Integrated Marketing Communications Communication Being an Important

Integrated Marketing Communications

Communication being an important element of organizations needs to be integrated in all areas of working so that the purpose, the goals, objectives, and the mission with which the organization is formed are achieved successfully. The concept of integrated marketing is applied everywhere in the world by almost more than half of the organizations. Out of which many are the renowned brands who precisely used their marketing communications to build this spot for themselves. The marketing communications require that all concepts of marketing communication come together to combine as synergy and perform one unified function for building the brand. Integrated marketing communications has been a long gone concept used by the famous brands and the reason why not all brands are successful at implementing is that it takes a critical analytical approach to understand how the different communications combine together with what ratio to form a strong competitive force. This is not an easy task when you have to communicate the value of your products or services and you want to build the focus upon clients using all means to create the perfect circle for your customers. Integrated marketing communications strategy can be planned in a way when an organization decides to identify and understand the needs of its customers. This can be done by interacting with the customers through efforts made by the quality of content delivered on time (P.Cornelissen, pg., 67,2001). Clarity of service and concepts, consistency in quality provision and timing plus appearance of the message you are communicating. These factors if delivered correctly can be worthy in eliminating any sort of confusion that could be building on the other side of the big picture. The recognition of your brand through this way will enable you to establish a quick connection with your customers. Integrated marketing communication encompasses a strong marketing mix, which develops the needed strategies, and contingency plans in case of failure of a certain strategy (Hughes, pg., 34, 2007).

Price, distribution, advertising and promotion with customer service are the centers of focus in an integrated marketing communications planning. The planning defines what your target market and your targeted audience would be. With this approach, development of objectives, budgets, analyzing of any social, competitive, cultural or technological issues is conducted and evaluation of the effectiveness of the promotional strategies is made. Unless all these operations are conducted with ethical mindset, the company will not be able to approach its customers properly and will not earn the recognition of their targeted audience (Lorsch, pg., 55,1967).

Body: The reasons why integrated marketing communications is so important this because of the development of more contact points, specialized media, customer power and wide spread sue of internet. In old times, marketing was solely acquainted to advertising means through radio and television broadcasts but now in present times, several points disseminate the information. A person to people marketing has emerged in the recent years as a strong concept. People talk about a product or service, they convey their feedback to the family members or friends or acquaintances around them, and this is how a product or service is marketed throughout. This is how an efficient IMC planning focuses on covering all these aspects of information delivery by enhancing customer service, direct marketing, after sales services etc. with the advancement of media, the niche marketing segments are also reachable by any organization. IMC planning focuses on using the media as means of attracting those market segments through interactive ads and videos to keep them captivated with the product concept (PICKTON, pg.,1999). Similarly the widespread use of internet and development of social media networks have given an opportunity for organizations to target their audience all over the world and develop effective strategies to communicate the right message on right time through IMC planning.

Integrated marketing communications planning as stated earlier is the core ingredient in any successful recipe of renowned brands of the world. One such example of successful integrated marketing communications planning is of Nike Singapore. Nike has been a long gone sponsor of football and has built its remarkable position in the world as the worldwide sponsors of sports. Nike Singapore uses integrated marketing communications through traditional advertising, which incorporates billboards, televisions and magazines. As sponsorship for worldwide sports has been a truly remarkable approach, of Nike, it has used it as an integrated approach to sponsor events such as Super Bowl and players like Tiger Woods. Another successful approach by them is the online marketing service. This service gathers customers all around the world to come to one place online and customize their own shoes using Nike Id. The concept of Nike Id is solely developed to facilitate customer involvement and to understand the customer preferences from all around the world (Carbasho, pg., 45, 2010). Nike came up with a groundbreaking integrated marketing strategy, which was embraced by the customers frantically. The incomplete TV ad of world's fastest woman concludes with the message "continued at whatever.nike.com' helped Nike get a tsunami of customer traffic online. This helped them greatly in increasing sales by a great margin and contributed in delivering a new experience to their targeted customers. Integrated marketing enabled Nike to gather a greater number of people to watch the ad and gain a new level of experience that was never delivered by any other brand in the world. It has enabled itself to become one of the leading sports brand in the world, which ensures that 'whatever' your game is, you have to choose Nike for your best performance thus, targeting almost all sports around the world.