Integrated Marketing Communications

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), according to The American Marketing Association, is “a planning process designed to assure that all contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.” [http://www.marketingpower.com/mg-dictionary-view1569.php Marketing Power Dictionary] Integrated marketing communication can be defined as a holistic approach to promote buying and selling in the digital economy. This concept includes many online and offline marketing channels. Online marketing channels include any e-marketing campaigns or programs, from search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click, affiliate, email, banner to latest web related channels for webinar, blog, RSS, podcast, and Internet TV. Offline marketing channels are traditional print (newspaper, magazine), mail order, public relations, industry analyst relations billboard, radio, and television.

Reasons For The Growing Importance of IMC

There have been many shifts in the advertising and media industry that have caused IMC to develop into a primary strategy for most advertisers

7 main shifts

#From media advertising to multiple forms of communication (including promotions, product placements, mailers...)
#From mass media to more specialized media, which are centered around specific target audiences.
#From a manufacturer-dominated market to a retailer-dominated market. The market control has transferred into the consumer's hands.
#From general-focus advertising and marketing to data-based marketing.
#From low agency accountability to greater agency accountability. Agencies now play a larger role in advertising than ever before.
#From traditional compensation to performance-based compensation. This encourages people to do better because they are rewarded for the increase sales or benefits they cause to the company.
#From limited Internet access to widespread Internet availability. This means that people can not only have 24/7 access to what they want, but that advertisers can also target potential buyers just as much.

SEKURU FRANCO (1968)highlighted the issue of marketing in relation to the stigma of sales.

olution: Market Research

They are , , and . An effective ad must capture the attention of the audience; it must be well branded so the consumer properly attributes the message only to the sponsor’s product or service; and it must motivate the consumer to move closer to the sale.

To see what additional metrics are important to each type of media, see Image 1 of this article.

Formula for Selecting Most Effective Marketing Elements

The goal of researching the elements of proposed integrated marketing communications is to create a campaign that is effective across media platforms. Some marketers may want only ads with the greatest breadth of appeal: the executions that, when combined, provide the greatest number of attention-getting, branded, and motivational moments. Others may only want ads with the greatest depth of appeal: the ads with the greatest number of attention-getting, branding, and motivational points within each.

In today's accountable marketing environment, sophisticated marketers must focus on applying IMC to move consumers from "awareness" to "action". Therefore, in order to optimize IMC performance the testing system utilized must be able to factor the abilities of multiple brand contact points to generate recall and to persuade. A consistent metric system using these variables will greatly simplify interpretation of the metrics and illuminate synergies to be exploited with IMC.

Although integrated marketing communications is more than just an ad campaign, the bulk of marketing dollars is spent on the creation and distribution of advertisements. Hence, the bulk of the research budget is also spent on these elements of the campaign. Once the key marketing pieces have been tested, the researched elements can then be applied to other contact points: letterhead, packaging, logistics, customer service training, and more, to complete the IMC cycle.

Some other creative marketing communications methods include: social marketing and green marketing may enhance or facilitate the marketing process of building relationship among stakeholders (customers, employees, suppliers, partners, communities, shareholders).

Relevant Links

* Advertising
* Advertising Research
* Communication planning
* Global Marketing
* Marketing
* Marketing research
* Personalized Marketing
* Rythmic Marketing
* Threaded Marketing

External links

* [http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/faculty/imc.aspx?id=59637 Don E. Schultz] (Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism)
* [http://www.imc.wvu.edu/ IMC Program at WVU] (P.I. Reed School of Journalism at West Virginia University)
* [http://www.journal.siu.edu The School of Journalism, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale]
* [http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/medill/imc/ Integrated Marketing Communications] (Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism)
* [http://jimc.medill.northwestern.edu/ Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications] (Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism)
* [http://exed.wisc.edu/marketing/imc/default.asp Integrated Marketing Course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Executive Education]
* [http://www.journalism.ku.edu/academics/grad_curric_marcom.shtml Marketing Communications Graduate Program at the University of Kansas Edwards Campus] (William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas)
* [http://www.ggu.edu/academic_programs/marketing_and_public_relations/ms_integrated_marketing_communications/ IMC Program at GGU] (Golden Gate University's Ageno School of Business) San Francisco, CA