No doubt, businesses are considered incomplete without marketing as it is the most crucial aspect of business. You will get various marketing communication channels which allow you to reach out to the target audience and attain maximum success. However, a planned and effective branding strategy is must in creating up the position of your business profile.
On considering the marketing strategy, you will get to know that there is a plethora of channels and campaigns you should look for when finding the best for your business. Whether you need to stay in contact and top-of-mind with current customers, or to build credibility within your prospect pool, integrated marketing communication is considered the most powerful way.
What is integrated marketing communication?
Basically, integrated marketing communications is a concept that refers to combining all the methods of brand promotion. As per the American Association of Advertising Agencies, IMC is an approach of achieving the goals of a marketing campaign by using multiple ways that are intended to reinforce each other. Integrated marketing communication ensures that all the required messages and communications are carefully linked together. If the companies are following industry guidelines and communicating well, then it means they will most likely earn the trust of their customers and target audience.
Marketing communications and brand strategy are especially helpful for medium to small-sized firms, being the most effective in terms of costs and efforts that is greatly reduced in comparison to traditional marketing methods.
Basic tools of integrated marketing communication:
- Advertising
- Sales
- Direct Marketing
- Personal Selling
- Public relation
- Social media
Here are the various components of Integrated marketing communication:
The Foundation
This stage comprises detailed analysis of both the product as well as target market. This component brings the need to clearly understand the brand along with the requirements and expectations of the target customers.
The Business culture
You need to understand that the features of the product must be in line with the work culture of your company. Before designing your products and services, you need to keep in mind the mission and vision of your organization.
User experience
Find out what the customers think about your product or service. The customers of today are modern and likely to pick up a product which comes in good packaging and looks good. So focus to provide more than the expectations of your customers.
Communication and promotional tools
The internet provides various platforms to communicate with your target audience. These tools allow you to promote your brands through trade promotions, personal selling and so on. By communicating and promoting more, you can strengthen your relationship with your existing customers and external clients.
Integrated marketing communication plan:
The very first step to create an integrated marketing communication plan is to know the aim of the marketing plan. Explore what kind of resources you have and the total time in order to promote a specific product or service. You need to understand that budgeting and providing right resources for promoting products and services through IMC plan are of utmost importance. The other step begins with collecting the right information that includes the information about your organization, brand, features and most importantly about your target audience. Also, find out what exactly your product is offering to the customers and how can your product benefit the customers. Comparing your products with your competitors is a great idea as it will let you know more about your strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of the marketing plan.
The right kind of marketing communication and brand strategy has a key role in promoting product/service for any firm or an industry. Also, IMC will help your business to offer a more user-centric and personalized experience to their customers.
The precise ways associated with IMC will allow your business teams focus your energy on the things that matter for the business and not waste your resources on things that are not closer to your business goals.
However, before selecting an IMC tool, make sure to consider competitive, legal, regulatory, ethics, cultural and technological aspects. The thing you should avoid is reaching inappropriate audiences and causing controversy when activating the tools of integrated marketing communication. This can damage your brand and may encourage consumer spending with your company.
Author’s Bio: Jeff Vardy is a reliable name associated with Step Change, which is a leading and reliable strategically-led digital creative agency based in Australia. It is one of the best companies in Australia that can provide the marketing communications and brand strategy by putting the best energy to help the clients. By keeping in mind the business values, their professional and dedicated experienced team focuses on delivering the maximum to the clients.
