MEDIA BUYING

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INTEGRATED MARKETING
COMMUNICATIONS
 The Evolution of IMC
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 During the 1980s, many companies came to see the need for more of a
strategic integration of their promotional tools to enhance effectiveness
and efficiency.
 These firms began moving toward the process of integrated marketing
communications (IMC), which involves at the basic level, coordinating
the various promotional elements and other marketing activities that
communicate with a firm’s customers.
 As marketers embraced the concept of integrated marketing
communications, they began asking their ad agencies to coordinate the
use of a variety of promotional tools rather than relying primarily on
media advertising.
 Companies also began to look beyond traditional advertising agencies
and use other types of promotional specialists to develop and implement
various components of their promotional plans.
 
Many agencies responded to the call for synergy among the
promotional tools by acquiring public relation (PR)
sales promotion, advertising and direct-marketing companies and
peddling themselves as IMC agencies that offer one-stop shopping
for all their clients’ promotional needs.
Some agencies became involved in non advertising areas to gain
control over their clients’ promotional programs and budgets and
struggled to offer any real value beyond creating advertising.
However, the advertising industry soon recognized that IMC was
more than just a trend. Several terms such as new advertising,
orchestration, and seamless communication were used to describe
the concept of integration.
DEFINITIONS OF IMC

 Duncan, 2002 :IMC is a process for managing the
customer relationships that drive brand value. More
specifically, it is a cross-functional process for creating and
nourishing profitable relationships with customers and
stakeholders by strategically controlling or influencing all
messages sent to these groups and encouraging data-
drive, purposeful dialogue with them.
 Shimp, 2000 :An organisation’s unified, coordinated effort
to promote a brand concept through the use of multiple
communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent and
compelling message tools that ‘speak with a single voice’
 
 Kotler et al., 1999: IMC is the concept under which a
company carefully integrates and coordinates its
many communications channels to deliver a clear,
consistent and compelling message about the
organisation and its products.
 Betts et al., 1995 :IMC is the strategic choice of
elements of marketing communications which will
effectively and economically influence transactions
between an organisation and its existing and
potential customers, clients and consumers.
 
 Reported in Schultz, 1993 :IMC is a concept of
marketing communications planning that recognizes
the added value of a comprehensive plan that
evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of
communication disciplines – for example, general
advertising, direct response, sales promotion, and PR
– and combines these disciplines to provide clarity,
consistency, and maximum communications impact
(American Association of Advertising Agencies).
 Features of integrated marketing
communications

 Clearly identified marketing communications objectives
which are consistent with other organizational objectives.
 Planned approach which covers the full extent of marketing
communications activities in a coherent and synergistic way.
 Range of target audiences – not confined just to customers or
prospects nor just to imply end customers but include all
selected target audience groups. These may be any specified
‘public’ or group of ‘publics’ – stakeholders (e.g. employees,
shareholders, suppliers), consumers, customers and
influencers of customers and consumers, both trade and
domestic.
 
 Management of all forms of contact which may form
the basis of marketing communications activity. This
involves any relevant communication arising from
contact within the organisation and between the
organisation and its publics.
 Effective management and integration of all
promotional activities and people involved.
 Incorporate all product/brand (‘unified’) and
‘corporate’ marketing communications efforts.
 
 Range of promotional tools – all elements of the promotional
mix including personal and non-personal communications.
 Range of message – brand (corporate and products)
propositions should be derived from a single consistent
strategy. This does not imply a single, standardized message.
The integrated marketing communications effort should
ensure that all messages are determined in such a way as to
work to each other’s mutual benefit or at least minimize
incongruity.
 Range of media – any ‘vehicle’ able to transmit marketing
communication messages and not just mass media (Pickton
& Broderick, 2005).
 The benefits of integrated marketing
include:
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 Memorability —
 The messages you deliver across channels are more
effective when they are unified.
 The number of ads we see per day are many , so
we’re more likely to remember the ones that make a
consistent impression and appear on multiple
platforms.
 Efficiency

With an integration plan, you can repurpose content
and streamline production and distribution schedules.
Internal assets and communications can also be
streamlined.
You can attach campaigns more purposefully to larger
business objectives instead of relying on scattered and
duplicated projects across departments with
incompatible metrics.
 Loyalty


 An important component of integrated marketing is
understanding and responding to customers.
 People like to know what to expect.
 Customers keep coming back to a brand that
provides a reliable positive experience at every
encounter.
 Integrating marketing works

 Integrating marketing works in tandem with public
relations, corporate communications, media
relations, and other common outlets for marketing
messaging.
 It’s impossible to ignore these other forms of
communication and the many ways that consumers
might encounter a brand.
 
 After all, consumer expectations have been shaped by the
multiple channels they use on a daily basis.
 Customers learn in new ways and do their own research.
 They want to interact with brands in different ways and
find content that is relevant to their unique needs and
tastes.
 It can be a huge challenge for companies to manage this
customer data and respond to it efficiently. With a game
plan in place, your company can show up on the field the
way it needs to.
 Approaches to integrated marketing communications


There are various ideas about what IMC means and
how it can be implemented. The following list of
common approaches should give an idea of the
different ways it can apply:
 Consumer-oriented


 This approach starts by seeking to understand
consumers. Before creating content or messaging, the
marketing team does research.
 They identify the target audience and use internal
data or other tools to find out what customers need
and value.
 The findings determine the shape of an integrated
marketing communications plan.
 Outsourced


 One option is to hire an external team to carry out
research, analytics, and content creation.
 They can look at what your company is trying to
accomplish, how well it’s performing, and what it
will take to integrate marketing communications.
 Then they can implement the strategy.
 Horizontal

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 A horizontal approach is a federation of departments
working together on one initiative.
 Management might promote an initiative across
departments, including sales, PR, and corporate
communications, or they can create a team and
assign a leader to the project.
 The process can form a workflow from planning to
implementation to evaluation.
 Vertical


 This top-down approach is not as focused on
customers. A company might have a set-in-stone
mission and message to convey.
 Starting at the C-suite, leaders can nurture
excitement about new initiatives or products to
employees, who then share this messaging more
broadly or direct the implementation of an IMC plan.
 Cross-functional

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 An approach growing in popularity in the digital age
is to start by planning multiple touchpoints for
consumers, online and in person, to create an
interactive and engaging customer service
experience.
 How to implement integrated marketing communications


 By integrating your marketing communications,
your campaigns will be more effective.
 To adopt this strategy and execute an integrated
campaign, there are a few basic steps you should
follow and things to keep in mind:
Identify your audience.

 Who are your target customers? Use internal data
and research to understand their behavior and
preferences.
 Identify the channels they are most likely to use. For
example, TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn each has
different age demographics.
 You don’t need to use all the channels that are out
there — only the ones your customers use.
 Listen to customer pain points and create personas
that can help you shape targeted content.
 Assemble a team

Identify the departments that need to be involved.
It’s crucial to get marketing and sales teams in
alignment, but anyone who participates in
communications is relevant.
That could be corporate communications, media
relations, or another team.
 Make assignments.

Let a different team member direct each channel, and
be sure that there is a designated director for the larger
initiatives.
 Set goals.

 What does your company want to achieve with this
campaign?
 Set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable,
relevant, and time-bound.
 Decide on which KPIs will help you best evaluate
exposure and engagement.
 Plan the content.


1.Establish a visual theme with codified colors,
typeface, and graphics.
2.Use emotion and storytelling to capture attention and
increase engagement.
3.Consider the history and identity of your brand.
4.Choose a character or quality that can appear
consistently through many iterations. (For example,
Travelocity’s gnome is easily recognizable across its
marketing communication, and The Home Depot
appeals to the identity of a “doer.”)
 
5. Select the voice and tone that is appropriate for your
brand identity, for this campaign, and for different
audience segments.
6. Create landing pages to collect leads.
7.Determine how you will adapt messaging for
different stages of the sales journey.
Establish a workflow and a schedule.

 The more people who are involved, whether as
decision-makers or content creators, the more
important it is to have a clear plan and system for
collaboration.
 Challenges of IMC across
platforms / channels

 Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is an approach to
disseminate a consistent brand message to the target customer by using
both traditional and non-traditional channels and different promotional
methods.
 In this modern era, IMC is considered as a key to successful brand
building. Mainstream companies are investing significant amount of
time, money and effort to create effective and integrated communication.
 To reach different target markets, companies are using tools such as
advertising, sales promotion, publicity, public relations, personal selling,
direct marketing, internet and interactive marketing, etc.
 They are also recognizing that these communication tools are most
effective when they are coordinated with other elements of the
marketing program (Belch & Belch, 2003).
Promotion mix for IMC
Advertising : Any paid form of non personal

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presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, services
by an identified sponsor.
Example: Broadcast , print, internet, mobile
Sales promotion: Short term incentives to encourage
the purchase or sale of a product or service.
Example: Discount ,display , coupons, demonstration
Personal selling: Personal presentation by the firms
sales force for the purpose of making sales and
building customer relationships
Examples : sales presentation, trade shows and
incentive programme
Public relations: Building good relations with the
company’s various publics by obtaining favorable
publicity, building good corporate image and handling
or heading off unfavorable rumours,stories and events
Example; press release, sponsorships ,events ,web
pages
 
Direct marketing: Direct connection with carefully targeted
individual customers to both obtain an immediate response and
cultivate lasting customer relationships.
Examples : catalogue, direct response TV,kiosk ,the internet, mobile
marketing
 1.Identifying and accessing the
right audience

 In traditional business, identifying the target market
begins with searching for audience bases that have the
demand for the product and are accessible, substantial
and profitable.
 On the other hand, in social business, identifying the
right market begins with identification of a viable
problem that can be approached.
 Research (BCG, 2013) suggested that a company should
not just treat the symptoms but rather should fully
understand the problems and their root causes. This
often becomes a hurdle to overcome.
 2. Uneducated Audiences:
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In rural areas, and even in urban ones, targeting BOPs,
who often lack education, brings another challenge to
communication.
Social deprivation made it difficult to get their mental
access (Khalil and Hussain, 2014). A social business
may address needs that consumers are not aware that
they have.
A lack of education may keep people from
understanding the value that the social business is
offering.
 3. Budget Constrains:

 Social business itself is a low-cost structured business. Moreover,
the philosophy suggests that the employees have to be fairly
paid and the operation must be environmentally friendly.
 Ensuring this affordability and sustainability becomes a
challenge. Besides, poor customers often give exceptional
emphasis to getting value for money (BCG, 2013). Ensuring all
these factors leaves the business with a reduced budget for
promotion.
 In the low-cost structure of Social Business, the scope of
spending high in advertising and promotion is limited. Going
for traditional high cost media like TV, Billboard, Print
Advertisement is not always possible here.
 4. Cultural Barriers:

 Studies have shown that deeply entrenched behaviors
and cultural and religious norms are often hard to
change (BCG, 2013).
 Addressing the people of BOP leads the business to
deal with people from underdeveloped areas where
lack of education, employment and awareness prevails.
 People of this segment are often occupied by different
pre-conceptions that create barriers and decrease the
adoption process of new products and services
 5. Media Darkness:

Many of the rural people still live in the remote areas where
both traditional and new media access is a challenge
In a most rural areas infrastructural limitation prevails,
with only few people accessing electricity from the
national grid a.
Many of these areas are thus beyond the reach of traditional
and new media l(www.feedthefuture.gov, 2015).
Profit oriented business might exclude some of these areas
and cover the reachable audience
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