Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

What is it
The coordination pf promotional efforts for maximum informational and persuasive impact on customers

Whats is promotion


To inform

  • create awareness
  • identify prospects
    To persuade
  • stimulate demand
  • encourage product trail
  • reduce sales fluctuations
    To remind
  • retain loyal customers

What is advertising: Paid non-personal communication about an organisation and its products transmitted to a target audience through mass media

What is communications
a sharing of meaning - the transmission of information

What is the communications process
the process of transmitting a desired message from the sender to reciever
How does it work
through encoding and decoding a series of symbol signs to be interpreted

Message appeals

  • Rational
    promotes fatual information
  • Emotional
    stir emotions such as humour, fear, warmth, irritation and sexual arousal
  • Moral
    relies on our sense of 'what is right or wrong'

Communications process

1) Source (sender)
a person, group or organisation with a meaning it tries to share

2) Coded message Meaning converted to a series of signs or symbols that are meaningful to intended reciever

3) Medium of transmission
the communications channel that carries the encoded message from source to audience

4) Decoded message converts signs or symbols into concepts and ideas

5) Receiver (audience) the individual, group or organisation that decodes a coded message

Selecting appropriate IMC tools

  • advertising
    see advertising box
    Comparative - compares a sponsored brand with one or more identified brands on the basis of one or more characteristics
    Reminder - reminds consumers about an established brand's uses, characteristics and benefits

TV
Radio
Internet
newspapers
magazines
direct mail
outdoor displays
signs on vehicles

NOISE IS ANYTHING THAT REDUCES A COMMUNICATION'S CLARITY AND ACCURACY

Selecting appropriate IMC tools

  • product placement
    strategic location of products or product promotions within entertainment content to reach target market, e.g. in a movie
    subtle and powerful
  • digital marketing
    marketing communications mix elements that rely on digital technology, e.g. mobile coupons or banner advertisements
  • word of mouth
    personal, informal exchanges of information that customers share with one another about products, brands and companies
    not actually part of marketing communication mix
  • personal selling
    paid for personal presentations aiming to inform and/or persuade the customers
  • usually for sales prospects
  • most expensive
  • sales promotion
    an activity and/or material meant to induce resellers or salespeople to sell a product or consumers to buy it

designed for quick sales
should be designed properly to sustain long term customer relations

  • public relations
    communication efforts used to create and maintain favourable relations between an organisation and its stakeholders
    mainly used to enhance image
  • sponsorship
    when an organisation contributes financially to a special event to gain positive publicity
  • social
    to influence customer perceptions of their socially responsible merits or to improve their image
    Arts
    Sports