What is IMC?
Source — kais.me
IMC stands for Integrated Marketing Communications, whereby all forms of communications and messages are thoughtfully combined together to reinforce brand message for targeted audiences.
Instead of relying on individual marketing efforts, this approach simultaneously make use of multiple channels to provide consistency and maximum communications impact. These channels includes advertising, public relations, direct marketing, social media and sales promotion.
Why do you need IMC strategy?
So why do businesses need IMC strategy?
1. Delivering Consistent Message
If you manages to deliver one message across all channels with consistency, then it is successful! As business's message is the most important in order not to lose audience. If business message becomes unfocused and inconsistent, your audiences will starts to disappear one by one!
Source — medium.com
2. Cost Savings
By using the same images and same copy for different media, cost of copy-writing, designing is reduced.
Source — ydr.com
3. Align with Customer Preferences
An integrated campaign helps with providing customers information in their preferred format by specifying how they would like to receive product information, email, text message, or phone calls. This ensures that customers as well as potential customers receive the same information in all communications.
Source — giphy.com
4. Increase the Connection Between Brand and Lifestyle
Through an IMC approach, brands can be associated with a particular lifestyle which can lead to an increase in loyal customers.
Source — dribbble.com
5. Retain Customers
It is definitely much more affordable to market to existing consumer than to acquiring new customers. With the digital age, it is much more easier for entrepreneurs to start doing businesses and there will be more competition in the industry. Therefore, retaining customers is important. In order to do so, businesses should ensure that the same value is shared, and IMC is the best way to integrate these values to customers.
Source — omnikick.com
IMC plans are one of the easiest and most effective ways to UP YOUR COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGIES GAME!
Start implementing an IMC strategy if you haven't already!!
Feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comment section below ;)
Hi Claire! This is an interesting post! Now that i understand what IMC is, I realize that it is greatly utilized by successful companies of today. This has definitely proven the success of implementing IMC strategy in their marketing efforts. When it comes to marketing, maximizing customer volume is vital and it is all listed in the points you shared. From conveying a consistent message to aligning with their preference, this leads to more customer retention and acquisition.
ReplyDeleteHi Sean :) Thanks for reading! Indeed IMC is greatly utilised by successful companies such as Apple, Nike, Dove, etc. This clearly demonstrates the important of implementing IMC :)
DeleteHello Claire~ It's really great knowing the reasons for IMC strategy, which make it easier for companies to work from there. But companies certainly need to put in a lot of effort in the IMC planning because if it goes wrong, not only that it'll gain negative reaction from the public, there will be monetary loss as well which is not worth! For me, I feel that having a consistent and clear message is the top importance for IMC strategy as it will be more appealing and less confusing for the consumer :)
ReplyDeleteHi Jiayi! :) Thanks for dropping by! Couldn't agree more with what you said! A lot of effort is needed and if anything goes wrong in between, public is fast to catch those mistakes and efforts made before will go down the drain. Having consistent message across all channels is definitely crucial for customers to get the right message!
ReplyDelete