Integrated Marketing Communications - Term Paper Example

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Introduction Marketing, the process of communicating the value of a product or service to s, and corporate communications are part of the most fundamental functions of every business; marketing and corporate communications mediate between a society’s material needs and the economic patterns of response, meeting the needs and wants of society through exchange processes while establishing long-term interactions. In other words, marketing comprises a set of process that are used for creating, delivering, as well as communicating value to prospective consumers in the society, while managing customer relationships in a manner that is not only beneficial to the organization itself, but also to its shareholders. Nowadays, marketing teams are seeking and adopting the most effective and efficient marketing techniques to maximize results and impact of marketing campaigns in specific target markets; increasingly, marketing teams are recognizing the value of establishing comprehensive plans that evaluate the strategic contributions of multiple communication disciplines including advertising, public relations, and personal selling, as well as promotion of sales. An emerging trend in the field of marketing for that matter is the combination of a variety of communication disciplines and channels of communication to achieve clarity as well as consistency of messages, to maximize the impact of communication while promoting the marketing goals and objectives. The fragmentation of media in the 21st century, particularly due to the massive influx of new technological platforms such as the social media networks in the internet age and advance communication mediums makes it harder to communicate messages with clarity and utmost efficacy thereby necessitating an integrated approach (Gonring 1994, p.45). The realty of media fragmentation in the 21st century implies that consumers across different markets are bombarded with separate pieces of information almost on a daily basis and this may be a potential source of confusion if not counterchecked by consistency in marketing communications. This paper will evaluate the concept of integrated marketing communications as applied in the field of marketing with a specific focus on the impact of interactive marketing communications and the emerging role of digital media and digital technology; additionally, this essay will also outline some of the key arguments against the IMC perspective while drawing conclusions on the discussions. The concept of Integrated Marketing Communications Integrated marketing communications (IMC) refers to the use of branding messages that are consistent throughout all the marketing channels, both conventional and non-conventional, while applying varied promotional methods to reinforce each other. The IMC is an invaluable approach that marketing teams world over exploit in their marketing campaigns to achieve their objectives effectively and efficiently, particularly because, applying the different and well-coordinated promotional methods reinforces their influence (Rehman & Ibrahim, M. S. 2011 p.187). The concept has a number of components but one of the most essential one is the company’s brand, that is, the company’s name, sign or logo, which are used to identify the company alongside all its products and services in the marketplace while promising value. Other components of IMC include the organizational culture, four P’s (price, product, promotion, and place), advertising, e-commerce, sales, public relations, promotions, trade fairs, as well as corporate philanthropy. The marketing teams have numerous communication tools at their disposal, which can only achieve optimum benefits if they work together in harmony speaking with consistency rather than singly since their sum often achieves greater impact than their parts. Beyond the mere integration of basic marketing tools, integration also occurs at other levels of the corporate thereby yielding other numerous forms of integration namely horizontal, vertical, internal, as well as external integration and data integration, which contribute to the strengthening of integrated communications. Whereas marketing communications are integrated horizontally across the different organizational departments as well as across business functions, vertical integration ensures that all the goals and objectives of marketing communications are aligned to the corporate aims and objectives at the higher levels in the organizational strata. Internal integration entails marketing within the organization to keep its members up to date, motivated, and committed to the corporate identities, service standards, among other things; contrariwise, external integration requires collaboration with the external partners of the organization such as PR agencies to ensure that there is consistency in messages across all channels. Data integration entails the establishment of marketing information system that retrieves relevant data and information from the different organizational departments including sales, direct mail, as well as the advertising department, among others, and sharing it for achieving consistency in marketing communications. The Impact of Integrated Marketing Communications The IMC is an invaluable marketing communications approach in the highly complex and dynamic business environment of the 21st century due to its profound impact on marketing effectiveness and the overall organizational performance by creating competitive advantage, enhancing sales, while reducing operational costs in terms of both time and money (Porcu, del Barrio-García, & Kitchen 2012, p.313). Generally, an integrated marketing communications mix concentrates messages in the markets guiding consumers through the gruesome buying process while consolidating the organizational image, establishing and sustaining dialogues, while nurturing the relationship between a firm and its customers. Specifically, ICM enhances a firm’s financial performance due to the increased communications effectiveness that is achieved through the consistence of messages across the myriad communication channels used by the organization; a concise, consistent, and clear communications message cuts across the noise in the channels thereby reaching the customers and achieving the intended outcomes of the marketing campaigns. Furthermore, integrating both conventional and non-conventional ones increases coverage since messages are more likely to reach a wider customer population thereby increasing communications’ effectiveness. In other words, stretching communication messages across numerous channels and using several communication tools creates more platforms through which customers and prospective buyers can access the relevant information thereby arousing their awareness, and interest, thus prompting purchases. Additionally, the IMC approach inevitably leads to massive business growth and expansion since the increased sales due to strong market presence prompts the expansion of business to continue serving customers even at wider extents by supplying quality goods and services that satisfy their needs. Increased corporate communications effectiveness creates positive brand recognition in the markets thereby inevitably attracting investments, which eventually lead to growth and expansion of business. Nondescript small businesses have emerged everywhere around the world and risen to great, influential multinational corporations due to the power of IMC, thereby lending credibility to the strong case of the approach as a marketing tool in the corporate world. Consistency of messages and the clarity that arises does make customers aware of existence of products and services that can meet their needs and services thereby inciting purchase motive; increased customer awareness and purchase motive does increase sales volumes thereby sparking growth. Besides that, consistency of message across channels is a show of confidence and commitment to the stated promise of value to customers, thus, it does enhance brand image and customer perceptions thereby promoting growth and expansion. The IMC also does help in the establishment of powerful brand image while strengthening and expanding market shares thereby solidifying the corporate position in the highly competitive, complex, yet continuously shifting global market environment. Remaining competitive in the face of increasing competition and changing market preferences and customer tastes is highly desirable for organizations today, and the IMC is helping organizations to achieve just that. IMC helps the organizations to focus their marketing communication messages to achieve clarity and consistency that is required to win competition since it outlines the unique features of the organization’s products and services besides increasing corporate and brand awareness in the target marketplaces. Whereas harmonized communication does enhance credibility in the organization, as well as its products and services, disjointed communication only achieves the opposite, that is, doubt and suspicion, thereby diluting the impact of messages, yielding confusion, frustration, and anxiety among customers. In that case, the dearth consistency in marketing and corporate communication messages inevitably results to negative attributions of the corporate brand and its products across markets thereby leading to corporate failure as the customer’s trust and confidence diminishes. Digital media and technologies Digital media and technologies have completely transformed and revolutionized the world of marketing and corporate communications and the fast growth rate of digital marketing is slowly threatening to edge out the conventional marketing strategies altogether. With the pervasiveness of digital technologies such as mobile phones, laptops, and personal computers both at home and in the offices, coupled with the invention of the internet, the world wide web of communication, as well as social network platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, the massive influence of the digital platform cannot be ignored in marketing. Digital media and technologies are undoubtedly essential in marketing and corporate communications since they present numerous opportunities for organizations in the future of marketing, even threatening to dislodge the conventional media and technologies, both print and non-print, including newspapers as well as radio and TV broadcasts respectively. Digital media and digital technologies play a very crucial role in IMC since they are the channels through which businesses gain access to the marketplaces, and interact with target customers while delivering brand as well as marketing messages. Digital media and technologies are the favorites of IMC today, particularly because they are faster, versatile, practical, and focused; digital marketing presents itself in different forms today, including corporate websites, and SEO content, blogs, internet banner ads, online video contents, email marketing, social media marketing, as well as mobile marketing (Khan, & Siddiqui 2013, p.2). Mobile marketing and social media marketing platforms have increasingly become the norm or golden standard in marketing, particularly because most people are subscribed to these platforms, which make it easier for messages to be disseminated fast and cost effectively. The young generations particularly, are heavy consumers of the social media content because they spend most of their time on social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and the rest, while shunning mainstream media such as TV and newspapers. In that case, the digital platform increases coverage of corporate communications and the accessibility of marketing messages since they are common with people today more than a few decades ago when TV or radio broadcasts and the newspapers were the dominating mediums. The digital platforms of marketing and communication are cheap thereby cutting down the costs of traditional media and apart form that, the digital platform enables organizations to track and monitor their marketing results. Usually, organizations would have contacted market researches to determine the performance of their products and services as a way of deducing the successor effectiveness of their marketing and/or corporate communications approaches. However, the digital platform has made things extremely simple now days especially because instead of carrying out costly customer and market researches, one can easily check the rate of responses from customers, which help in estimating the success of marketing campaigns in real time, thereby planning early for next goals. The digital media and technologies facilitate real time interactivity thereby enabling a two-way communication while further strengthening the impact of communication and marketing campaigns concurrently, unlike the traditional media, which only provides one-sided communication. The aspect of interactivity in digital media and technologies transforms the dull and passive marketing and communication experiences into richer and more fulfilling experiences thereby enhancing the effectiveness of corporate messages and marketing campaigns accordingly (Khan & Siddiqui 2013, p.2). Overall, the new digital media and technologies are undoubtedly the future of marketing and corporate communications since they are gradually rendering the traditional forms of media ineffective as days go by, which explains the massive shifts to the new media. IMC Counterarguments The numerous benefits of IMC notwithstanding, the approach has been criticized for a number of reasons, which shall be the focus of this section; generally, counteractive arguments against the effectiveness of the IMC approach center on the many barriers that impinge on its successful implementation. These barriers include but not limited to, resistance to change, communication challenges across channels, functional silos, stunted creativity, and time constrains, as well as the dearth of technical knowledge. The prevailing organizational structures in many organizations are too rigid particularly because managers exert a firm stranglehold on budgets and power thereby creating walls or barriers that hinder effective communications, and other interdepartmental exchanges; internal power battles further reinforce and aggravate these divisions thereby hindering the efficacy of IMC. For instance, the IMC approach cannot succeed in an organization where the sales team hardly interacts with the advertising or promotions team, among other cases, due to the rigid organizational structures that enforce fragmentation because such an environment distorts the consistence of messages. Apart from that, the IMC has also been criticized for stifling creativity in marketing communications strategy at the workplace, especially because it requires interrelationships between various teams yet others may want autonomy over the rest. For instance, a marketing or advertising agency may be noncommittal on developing ideas generated by other departments such as the PR agency, thereby rendering the realization of creative ideas from others impossible and the IMC approach ineffective. Furthermore, the IMC approach may limit creativity by restricting the types of ideas that suit the requirements of the overall marketing communications strategy; in this case, the creative teams are not free to experiment with wild ideas due to the rigid requirements that should be fulfilled by marketing communication messages. Different timeframes also impinge on the successful application of the IMC approach in marketing communication strategies thereby rendering it ineffective; the marketing communications may be designed to achieve long-term and short-term goals, thus implying different time scales in marketing. For instance, whereas image marketing aims to nurture the brand over a long-term frame in the life of an organization, the short-term marketing goals of sales promotions are designed to boost quarterly sales in the organization. In this respect, the short-term marketing goals of the sales promotion campaigns may be stifled if they are not balanced effectively with the other long-term image marketing goals of the organization thereby creating challenges in the effective utilization of the IMC approach. Nonetheless, the effective utilization of IMC requires a considerable degree of background knowledge and experience in the numerous marketing communication disciplines; unfortunately, there is a serious dearth of expertise in IMC at the workplace, among managers, and even in marketing agencies as well. since the IMC requires comprehensive and careful planning, it is imperative that managers alongside their marketing communication teams be thoroughly grounded in the different marketing communications disciplines for the successful application of the IMC approach in marketing communications in the organization. However, due to the insufficiency of knowledge concerning the various marketing communications disciplines, integration of marketing communications remains a daunting undertaking for most organizations. Overall, the IMC approach has been criticized for its simplistic assumption that all marketing tools achieve the anticipated outcomes while it is only the most appropriate ones that do, that it, not all promotional campaigns may be effective in enhancing sales volumes. In that respect, organizations are better of narrowing down to the most effective marketing communication strategies rather than adopting an integrated marketing communications mix that may not be effective eventually. Conclusion Ultimately, the Integrated Marketing Communications approach is undoubtedly a powerful marketing communications strategy today, particularly because it enables the application of consistent branding messages throughout all the marketing channels, both conventional and non-conventional, while applying varied promotional methods that reinforce each other. The fragmentation of media in the 21st century, particularly due to the massive influx of new technological platforms such as the social media networks in the internet age and advance communication mediums makes it harder to communicate messages with clarity and utmost efficacy thereby necessitating an integrated marketing communications strategy. The realty of media fragmentation in the 21st century implies that consumers across different markets are bombarded with separate pieces of information almost on a daily basis and this may be a potential source of confusion if not counterchecked by consistency in the marketing communications strategy. The integrated marketing communications strategy focuses messages in the markets helping customers to sieve through the vast amount of marketing communications information they are bombarded with in the gruesome buying process thereby prompting their buying motive. Furthermore, while increasing sales volumes, consistency of messages does help in the establishment of a strong brand image, as well as positive dialogues within the markets, and nurtures the relationship between a firm and its customers. Increased consistence of messages in the different communication channels adopted in the corporate marketing communications strategy does enhances a firm’s financial performance especially because a concise, consistent, and clear communications message cuts across the noise in the channels thereby reaching the customers and achieving the intended outcomes of the marketing campaigns. References Rehman, S.U. & Ibrahim, M. S. (2011). Integrated marketing communication and promotion. Researchers World, 2(4), 187-191. Gonring, M.P. (1994). "Putting integrated marketing communications to work today", Public Relations Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 45. Porcu, L., del Barrio-García, S. & Kitchen, P.J. (2012). "How Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) works? A theoretical review and an analysis of its main drivers and effects, Comunicación y Sociedad, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 313-348. Khan, F., & Siddiqui, K. (2013). The importance of digital marketing. an exploratory study to find the perception and effectiveness of digital marketing amongst the marketing professionals in Pakistan. Journal of Information Systems & Operations Management, , 1-8. Read More