Integrated Marketing Communications - Essay Example

Exchange of information forms a vital element, in marketing, besides nurturing and maintaining a sustainable relationship between an organization and its customers or the market. The high competition in the marketing industry calls for elaborative actions by organizations to adapt holistic marketing strategies that can satisfy the existing market demands. The advancements in technology and the ever-increasing ease of information access by customers make it inevitable for organizations to adopt strategies with high impact on the targeted market audience in the open economy.

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is among various globally adopted trends of communication by organizations and companies, as a landmark advancement in marketing, to cope with the competition. It entails the use of a blend of promotional methods that complement each other to achieve the objectives of marketing. The plan applied in IMC appreciates the role of communication in advertising and promotion among other objectives of marketing. IMC utilizes the role of public relations, sales promotion and personal selling to create profound impact through communication, which is clear and consistent, as a marketing strategy.

It also entails that use of other strategies as direct marketing and brand marketing coupled with distinct management of customer relationship (Yeshi 2012, p.220). IMC ensures that consumers have a consistent image of the marketplace using plans that promotes and markets the organization or the brands (Kitchen 2004, p.21). It achieves this objective by employing a central messaging function that ensures that all information passes a common theme and hold a common position. The evolution of IMC is traceable from the 1990s (Sisodia & Telrandhe 2010, p.136) and overdid the traditional advertising method that prevailed in the market, notably in the 1980s.

Organizations, however, broadened their perspective of marketing communication by integrating a number of factors in marketing. Given the various challenges faced by organizations, organizations adopted promotional tools that blended the traditional methods of advertisement. Sales promotion, public relations as well as the use of direct marketing were among the developments adopted by organizations as parts of reforms in marketing. The progress toward IMC involves efforts by firms to coordinate various elements aimed at promotion of their products while maintaining communication with customers.

They abandoned the prior situation where organizations and firm depended primarily on media advertising. Involvement in non-advertising areas enabled the agencies to gain control of their clients was a key change in the marketing, under IMC. The major focus of IMC was to maximize on the impact of communication as a tool in marketing. The use of maximum communication impact emanates from the fact that consumer’ sensitivity or awareness of organization or products is a factor of the messages they get or the extent of contact that they have.

IMC is a sophisticated marketing strategy that differs from the traditional methods of advertising from a number of considerations. The traditional advertising and promotion