Promotion: Integrated Marketing Communication

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Definition

IMC: Making an Impact with Marketing Communication

Having a great product available to your customers at a great price does absolutely nothing for you if your customers don’t know about it. That’s where promotion enters the picture: it does the job of connecting with your target audiences and communicating what you can offer them.

In today’s marketing environment, promotion involves integrated marketing communication (IMC).  In a nutshell, IMC involves bringing together a variety of different communication tools to deliver a common message and make a desired impact on customers’ perceptions and behavior. As an experienced consumer in the English-speaking world, you have almost certainly been the target of IMC activities. (Practically every time you “like” a TV show, article, or a meme on Facebook, you are participating in an IMC effort!)

What Is Marketing Communication?

Defining marketing communication is tricky because, in a real sense, everything an organization does has communication potential. The price placed on a product communicates something very specific about the product. A company that chooses to distribute its products strictly through discount stores sends a distinct message to the market. Marketing communication refers to activities deliberately focused on promoting an offering among target audiences. The following definition helps to clarify this term:

Marketing communication includes all the messages, media, and activities used by an organization to communicate with the market and help persuade target audiences to accept its messages and take action accordingly.

Integrated marketing communication is the the process of coordinating all this activity across different communication methods. Note that a central theme of this definition is persuasion: persuading people to believe something, to desire something, and/or to do something. Effective marketing communication is goal directed, and it is aligned with an organization’s marketing strategy. It aims to deliver a particular message to a specific audience with a targeted purpose of altering perceptions and/or behavior. Integrated marketing communication (IMC) makes this marketing activity more efficient and effective because it relies on multiple communication methods and customer touch points to deliver a consistent message in more ways and in more compelling ways.

The Promotion Mix: Marketing Communication Methods

The promotion mix refers to how marketers combine a range of marketing communication methods to execute their marketing activities. Different methods of marketing communication have distinct advantages and complexities, and it requires skill and experience to deploy them effectively. Not surprisingly, marketing communication methods evolve over time as new communication tools and capabilities become available to marketers and the people they target.

The Promotion Mix: Marketing Communication Methods. The Target Market is surrounded by the four Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Attached to Promotion are Advertising, Public Relations, Sales Promotion, Personal Selling, Digital Marketing, Direct Marketing, and Guerrilla Marketing.

Seven common methods of marketing communication are described below:

  • Advertising: Any paid form of presenting ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Historically, advertising messages have been tailored to a group and employ mass media such as radio, television, newspaper, and magazines. Advertising may also target individuals according to their profile characteristics or behavior; examples are the weekly ads mailed by supermarkets to local residents or online banner ads targeted to individuals based on the sites they visit or their Internet search terms.
  • Public relations (PR): The purpose of public relations is to create goodwill between an organization (or the things it promotes) and the “public” or target segments it is trying to reach. This happens through unpaid or earned promotional opportunities: articles, press and media coverage, winning awards, giving presentations at conferences and events, and otherwise getting favorable attention through vehicles not paid for by the sponsor. Although organizations earn rather than pay for the PR attention they receive, they may spend significant resources on the activities, events, and people who generate this attention.
  • Personal selling: Personal selling uses people to develop relationships with target audiences for the purpose of selling products and services. Personal selling puts an emphasis on face-to-face interaction, understanding the customer’s needs, and demonstrating how the product or service provides value.
  • Sales promotion: Sales promotions are marketing activities that aim to temporarily boost sales of a product or service by adding to the basic value offered, such as “buy one get one free” offers to consumers or “buy twelve cases and get a 10 percent discount” to wholesalers, retailers, or distributors.
  • Direct marketing: This method aims to sell products or services directly to consumers rather than going through retailer. Catalogs, telemarketing, mailed brochures, or promotional materials and television home shopping channels are all common traditional direct marketing tools. Email and mobile marketing are two next-generation direct marketing channels.
  • Digital marketing: Digital marketing covers a lot of ground, from Web sites to search-engine, content, and social media marketing. Digital marketing tools and techniques evolve rapidly with technological advances, but this umbrella term covers all of the ways in which digital technologies are used to market and sell organizations, products, services, ideas, and experiences.
  • Guerrilla marketing: This newer category of marketing communication involves unconventional, innovative, and usually low-cost marketing tactics to engage consumers in the marketing activity, generate attention and achieve maximum exposure for an organization, its products, and/or services. Generally guerrilla marketing is experiential: it creates a novel situation or memorable experience consumers connect to a product or brand.

 

Methods of marketing communication 

Advertising 

Public Relations

Sales Promotions 

Personal Selling 

Direct Marketing

Digital Marketing: Web Sites

Web-Site Marketing

Digital Marketing: Social Media

Guerrilla Marketing 

Marketing Mix 

Personal selling – when and how Work 

How to Promotional Mix Work

WHY YOU NEED A PROMOTIONAL MIX 

Advertising and Promotional Channels 

Launching a PR Campaign

Multicultural Marketing 

The Objectives of Marketing Communication 

Developing Effective Ads: The Creative Advertising Strategy

Advantages of Public Relations 

Common Personal Selling Techniques

The Key to Effective Direct Marketing 

Direct Marketing in Action  

Advantages and Disadvantages of Web-Site Marketing 

Advantages and Disadvantages of SEO and Content Marketing

How Social Media Marketing Works

When to Use Guerrilla Marketing 

Putting It Together: Marketing Mix 

UNDERSTANDING THE MAIN PROMOTIONAL MIX COMMUNICATION CHANNELS  

Service Marketing Mix 

 

 

 

 

Marketing Campaigns and IMC Campaigns 

Consumer Sales Promotion Techniques 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Sales Promotions 

When to Use Personal Selling 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Personal Selling 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Direct Marketing

Search-Engine Optimization and Content Marketing 

How Content Marketing Works 

Common Social Media Marketing Tools 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing 

Telltale Signs of Guerrilla Marketing 

Guerrilla Marketing Tactics: The Usual Suspects 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Guerrilla Marketing