The media (TV and radio) used to be the main source of entertainment for people. Now, most people spend a lot of time on their phone navigating different online platforms. So, has this posed a problem for marketing? Yes. because businesses shouldn’t be saying different things on different platforms. Hence, integrated marketing communication helps businesses be consistent and coherent in getting their message to their target market segment across all platforms.
What Is Integrated Marketing Communications?
Integrated marketing communication is a comprehensive approach; businesses use to maintain clarity and consistency of message to their consumers. Hence, they maximize the impact of their message on their customers.
What Is an Example of Integrated Marketing Communications?
Coke’s “share a coke with” campaign is another incredible example of an integrated marketing effort. This campaign, which aimed to increase consumption of Coke within the target demographic by 7%, featured consistent messaging across television, social media, outdoor, and digital displays.
What Are the 5 Forms of Integrated Marketing Communications?
We’ve already shown that the five main forms of communication utilized in Integrated Marketing may work together effectively. These include conventional and novel forms of advertising, direct and online marketing, sales promotion, and public relations.
Integrated Marketing Communication Tools
Basically, integrated marketing communication tools are components of the promotion mix which can have a great impact on the market segment when melded together. Examples of these tools are below.
Advertisement:
This tool enables businesses to get their message across to potential customers on another platform. The party that owns this platform will get paid by the ad sponsor. The method involves mass communication. So, a company’s message should speak to everybody within its target market segment.
Public Relations:
By doing this, companies try to maintain a positive public image. There are ways to do this. And one of them is via authority recommendation. This means an influencer gives them a positive review.
Sales Promotion:
This is one way companies try to increase sales by offering incentives to customers. Through coupons, flash sales, etc. Furthermore, integrating this with an advertisement will not be difficult. In fact, businesses can create ads just for their sales promotion.
Personal Selling:
This involves a closer interaction with customers through the company’s sales personnel. However, a great deal of time is invested during the process. Hence, it might be less efficient than others.
Direct Marketing:
Through this, customers can be persuaded to take action via call-to-action buttons on newsletters and websites. Hence, the instant result of this method makes the impact measurable.
Integrated Marketing Communications Process
A well-integrated marketing communication process synchronizes its message across all channels. And also, the messages across the channels augment one another to achieve the marketing goal. In order to achieve a goal, the list below will help with your integrated marketing communication process.
Know Your Customers:
You need to acquire every available detail about your customers. Know the platforms you can use to reach them, their psychographics, their financial buoyancy. Hence, this will help you in choosing the right tool to achieve your marketing aim.
Choose the Right Communication Channels:
Doing this is dependent on knowing your customers. If you understand your customers well and know the right channel to best reach out to them. Your message will have more impact than blind advertisements. For example, a business can choose a YouTube ad to promote a product meant for a given geography. But a negligible percentage of consumers access this platform. Then, the ad will be a waste of resources. Also, another thing you can consider in this step is the additive effect of different platforms. For instance, 50% of your consumers might prefer cable channels only, and 30% might prefer Facebook only for their entertainment. So, to achieve this additive effect both should top the list of channels you should use to reach out to them.
Design your Message and Launch it:
Once you are done selecting the different channels for integrated marketing communication. Then design the message based on the peculiarities of that platform. For example, people who spend most of their time on YouTube like watching motion pictures. While Facebook users may not be fans of videos, just pictures will do. So, adjust based on what they might welcome.
Analyze the Result and make Adjustments:
Sometimes even the best go-ahead strategy for every marketing campaign doesn’t yield as much as required. Hence, you need to collect data to know how much of your goal you have achieved.
Importance of Integrated Marketing Communications
A major aim of all marketing campaigns is goal achievement, and integrated marketing communication helps achieve that and even more. Below is some importance of integrated marketing communication.
Branding:
Consistency and repetition of your message on all channels enable easy recognition of your company. And also associates you with that message. Hence, integrated marketing communication fosters the branding of a company.
Aligning with Customers’ Choice:
Another importance of a properly done integrated marketing communication is a nice alignment with customers’ choice. Because you already know what turns on and turns off your customers. So, when you hit; they resonate at your frequency, or let’s say you resonated with theirs first and they just reciprocated.
Wider Customer Reach:
Integrated marketing communication helps reach a larger number of people. And also does that while maintaining consistency and clarity in all channels chosen by the company.
Fosters Market Valuation of a Company:
Beliefs and notions about a company in its market affect its valuation. Also, integrated marketing communication helps foster a positive perception of a company.
Conclusion
Integrated marketing communication can help businesses make sure their message gets to their target market segment in a consistent and clear way across all platforms.
