IMC Strategy Integrated Marketing Communication and Customer

IMC Strategy

Integrated Marketing Communication and Customer Satisfaction Strategy

The ability to set and exceed customer expectations on a consistent basis is critical to creating a profitable business. The defining of an effective Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) platform and series of strategies has a direct impact on the expectations set with prospects and customers both. The ability to measure expectations and their relationship to customer satisfactions can provide insights into how best to communicate marketing messages with clarity and conviction (Anantachart, 2004). The intent of this analysis is to explain how a company's IMC strategies drive advertising to align with marketing goals, also explaining how effective of advertising is also measured. As IMC-based strategies also have promotional strategies, that area is also briefly disused. All of these factors contribute to the expectations created with prospects and customers, with IMC being the foundation that unifies potentially diverse marketing strategies (Robinson, 1997). Inevitably there are differences between customer expectations and experiences, even in the most well-executed marketing campaigns (Holm, 2006). Closing these gaps through more effective personalized service and support programs incouding service recovery is an era of best practices gaining momentum in industrial and services industries (Jenkinson, Matthews, 2007).

How IMC Strategies Define Customer Satisfaction Best practices in the use of IMC strategies center on accelerating the accomplishment of marketing objectives by coordinating all aspects of marketing strategies company-wide. Many companies today rely primarily on IMC-based strategies as the foundation of their go-to-market strategies in new and existing markets (Anantachart, 2004). Given the highly coordinated nature of IMC strategies they are also used extensively for new product introductions and launches (Chen, 2011). Measuring market effectiveness is also based on a solid IMC framework, as the marketing strategies must be defined in measurable, quantifiable terms to determine how well a company is executing against their plans (Holm, 2006). Best practices in IMC strategies build in marketing and advertising effectiveness measures as part of the ongoing reporting process as well.