Question

Importance of intergrated marketing communications

answ in2 pages

Answer 1

What is Integrated marketing communication -

• The ultimate goal of IMC is to unite all aspects of marketing communications so they work together seamlessly and harmoniously.
• Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is an approach to brand communications where the different modes work together to create a seamless experience for the customer and are presented with a similar tone and style that reinforces the brand’s core message.
• Some of the most common goals of IMC campaigns include increasing brand awareness, generating sales and reinforcing repeat purchases.
• Only changes in the marketplace, new competitive forces, or new promotional opportunities should cause companies to alter strategies and reassess IMC goals.
• Key Terms -
  • integrated: composed and coordinated to form a whole
  • fragmentation: The act of fragmenting or something fragmented; disintegration.

Setting Goals -

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is an approach to brand communications where the different modes work together to create a seamless experience for the customer. Customers are presented with a similar tone and style that reinforce the brand’s core message. The ultimate goal is to make all aspects of marketing communication– advertising, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing, personal selling, online communications and social media –work together as a unified force, rather than in isolation. This synergy between different marketing elements maximizes their cost effectiveness.

Common IMC Objectives:

• In addition to considering recent market, consumer and technological shifts, brands must assess their marketing budget and target audience when setting IMC goals.
• Despite varying budgets, product features and benefits, and consumer behaviors, organizations typically set and work towards the following goals when implementing IMC strategies:
  • To develop brand awareness
  • To increase consumer or business demand for a product category
  • To change or influence customer beliefs or attitudes
  • To enhance purchase actions
  • To encourage repeat purchases
  • To build customer traffic to physical stores, websites or other marketing channels
  • To enhance firm/brand image
  • To increase market share
  • To increase sales
  • To reinforce purchase decisions

The role of integrated marketing communication is to ensure the synergic effect between the brand positioning and values, obtaining a common message of all communication techniques, sent on a special tone, meant to make the difference among products.
The difficulty to manage communication with respect to creating and maintaining brand equity starts from the attempt to sketch its particular features. Thus, considering the meanings of the word “global”, standardization versus adjustment, we could question the existence of a global brand from the perspective of standardization, confining ourselves to the existence of a “global name”.

Importance:

• Integrated marketing communication plays an integral role in communicating brand message to a larger audience. Integrated Marketing communication helps in integrating all essential components of marketing to communicate similar message to potential and existing end-users.

• Marketing integration has always been beneficial, but it is becoming more important today than it ever has before. There’s a good reason for this, and it’s all about digital.

  In the past, marketing channels were pretty much limited to direct marketing such as phone or post, as well as advertisements on TV, radio and in print. With only a handful of channels to occupy, it was easy for brands to maintain a clear, concise message across all touch points.

  But, in the modern world, there are infinite possibilities for marketing to occur, and for it to become confused, messages muddied, and loyalties smashed. Indeed, many brands rely on external agencies to manage various parts of their activities, often with different specialists in place for different outlets. The proliferation of channels for marketing has made it more important today than ever before that we strive for integration, to ensure a clear message at every touch point.

• Integrated marketing communication goes a long way in creating brand awareness among customers at a minimal cost. Integrated marketing communication is essential not only for business to business marketing but also for direct interaction with customers.

• Integrated marketing communication is more effective as it carefully blends various marketing tools such as advertising, public relations, direct marketing and so on.

• Integrated marketing communication scores over traditional ways of marketing as it focuses on not only winning new customers but also maintaining long term healthy relationship with them.
  Integrated marketing communication ensures the brand (product or service) is an instant hit among end-users. It also develops a sense of attachment and loyalty among end-users.

Key Benefits -

• Better results: Traditional marketing will see businesses and their agencies planning separate campaigns for each marketing stream. Press releases, advertising, sales promotions and direct marketing will all have their own stomping ground, never the twain shall meet. With an integrated approach, however, all the components come together to work as one big, beautiful, shiny machine. The information from press releases is reinforced by articles and blog posts, advertising messages are bolstered by these outlets, and follow up using direct marketing further supports the communication, shepherding leads like moths to a light.
• Increased efficiency: Being consistent in your messages will not only make the overall impact stronger and more effective, it could save you money too. Images can be created once, then used across a variety of channels. Copy can be perfected, then repurposed for different media. And rather than using a host of different agencies, each with different specialisms, you can opt instead to work with one provider who is an integrated marketing expert. This could save you money on agency fees, and will almost certainly cut the time cost compared to dealing with multiple providers.
• Boosted brand awareness: Creating the same message across a variety of touch points serves to reinforce your messaging, helping the customer to feel comfortable and confident in who you are and what you stand for.
• Repeated success: Integrated marketing helps you to reiterate the same message in a variety of different ways, so the chance of having it heard and acted upon is increased.
• Customer satisfaction: By integrating your campaign, you can be confident that customers will receive the same message, no matter where they encounter your brand. This means you can communicate with your customers to their preference, whether that’s by email, social media or otherwise, and be confident that they are receiving your key messages loud and clear.
• Organisational benefits: By adopting an integrated approach to marketing, you can ensure that teams all function well together, and that there is less risk of confusion between departments, agencies and individuals.