If your customers are unaware of your amazing product and its cheap pricing, it serves no use for you to have it available to them. Promotion comes into play here since it connects with your target markets and lets them know what you have to offer.
Promotion in the modern marketing environment entails integrated marketing communication (IMC). IMC entails, in a nutshell, combining a range of various communication methods to convey a single message and have the intended effect on customers’ perceptions and behaviour. You have probably been the target of IMC activities as a seasoned consumer in the English-speaking globe. You practically participate in an IMC endeavour every time you “like” a TV show, post, or meme on Facebook!
Integrated Marketing Communication
The practice of synchronising all of product and brand promotion activity across many communication channels is known as integrated marketing communication (IMC). It’s important to note that this definition strongly emphasises persuasion, which is the art of getting others to agree with your point of view or act in a certain way. A company’s marketing strategy should be in line with effective marketing communication, which is goal-directed and coordinated. It seeks to convey a specific message to a particular audience with the explicit objective of changing perceptions and/or behaviour. IMC, which uses a variety of communication channels and customer touchpoints to deliver a consistent message in more and more persuasive ways, increases the effectiveness and efficiency of this marketing activity.
Why Did the Need for IMC Arise Instead of Traditional Marketing Communication?
Prior to the development of integrated marketing communications in the 1990s, mass communications (also known as mass marketing) — the technique of delivering information to broad sectors of the population via television, radio, and other media – dominated marketing. Marketing was unidirectional. Advertisers disseminated their offers and value propositions without respect for consumers’ different needs, preferences, and values.
Due to a lack of instruments for measuring results, this “one-size-fits-all” strategy was frequently expensive and ineffective (in terms of sales). As means for collecting and evaluating consumer data, such as store scanners and electronic data about consumer purchases, improved, marketers were able to associate promotional activities with customer purchasing patterns more frequently. Additionally, businesses began to reduce their operations and enlarge their marketing departments.
At the same time that these changes were taking place, consumers had access to a greater variety of specialised “niche” media and new media consumption methods. The mass market has become significantly fragmented due to the proliferation of cable television, digital video recorders, and digital media. Although costly mass-media advertising is still a possibility, it has less and less impact each year. Instead, the majority of firms find that other marketing communication tactics are more cost-effective for reaching their target demographics. As consumers have increasingly turned to niche media, promotion techniques (and marketing communication) have become more customised and segmented based on customer tastes and preferences.
IMC aims to integrate these functions into a collective strategy instead of a functional approach. IMC results in more efficiently attaining an organization’s communications objectives if effectively implemented. Although it is impossible to establish precisely what initiated the transition to IMC, researchers hypothesise several interconnected explanations. Historically, mass media have been distinguished by their widespread inability to measure their results, particularly revenues.
Recently, the availability of customer information (particularly purchasing habits) via single-source technologies such as retail scanners and other related technologies has allowed marketers to correlate promotional activities with consumer behaviour. During the same time span, companies have reduced their operations and increased their expectations for task completion. This increased expectation has impacted the relationship between clients and advertising agencies. In truth, IMC appears to be very similar to promotional strategies, a notion that has existed for many years. Perhaps the word “IMC” was coined due to confusion with the phrase “sales promotion” and the advertising industry’s unwillingness to accept promotion. Time will tell if IMC will become an integral component of marketing communication.
This content was originally published here.
