What is IMC ?
IMC is an approach that accomplish of a marketing campaign, numerous promotional methods are being use in order to support each other.
American Association of Advertising Agencies has defined that integrated marketing communication by having a significance exhaustive plan that assess the strategic roles of using different communication channels, public relations, personal seliing and sales promotion that combines them to get better view, consistency and best communication impact.
What are some of the element if IMC ?
Electronic Direct Mail (EDM)
Company would use EDM to reach out to their existing customer in the CRM system in order to inform them about the brand’s campaign or new product.
Public Relations
This would help firms to foster the relationship between the comapny and the customer to ensure that they have the best service or after sales serivce after purchasing the product. Not only that, it also help to keep track on what is going on on the various advertising channels.
Websites
Websites are use to tell customer about presence of your brand or your product in the online platform to facilitate customer during purchasing. It will also give customer on what is the latest news about your company brand or product.
SEO and SEM
SEO and SEM will help company to be appear on various search engines or PPC to help customer to know their existence in the market as well as help the company to build brand awareness in the market. It will also allow your brand or products are more searchable within the internet.
Sales Promotion
Sales and promotion will help to build brand awareness by giving an attractive discounts to the customer and it may help to improve sales as well.
Steps to create successful IMC
Steps 1: Identify and understand who is your target audience
We have to identify who is our target audience and various channels that they prefer to be communicate. This would help to narrow down and easier to reach out to our target audience. Not only that, we have to find out what are their motivation so that we can craft our messages better.
Steps 2: Pick you channels
Identify which channels that your target audience always expose to so that we can find out what are the strengths and weakness of using the channels. We have to ensure whether the channels help us to reach out objectives. Company would not want to spend resources and see no or minimal results.
Steps 3: Have a consistent look
Company have to ensure that their advertising on newspaper, social media, EDM, websites have to be consistent and this would have a better impact to carry a better brand image.
Steps 4: Create consistent and clear content can be easily adopt or re-purpose to suit different media or channels.
In order to have a consistent and clear message, Three C’s model have to be adopted to ensure that the COMMUNICATION of message to the target audience must be clear and concise and must not be confusing. The other Cs would be COMPELLING as this would be more visually appealing and capture the attention of the viewer. The last C’s would be CONSISTENT as this would help to build a consistent brand image on your brand.
Steps 5: Ensure that all messages are integrated
Company have to ensure that all message are integrated through all the Integrated Marketing Campaign.
Steps 6: Ensure that all marketing teams or agencies are on the same page.
Company have to ensure that all marketing teams or agencies are well communicated so that all advertising channels are well inform and have the same set of brand image across all the advertising channels.
Steps 7: RESULTS, RESULTS, RESULTS
Company have to measure the results in terms of sales before the IMC campaign being conducted and compare with the results of the sales after the IMC campaign. This is to measure the success of the IMC campaign and know whether it helps the company to boost their sales.
Fantastic now we have all the step in order to create successful IMC for your business. Hopefully this would help you to create a successful IMC.
Examples of brand that have done well using IMC
- Apple
It is only the few brand that in the world have high level of brand recognition and the company have consistently have high level of brand integration no matter which part of the world encounter it. They have done a good job in such a way that the store front is almost similar to their websites. Not only that, they have also integrate their website together with their store location which help the consumer to identify the customer experience no matter in which part of the world.
Sources: Reach force
2. Old Spice: Smell Like a Man
It was integrated with videos and social media. The integrated marketing campaign held you attention first and sold you later. According to Nielsen, the sales of Old Spice that was being touted by Wieden + Kennedy created campaign, it rose 11 percent over the past 12 months since February. Sale have gaining momentum. Not only that, over the past 3 months, the sales have also increase 55% in the previous month, they have increase 107% according to Nielsen. Thus, it is important to have IMC and it may effectively help you in the business.
Sources: Adweek 40
Thus, these are some of the tips on how to create a successful IMC campaign to boost your business in the market. Not only that, examples are given too to help better understanding on how to create a successful IMC campaign. If you have any other thoughts on how to create a successful IMC campaign, feel free to share with US !!!!
How much do you know about Digital Marketing ? 
I agree that it is important that the message sent to the consumers have to be consistent. With conflicting messages, it will just confuse the consumers. For example if a brand is an advocate of environment friendliness and are producing recyclable products, however their packaging is unrecyclable, then it creates conflict in the brand message.
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Yes I agree with you that conflicting message might confuse the consumers. I have use numerous product which convey misleading messages. It stated on the packaging that they have use organic ingredient but the fact that the product is mixed with chemical which is harmful to the body.
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Wow Darren, it is such a detailed blog post on IMC! I think I will be able to create a really successful IMC campaign after reading what you have written. IMC is important because it creates brand awareness among customers in the long run at a minimal cost! You know why?
Organisations implementing IMC not only successfully promote their brands among target audience but also develop trust among them who would always stick to their brands, no matter what.
Through IMC, similar message goes to customers simultaneously, eventually creating a better impact on them. Believe me, the end-user does not even think of buying Brand B, if features and benefits of Brand A are communicated well to the end-users.
IMC is more effective as it carefully blends various marketing tools such as advertising, public relations, direct marketing and so on.
Do you think IMC is important and if there is any disadvantages towards it?
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wow! great tips on creating a good IMC campaign! Many brands have really a lot of great campaigns out there. Don’t know if you’ve heard about the Dove’s Real Beauty campaign? I think that they have really done a great job in conveying their message to the world of redefining beauty! I think that a good campaign don’t just leverage on just one platform. Even traditional marketing are a part of a successful IMC Campaign.
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