Integrated marketing communications
Introduction to IMC
Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is a strategic marketing approach in which target customers receive consistent, persuasive and unified messages about brands and offerings through various communication channels
This approach seeks to enhance the overall impact of the campaign by integrating communications activities rather than having them operate in isolation.
What is IMC
IMC is about creating one-voice messaging – a clear and consistent brand image, position, message and creative theme across all marketing communications activities
The importance and the benefits of IMC
IMC and brand identity
An effective IMC campaign can help organisations build and maintain their brand identity by creating favourable and memorable associations in their target audiences’ minds.
IMC and efficiency
consumers are now bombarded with a range of advertising and communications messages from an ever-growing range of sources. As such, it is increasingly difficult for organisations to get their message through. The synergy offered by IMC means organisations can achieve greater impact from their communications spend and use fewer marketing resources in the process.
IMC and changing behaviour
people consume media in different ways
IMC offers a way to address these and other challenges more effectively than the more traditional approaches to marketing communication.
The benefits of IMC
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IMC campaigns have numerous benefits for organisations that are able to successfully execute them. These include:
Unified messaging
The overarching benefit of IMC is its capability to transfer persuasive, consistent and unified messages to the target audiences through various channels (Low, 2000; Melewar et al., 2017).
More effective messaging
IMC helps organisations to increase their communication effectiveness and so enhance their competitiveness and status (Porcu et al., 2019).
Brand loyalty
Studies show that the implementation of IMC is positively associated with increased levels of customer loyalty and satisfaction as it enables the organisation to effectively and efficiently coordinate communication actions across different departments in the organisation (Porcu et al., 2019).
Improved performance
Some studies suggest that effective integration is associated with a higher level of overall performance of the campaign in meeting its objectives (Porcu et al., 2017; Šerić, 2017).
Improved recall and recognition
IMC can help achieve higher levels of brand recall and recognition through the unified nature of the message across different media.
IMC in non commercial context
Differences in customer-centric approaches between commercial and social marketing, especially the centrality of a ‘shared experience’
Leveraging resources and partnerships to create a unified message
The complexity of desired behaviour
What to integrate
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Bariers to IMC
Power, coordination, and control issues
Creativity and execution issues
Flexibility and responsiveness issues
IMC Strategy
Setting objectives
Organisations need to determine their objectives before designing their IMC campaigns. Marketing communications objectives involve everything that the campaign intends to achieve and what key message it seeks to communicate to the target audience
These objectives may involve enhancing the perceived brand image, increasing customer awareness of the brand, altering customers’ beliefs, increasing sales, triggering customers to select the brand, or reinforcing purchase behaviour
Budgeting
An organisation must be aware of its available resources before starting to design any communications strategy. The budget an organisation establishes for a marketing communications campaign depends on the size of the organisation, its sales volume, profits and what they can afford to spend.
There are two common methods employed by marketing managers to assign communications budgets:
For marketing managers, setting communications budgets tends to be a matter of conditional ‘if–then’ questions (Andrews and Shimp, 2018). For example:
If £x is invested in a television advertising campaign, then what amount of sales revenue is this projected to generate?
If £y is spent on sales promotion, then what percentage increase in sales can be expected?
Segmentation and targeting