. For example, if you are selling software to small businesses in the US, you could use several different types of media including social media ads, banner ads on relevant websites, pay-per-click search engine ads, etc. But what good is having all these advertising methods if none of them appeal to your target audience?
You should identify which advertising methods will attract the most attention from your target market and match the message of those advertisements with your overall marketing message. Doing this can help you reach a wider audience for less money than if you used only one type of advertisement. For example, if you identified that people in their 50s and 60s were your target market, you might want to use banner ads with a catchy jingle and the headline “New software improved refresh rates by 20%” on websites that cater to older audiences.
5. How can it be used in business?
The main purpose of integrated marketing communication is to make sure all of your advertising efforts speak with one voice to your target market. This method is especially useful for companies that have many different products or services. For example, let’s say you are a company that sells everything from dish soap to laptops and the only thing they have in common is that you want people to buy them.
You may find it difficult to create integrated marketing communication if you are not sure what they have in common. The best way to approach your marketing plan is to match the message of each product with an advertisement method that will attract its target audience. For example, if you are selling laptops you might decide to use banner ads on websites that cater towards business or technology enthusiasts. You could place another ad on social media platforms that are geared towards college students.
6. What are the challenges with this type of marketing campaign?
One common challenge companies face when creating an integrated marketing plan is maintaining a consistent message across all of their advertising methods. Because your advertisements will be reaching people through different avenues, it’s important that you use the same tone in each one. It’s also important to keep costs in mind as well. Using a lot of different advertising methods can make it difficult to determine the most effective strategies for your target market.
Another challenge is finding a balance between what works and what you can afford. While many companies rely on A/B testing, this method does not always lead to positive results. A/B testing focuses on small changes to advertisements and tries them out on a smaller group of people before expanding the test to more users. However, there is no guarantee these tests will yield positive results.
CONCLUSION
The Integrated Marketing Communications concept is a great way to combine the efforts of all marketing types into one cohesive message. This includes advertising, public relations, sales promotions, and events. All these different avenues are combined to form an overall strategy for reaching your target audience in order to increase awareness about your brand or product through content creation-based campaigns that use multiple channels.