What Is Integrated Marketing Communication in 2020 [Full Guide]

25 February 2020

It is just a simple concept of making all kinds of communication and messages linked together. This is just to ensure that there is no lack of information. This lack of information can have a negative result on the work. Do you know what is integrated marketing communication?

At the basic level of IMC i.e., Integrated Marketing Communication, all the promoting tools are linked together for smooth communication. You surely must have heard of the marketing mix. Yes, that 4Ps of the marketing mix. This promotion is one of that marketing mixes

To make all the tools work smoothly, all the tools must work together in harmony. This can be advanced when regular communication is integrated into several levels, such as Horizontal, Vertical, Internal, External, and Data integration.

Contents

1 Let’s go through various components of IMC:
2 Plans for Integrated marketing communication
3 Implementing integrated marketing communication
4 What are the components of successful integrated marketing communication?
5 Importance of integrated marketing communication
6 IMC tools
7 Managing IMC

Let’s go through various components of IMC:

1. The Foundation:

In this, a detailed analysis of the product and the target market is required. For the marketers it is essential to understand the nature of the brand, what are its USP (unique selling proposition) and the requirements of the end-user. It is important to have a close eye on your competitor’s behaviors. Every need of the customers is of the utmost importance.

2. The corporate culture:

There must need to be relevant in the product and the producing company. Every organization has its own vision, so while planning marketers need that to keep in mind.

For example, there is an organization whose vision is to train teenagers in the field of their interest. If they start training the middle-aged man they are deviating from the vision.

3. Brand focus:

Every organization is known by the brand they are producing or facilitating. So, it’s important to have plans which are always focused on the brand. Making their brand the center of attention.

4. Consumer experiences:

You must not forget about the consumer and how they feel about the product. Nowadays customers are more attracted to the product which looks good, has good packing, and of course, the product itself needs to be one of the best.

5. Communication tools:

It is a way via which the brand communicates with the customers. The ways can be direct selling, advertising, social media, advertisements, etc.

6. Integration tools:

Selling the product is one part of communication but also getting feedback from the customer is also part communication.

Plans for Integrated marketing communication

Integrated marketing

It integrates all aspects of the marketing mix to promote the products and services to the customers at the right place and at the right time. It is a proven fact that if you use different IMC tools at the same time it can improve the customer experience of the product.

If done correctly. IMC can improve the visibility of the brand. Whenever a customer goes to the market for shopping, they will be reminded of your brand. The impact of integrated marketing communication increases if the end-user sees the brand simultaneously multiple numbers of times.

A marketer should be well versed in time management. Because doing many things like budgeting, allocating the right resources at the right for the promotion of the product is of utmost importance.

Gathering information about your company and its product and the audience who buy this product is very important for planning.

While planning some points are needed to keep in mind:

A detailed summary needs to be made on the brand is going to reach its targeted audience.
Everything about the organization needs to be crystal clear.
Good knowledge of the product is required.
Choosing the right market is very important, and hoe you are going to promote it into the market needs to be mentioned clearly.
Competitors’ analysis is very important. And how the competitors are active in the target market.
Knowing your brand weakness as well as your strong points can be a good start to promote your brands.

Implementing integrated marketing communication

Integrated marketing communication is a way of promoting the brand through various methods like advertising, social media awareness, direct selling, public relation, etc. It focuses on using all the available ideas together to get the most desired result. Instead of using one integrated tool at a time, it brings all the possible tool under one umbrella and uses any viable option which is used in an effective way.

The success of integrating marketing communication relies totally on understanding the customers, their needs and expectations. Just remember one thing the customer will be loyal towards you only when you outperform their expectations. And to do so you need to be well versed in the marketing mix and need to apply that knowledge in the fields.

Just promoting your product once or twice does not make you gainer. You need to keep doing that. So that whenever they think of buying a product, your brand needs to be the first to come in their mind. This can be done only after promoting the same product several times a day to the same audience. This makes their subconscious mind active and your product makes space in their second mind.

Let’s take Colgate for example, no matter where you are, whenever you think about a toothpaste product the first name that comes into mind is “Colgate”. Why? Because it was their integrated marketing communication skills that have made you think this way. This what an integrated marketing communication does if done correctly.

What are the components of successful integrated marketing communication?

It is essential for organizations to have a well-integrated marketing communication team, who can work hard for the organization. And make the customer satisfied so that the customer can invest in the product. This can only happen if the brand can provide services that can make the customer loyal to the brand.

This can be done only by using the components effectively:

Customer focus

No matter how good your product is, no matter how good is your service is, until and unless you make a customer happy all is worthless.

Do you believe in God?

No, then start believing in the god named “Customers”. If you are a marketer then you need to have faith in this god. Only this god has the power to make your brand, organization what you hope for.

So, if you think ignoring their needs and doing and coming up with the best plan will work for you then you need to go back a little bit and have a fresh start.

Everything about the customer is very important. Their appraisal, as well as their, complains both hold the same value. But for me complain matters the most. That shows where we are lacking and where we need to improve ourselves.

Make sure whatever you are planning customer needs to be at the center of that.

Co operation

Cooperation among the marketing team is important, but it is essential that every member of the organization work as a whole, to promote the product.

Other members who are outside of the department are needed to be allowed to give their thoughts on the matter. This can help in unboxing new ideas, which can really accelerate the promotion.

Database communication

The sharing of information is one of the important aspects of good planning. This helps in formulating the best course of action. Every employee needed to be filled in on every relevant detail that they need to do their job.

Leverage

Analyze every channel on which the promotion is done. Calculate their cost estimation. See that if the ROI on that cost is relevant or not. This helps your brand’s promoting efficiency.

Profitability

At the end of the day, we have to gain revenue. So, making a plan, formulating the strategies are only helpful when they can bring in profits.

So, we have to market in such a way that it really brings in the audience to invest in our brand and stay loyal to the brand. This will help to bring in higher revenue.

Importance of integrated marketing communication

Nobody can deny the fact that integrated marketing communication is an important aspect of the promotion of the brand.

Let’s go much deeper:

It acts as a messenger between the brand and the audience

It recognizes the need of the customers, it gets the data of the competitors, locate an important place for marketing the brand and send this back to the organization for the analysis.

Brand awareness at a low cost

It is a long-term process where you gain audience trust, and convince them to invest in your brand. Integrated marketing communication is the best way to promote your values.

Think like this, if brand A is already communicating with you properly, and delivering its USP on a regular basis. Why would you go for the brand B. you will subconsciously choose brand A

Integrating marketing communication over traditional ways

IMC is taking over traditional ways because it not only focuses on getting new customers but also tries to retain the older on as well. Gaining a new customer does not mean that you forget about the older customer who has already avail of your services. Gaining new customers is very good but losing the older one is not accepted. Because once the trust is broken, it cannot be restored. The customer will never trust you again. So, doing both is of utmost importance.

It reduces the time required for the planning

If not for this IMC, strategizing the plan would take lots of time. It is due to the IMC that the time is reduced to none.

IMC tools

Let us go through the tools which are used in IMC:

Advertising

It is the best way of promoting the brand. It can reach a huge amount of audience in the shortest time frame. Advertisements on the television, newspaper, radio can reach many audiences in a small frame of time. This also increases the authenticity of the brand. Now it is the marketer’s job to make sure that the right messages are sent to the audience.

Self-promotion

The promotion which the brands do with the promotional code, discounts, attractive offers, etc. brands itself can pay for advertisements to the newspaper, distribute leaflets for the promotions.

Direct selling

There are various tools like mailing, text messages, brochures, which the brands use to promote themselves.

Personal selling

Personal selling here is referred to the selling of the products from their showrooms, via their agents and making sales call.

Public relation activities

Well, have you seen brands presenting themselves in the community meetup, in fairs, in public events? If yes, then you can understand what public relations mean.

It’s all about communication with the public by going in between them. This makes them feel closure to you. This creates a friendship bond with potential customers. Even if they had never thought of investing in your brand, but due to your public appearance. They may think at least once of buying your services.

Managing IMC

Just making the strategies and implementing those can be said that only half work is done. The rest half is managing and maintain those plans.

There are different modes of communication, so it needs to be managed effectively so that all work in the same synchronization to deliver the same message to all the audience. This can be done with the help of proper managing plans.

The first step is to identify the right audience

Finding the right audience is the best way to make your promotion fruitful. You need to understand who is your audience. what can be done to find the relevant audience for providing services, and who are willing to invest in you. After you find out the answer to these questions, only then you can move on with the second phase of the IMC.

The second step is to think of what to communicate

The kind of message you send to the customer is very crucial for gaining their trust. You need to have a proper crystal-clear message for audiences. This makes your brand much more authentic.

The third step is to plan your message in a way that convinces them

Having clear messages will not do, you need to present them in such a way that the audience likes it and get the meaning of it.

Make sure that your messages are all properly formatted.

The fourth step is to identify the various channel via which you can communicate with them

Choosing the best course of action is very helpful in making a promotional platform. It needs to be efficient that it reaches the right person at the right time.

The fifth step is to allocate the right source at the right time

Investment is needed to be done properly so that ROI gains a profit rather than a loss. So investment needs to be done after analyzing ever aspects of the promotional platforms.

Lastly, it’s important to measure the reach of Integrated marketing communication

You need to monitor constantly that the promotion is reaching the people or not, doing a blind job is just like walking on the edge of the mountain blindfolded.

Conclusion

As a whole, integrated marketing communication lays down a bridge between the organization and the audience. Without the IMC informational gap is created which can lead to malfunctioning of the whole organization.

There are many strategies that can be implemented to overcome any possible crisis faced by the organization.

Each and every detail on integrated marketing communication is given in this article.

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Content Rally

Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

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Making Your Office Safer for Workers

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Shouldn’t On-Demand Workers Get Workers’ Compensation?

Things have changed significantly for American workers in recent years. More and more Americans are working not as employees, but as independent contractors. Some people call it contracting or freelancing, but the implications are always the same - a worker is hired for a particular service and is paid a rate (hourly or per job) for that service. While working as an independent contractor might be the preferred choice of some workers, it is more often than not an arrangement born out of necessity, facilitated by a growing sea change in the relationship between labor and business. Contractors might have a bit more freedom in the way they do their jobs but, as many freelancers have discovered, there are plenty of drawbacks to working as an independent contractor. They pay their own taxes, lack many of the benefits associated with full-time employment and - perhaps most concerning - they aren’t protected when it comes to injuries suffered on-the-job. It’s this lack of compensation for workplace injuries that brings us to a growing discontentment for a large subset of independent contractors - on-demand workers. What is an On-Demand Worker? On-demand workers are the people who pick us up when we hail a ride with Uber. They are the workers who come clean our house or fix a leaky pipe when we book someone on our Handy app. In short, on-demand workers are those that spring into action when we request a service from a company that relies on freelance labor. The “Ride-Share” Economy’s Impact on Workers Every few weeks or so, you’ll find a news story or press release about another company that wants to become the Uber of something. Handy wanted to become the Uber of household cleaning. Cargo wanted to become the Uber of shipping. The list goes on and on. The financial success and the immense popularity of ride-share services have prompted companies to look for ways to incorporate the ride-share business model into other services, and many of them have been successful in doing so. These “on-demand” services are not just popular in the business community, they are popular with consumers, too. In many cases, the services offered by the new breed of businesses are more affordable and, in some cases, more responsive to a customer’s needs. It might be tempting for consumers to think of these services as a much more direct way to communicate with someone who is providing the service they need. The truth, however, is a little more complicated than that. The driver who picks us up, or the handyman who comes to fix our sink, is working on contract through the business who runs the app we use to summon them. The money that we pay that worker is divided between the worker and the business they work for. Many of these businesses have requirements that their workers must meet before they can do their job. Workers don’t have the level of control over their jobs that one would typically associate with an independent contractor, yet they are provided at the same level of benefits. In other words, they are provided with no benefits. Read also: Making Your Office Safer for Workers No Security for On-Demand Workers On-demand workers can suffer injuries just like any other subset of workers. A high percentage of workplace injuries are transportation-related. Many workers suffer injuries while moving goods or traveling for work. When you consider the fact that on-demand workers spend a good deal of their time in transit from one job to another (or, as is the case with drivers for ride-share services, all of their time in transit), it’s no surprise that these workers face just as many, if not more, hazards while on the job as those who are considered to be employees. To zero in even more on just how dangerous some of these jobs can be, let’s look at taxi drivers and chauffeurs, whose jobs are virtually identical to Uber and Lyft drivers. Taxi drivers and chauffeurs have fatality rates five times those of the average worker. On-demand drivers face the same risks - vehicle accidents, violent attacks - yet they aren’t given the financial security that other workers receive. If an on-demand worker is injured on the job, the company that they work for will not be held accountable for the injuries of their workers. That worker will be left without the security that so many of us enjoy as a fundamental right. They work just as hard. They observe the requirements set out by the company that employs their services, yet they are guaranteed nothing when something goes wrong. Contractors “In-Name Only” Understandably, many on-demand workers are growing increasingly dissatisfied with their classification as independent contractors. This is evidenced in a number of lawsuits in which workers are seeking to be treated with the same rights and benefits as other types of workers. This has been happening in the trucking industry for some time, an industry that has shifted from one heavily reliant on employed drivers (who used to be more likely to be union members) to one of the independent workers, and this industry suffered major labor shortage as a result. In one high-profile lawsuit, an appeals court found that FedEx incorrectly classified their drivers as contractors, despite the fact that FedEx required workers to wear FedEx uniforms, drive FedEx vehicles, and groom themselves according to the standards of FedEx. While on-demand workers face slightly different requirements from their companies, the principle is very much the same. The question is: How much can a company ask of you before they should give you the same rights as their “employees” are afforded? The answer is that you can ask only so much from a worker before they are essentially a contractor "in-name-only.” It’s becoming clear that companies are taking all of the advantages they can out of the “contract” relationship they have with workers while providing none of the benefits that they would give their employees. Unfortunately, this means a lack of workers’ compensation benefits for on-demand workers. The Implications for Consumers On-demand services might seem like a great thing for consumers, for now, but there are many ways in which the relationship between workers and their companies will begin to seep into the quality of the services consumers are currently enjoying. If companies providing on-demand services fail to provide workers with adequate benefits, they will face the same challenges as the transportation industry, which is struggling to keep high-quality workers who will find more benefits and security in other labor markets. In other words, on-demand suppliers will eventually get what they pay for and, by extension, so will consumers. In that respect, the lack of protection for on-demand workers is bad for business, not just for the workers themselves, but for consumers as well.