Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is a crucial aspect of any successful marketing campaign. By combining various communication channels and messages, IMC ensures that your brand speaks with one cohesive voice. In this Viindoo blog, we'll explore the key elements of IMC and provide examples of effective campaigns that have used this strategy to their advantage.
What is integrated marketing communication?
Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is a strategic approach to marketing that involves the coordination and integration of all promotional tools and communication channels to deliver a consistent and compelling message to target audiences.
IMC aims to create a seamless and unified customer experience by ensuring that all marketing messages and communication efforts are coordinated and consistent across different platforms and channels, such as advertising, public relations, direct marketing, social media, and personal selling.
The goal of IMC is to create a clear and cohesive brand message that resonates with the target audience, builds brand awareness and loyalty, and ultimately drives sales and revenue. By using IMC, businesses can create a more effective and efficient marketing strategy, which can help to improve their bottom line and achieve their marketing objectives.
What is integrated marketing communication?
Why is integrated marketing strategy important?
Organizations nowadays utilize a wide array of communication channels to reach their target audiences. The conventional mediums, such as television, radio, newspapers, billboards, and direct mail have expanded to include various digital platforms. With so many options available, it can be challenging to keep track of all the channels that can potentially connect with customers.
For many companies, utilizing multiple marketing channels simultaneously has become a necessity. Achieving success with this omnichannel marketing approach requires a strategic framework that integrates all channels towards the company's marketing objectives. This is where IMC plays a crucial role.
IMC is essential for the following reasons:
- Consistency throughout the customer journey: IMC ensures a cohesive brand message throughout the customer journey, from awareness to purchase and beyond.
- Brand-building: IMC reinforces brand values and differentiators across all channels, leading to stronger brand recognition and loyalty.
- Boosting campaign effectiveness: Utilizing the right mix of marketing channels in an integrated manner can significantly increase campaign effectiveness and ROI.Reinforcement of marketing
- channels: By integrating all marketing channels, IMC helps each channel reinforce the others, leading to a greater impact on the target audience.
Each of these points is vital to a successful marketing strategy, and some research findings included in this article may change how you approach marketing
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Consistency throughout the customer journey
When making a purchase, it's worth reflecting on your initial awareness of the product brand and how you came to the decision to buy. Typically, the buying journey involves more than just seeing a product and making an immediate purchase, as it can span from a few hours to several years, depending on the product.
The buying journey is commonly depicted through a marketing funnel, which outlines the stages of the process from awareness to conversion. The goal of any business is to increase the number of people entering the funnel and minimize the leaks between each stage.
However, achieving this goal is not simple, as effective marketing requires a strategic and coordinated approach. The use of IMC is a critical aspect of creating a smooth customer journey throughout the marketing funnel.
IMC helps to build on brand and product associations established in the awareness stage and guide potential customers towards the conversion stage. For example, Wise consistently communicates its promise of providing the best exchange rates and no hidden fees for its money transfer and exchange services, accompanied by its recognizable blue branding, regardless of the channel or method used to reach potential customers.
Overall, using IMC to communicate in a consistent and recognizable manner across all marketing channels is key to creating a successful and efficient marketing funnel.
Consistency throughout the customer journey
Brand-building
Let me elaborate on some of the ideas I previously mentioned. A crucial aspect of brand-building is communicating in a consistent and recognizable way. By doing so, you want to create a set of associations that people can easily link with your brand across all your campaigns.
It is important to deliver the right message at the right time, but accompanying your communications with distinctive assets, also known as brand codes, is the key to successful brand-building. These brand codes are elements that you consistently use in your communications, and they should be integrated into your marketing promotion strategy. This will help link all your campaigns, maintain brand salience, and improve your brand image.
While logos are the most common brand codes, they are not enough. Companies should strive to have at least three to five brand codes. For instance, at Ahrefs, in addition to our logo and blue color, we also use a custom font and a bearded guy mascot with a corgi.
It is important to note that as marketers, we may think we are overusing our brand codes, but this may not be the case for our target audience. So, when in doubt, codify even more. What we may perceive as overwhelming could be the threshold for people to consistently notice and remember our brand codes.
Brand-building
Boosting campaign effectiveness
IMC requires a reevaluation of the marketing channels you use and how you use them. With an abundance of online and offline options available, it's important to be selective with your choices unless you're targeting a mass market. For instance, promoting an industrial B2B product on TikTok may not yield much success and may not integrate well with other communication channels.
However, it's still essential to have a strong presence on all relevant channels and media. Research shows that campaigns with a mix of media channels tend to be more effective. While limited resources may make this challenging, it's recommended to allocate 60% of the budget to brand-building and the remaining 40% to increasing sales. This ratio is based on insightful marketing research conducted in the past two decades, which showed that a balanced approach leads to better outcomes.
Your choice of marketing channels should reflect this 60:40 ratio, with some channels being more suitable for brand-building (e.g., TV, billboards, YouTube ads) and others for sales activation (e.g., search ads, remarketing ads). It's important to note that many channels may serve both purposes, so there may be some overlap.
Boosting campaign effectiveness
Reinforcement of marketing channels
When you do communication right, marketing channels have the ability to make each other more powerful as your company grows. This concept of “marketing flywheel” was popularized by Rand Fishkin, and the best way to explain it in detail is to show you one of the flywheel diagrams:
Flywheel cycle: attract fans, optimize funnel and reward loyal fans, launch media campaigns, build press relationships and get coverage, boost coverage
As long as your marketing channels are properly integrated, you can rely on this flywheel effect. Ahrefs is proof of that. The main marketing driver behind our growth is the long-term, compounding effect of word-of-mouth marketing combined with SEO and content marketing.
Reinforcement of marketing channels
Examples of Awesome integrated marketing communications
Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" Campaign
Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign, launched in 2011, was a great example of integrated marketing communications. The company printed popular names on its bottles and cans, encouraging consumers to purchase and share the drink with friends and family. The campaign was integrated across all channels, including TV commercials, social media, and in-store promotions. Coca-Cola used personalized hashtags, digital ads, and a website to make it easy for consumers to share the campaign on social media, which helped it become a viral sensation.
Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" Campaign
Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" Campaign
Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign, launched in 2010, was another excellent example of integrated marketing strategy. The campaign featured a series of humorous TV ads that went viral, along with social media posts, print ads, and billboards. Old Spice also created a website where users could interact with the campaign and generate their personalized videos featuring the campaign's character. The campaign was integrated across all channels and became a massive success, increasing sales for the brand.
Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" Campaign
Nike's "Just Do It" Campaign
Nike's "Just Do It" campaign, launched in 1988, remains a classic example of IMC. The campaign featured a slogan that has become synonymous with the brand and a series of iconic TV ads featuring athletes. Nike integrated the campaign across all channels, including print ads, billboards, TV commercials, and sponsorships of athletes and sports events. The campaign helped establish Nike as a leader in the athletic footwear and apparel market and has contributed to the company's continued success.
Nike's "Just Do It" Campaign
In conclusion, implementing an integrated marketing communication strategy is crucial for any business that wants to build a strong brand image, reach its target audience effectively, and increase its sales. By taking a holistic approach to your marketing efforts, utilizing various channels and media, and ensuring consistency and coherence in your messaging, you can create a seamless and engaging customer journey that leads to conversions and loyalty. Don't underestimate the power of IMC, and make sure to continuously evaluate and adjust your strategy to stay ahead of the game in today's competitive market.
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