Integrated marketing communications: concepts and strategies

IMC Strategy

Exploring the Aspects of An

Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy

Given the proliferation of marketing, selling and service channels, the need for orchestrating all of them together for a common strategic marketing goal is critical. The coordination of advertising, direct marketing, online advertising, social networks and media, sales promotion, publicity, public relations and personal selling all need to have a common platform to execute from. The emergence of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) strategies is specifically for the purpose of bringing together online and offline channels to ensure the attainment of marketing and selling goals (Anantachart, 2004). The intent of this analysis is to compare the pros and cons of each of these individual elements of an IMC.

Analysis of an Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy

Of the elements within an IMC, the most visible and often the most costly is the advertising. The pros of using advertising in the context of an IMC strategy are its immediate visibility and effectiveness at push-based marketing strategies, customization for specific needs within a given strategy, and versatility of its many forms including digital and offline (Johnston, Tennens, 2005). The cons include the cost, the time frames to implement the print and large-scale offline projects, and the rising costs of placement and continual frequency to ensure this aspect of an IMC is successful (Holm, 2006). Direct marketing including the use of marketing automation is the fastest growing area of IMC strategies today as marketers are concentrating on getting the highest Return on Investment (ROI) possible (Holm, 2006).

The advantages of direct marketing include the ability to precisely target customers, speed of development and delivery, greater control over the call to action for a given campaign, and the ability to integrate content and messaging quickly across an entire IMC strategy (Johnston, Tennens, 2005). Direct mail's cons include high cost, lack of real-time tracking as digital marketing provides, and low response rates (Anantachart, 2004).

Sales promotional programs are designed to capture customer's initial interest in a given product or service, leading to a trial of a product or service (Holm, 2006). The pros or advantages of this aspect of an IMC strategy is the value it provides as a coordination or synchronization point throughout the entire strategy, the quickness of deployment, and the structure of it that provides for an immediate call to action to prospects (Anantachart, 2004). The downside of promotional strategies are their lack of permanence and relatively quick lifecycles, lack of measures on effectiveness, and long-term timeframes often needed to shut them off (Johnston, Tennens, 2005).

Publicity and public relations (PR) are among the most critical aspects of any IMC, in that they share the most relevant and valuable information about a given product or service with the target market of prospective customers. PR looks much easier than it is to do well. The pros of a strong PR campaign as part of an IMC strategy are its ability to create greater name awareness, act as a catalyst of the entire IMC strategy, and also underscore the unique value proposition of the products or services being sold (Johnston, Tennens, 2005). The cons of PR are its imprecise nature, as it will often not be directly applicable to all prospects all the time, it's lack of measurability, and the short lifecycle of this strategy in the context of selling Anantachart, 2004).