Why your digital marketing message must follow IMC rules

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is a relatively simple concept. IMC is responsible for ensuring that all forms of communications, as well as messages, are meticulously linked together. At its most fundamental level, IMC is about integrating all the promotional tools so that they work together in harmony.

IMC is the digital marketing strategy which you need to adopt in order to take your digital marketing department from different and separate functions into one interconnected approach. IMC takes your various marketing collateral in addition to channels — from digital to social media, to PR, to direct mail — and combines them with one overarching and dependable message.

Promotion and the marketing mix

What is the marketing mix?

Businesses have officially always made use of marketing tools in order to promote as well as sell their work. However, the term “marketing mix” was developed in the mid-20th century. One of its first times it was used was in a 1953 address to the American Marketing Association. During this address, Harvard professor and marketing expert – Neil Bordon – outlined how marketers build and implement a lucrative marketing plan.

Identifying as well as arranging the various elements of the marketing mix permits a business to make valuable marketing decisions at every level of the organisation. These decisions help a company to perform the following actions:

• Developing its strengths in addition to limiting its weaknesses,
• Becoming more competitive as well as adaptable in its market, and
• Improving profitable collaboration between departments as well as partners.

Ever since the 1950s, the aspects of the marketing mix have undergone a number of transformations in response to new technologies as well as other alterations in marketing best practices.

Traditionally, the marketing mix is seen as consisting of ‘4Ps’. These are the following:

• Price. This is the cost to buy a product. The price depends on the perceived value that a customer has of a product. This aspect can dramatically alter your marketing strategy. This is because a lower price seems to make a product more accessible to a broader range of customers. However, a higher price is attractive to customers who are looking for exclusivity. Depending on the price that you want to charge for your product, it must be higher than the cost of production so that your business can turn a profit.
• Product. This refers to what is being sold. Digital marketers must contemplate the lifecycle of the product in order to address any challenges which may arise once the product is in the hands of the consumer.
• Promotion. This term refers to advertising, direct marketing as well as sales promotion. TV commercials, Internet ads, catalogues, trade fairs, billboards and even ads on the sides of buses are all types of promotion. This category in the marketing mix also incorporates public relations, for example the distribution of press releases or continuing relationships with the media. Promotion includes what is being communicated, who it is being communicated to, how that audience is reached as well as how often promotion happens.
• Place. This refers to any physical location at which it is possible for the customer to use, access or – alternatively – purchase a product. The place at which people can access a company’s products includes distribution centres, transport, warehousing, inventory decisions in addition to franchises.

As discussed above, ‘promotion’ is one of the Ps present in the marketing mix. Promotions have their mixture of communications tools. This suite of communications tools functions better if they work together in harmony as opposed to in isolation. The sum of these tools is more significant than their parts. This is provided that they speak consistently with one voice all the time, every time.

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