What are the 4 pillars of IMC?

As time changes marketers are focusing more on digital media rather than physical/traditional media. In today’s media, internet became the most suitable instance, which has created a virtual world in our lives. Depending on the new technologies, internet renovates, magnifies and enhances network throughout the world. There is high connectivity between real and virtual life. Digital media is different from the traditional media as it connects all the networking forms. The digital world of living increasingly replicates real day to day life. In today’s digital age, people form networks and create communities based on their way of living, social characteristics and other behavioural attributes. Internet facilitates an ease of communicating, enhances entertainment, online education and so on. People from different societies and from different regions can able to communicate face to face through IMC. (Gang Chen, 2014)

PHYSICAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION

TV, radio advertisements, out-of-door advertisements such as billboards, exhibitions, and events etc., are the forms of traditional marketing but these forms of marketing may not be enough to achieve the goals. Furthermore, in the traditional way of marketing, there is no tracking system available to check whether the goals are accomplished or not. Traditional media always helpful to build brand awareness, mass marketing. Even though the digital media is emerging rapidly, there is always use for traditional media as it reaches a huge target audience at a time and also can reach people who don’t have internet knowledge. (Houndstooth Media Group, 2018)

DIGITAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION

Digital media is not just social media, it is more than that such as direct marketing through emails, usage of social media, mobile marketing, through videos, podcasts, blogs and building customer relationship through internet media. Digital marketing is not just another channel in the traditional. It is a unique method of marketing communication which offers customization of messages, builds personalized brand awareness. It is helpful to track the level of goals achieved, data analysis to make decisions. (Houndstooth Media Group, 2018)

IMC

According to marketing guru Philip Kotler “the concept under which a company carefully integrates and coordinates its many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent message about the organization and its products”. (Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Ltd, n.d.)

According to The American Association of Advertising Agencies (1989) “a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency and maximum communication impact.” (“Introduction to IMC – Elsevier Store,” 2008)

Through various forms of the marketing mix, IMC makes a consistent consumer experience. Each marketing communication channel integrate together to provide a unique brand message and brand awareness to reach the prospects.

The process of IMC is to integrate various communication channels in order to improve and execute the communication plans with the target audience. The objective of IMC is to influence the behavior of the targeted prospects. It studies and analyzes all the sources of a brand to communicate with their customers in order to decide with the best way to communicate in the future.

THE VALUE OF IMC PLANS

Technological advancements create innovative integrated marketing communication. As time moves rapidly the consumers cannot be reached only through traditional marketing methods. There is a wide emergence towards digital marketing and modern techniques to communicate with clients.

Figure 1: The four pillars of IMC

PILLARS OF IMC

In order to build an effective marketing communication plan, IMC requires its four pillars. The following are the four attributes of IMC.

Stakeholders:

It includes determining all the business involved target customers and pertinent parties. Likewise, it includes creating and continuing up a good rapport with them. There is a growth in the number of stakeholders which is due to the growth in the number of people utilizing social media and other media.

Content:

For any organization, content is very important as it is the only factor which can grab the attention of the target customers towards the brand. To develop a content, there should be an in-depth understanding of the target customer. Now, the digital media enabled the target customers to develop their own content according to their demand.

Channel:

It involves selecting an appropriate channel for the appropriate content. Subsequently, the internet media has taken over the control over all the media. To channel their content, many organizations currently utilize various communication channels which have emerged.

Result:

The digital world has provided numerous ways to analyze the effectiveness of the communication tools used. Decision making on various media in order to analyze the result of the executed communication plans. (Kliatchko, J., 2008)

FROM PHYSICAL TO DIGITAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION TOOLS

Traditional marketing consists of various forms of promotional tools for communication. It is the familiar way of communication which everyone listens and watches every day.

Sales Promotion, Companies promotes discount and membership coupons, loyalty programs and clubs, reward plans and impressive combo packages for trustworthy prospects for specific contracts etc. Companies can likewise advertise efficiently through posters, newspapers, and banners at the perfect location.

Personal selling is one of the important tools of integrated marketing communication. It happens when the salesperson meets the clients personally at their doorstep. Personal selling tries to enhance the personal bond between the company and the customer.

Print media, Consist of leaflets, magazines, articles, daily newspapers and other print material for circulation.

Broadcast media, consist of TV commercials, and also particular media like motion picture movie theatre promotion.

Direct mail, involves pamphlets, catalogs, postcards, leaflets, and other which is printed and sent personally to the customers.

Telemarketing involves cold calling, follow up regular calls to the prospects through the telephone. This helps to communicate personalized offers and builds in-depth relationship individual relationship. The personalized network creates a strong relationship between the company and the customer. (Marketing-Schools, 2012)

The tools of digital marketing are SEO, pay per click and display advertisements etc.

Social media marketing, the way of marketing which spreads across the social networks like Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter etc.

Email marketing, through opt-in-e-mail marketing the customers will select to agree on e-mail bulletins. This enables the members to opt-in with their consent and can avoid unwanted data to add on without their consent.

Display ads are the most familiar way of advertisements through the internet which pops into every marketer’s mind. Display advertisement on any website consists of banner ads on the top of the web page, most trending video ads, banner ads, and display ads are mostly part of substantial programs. For example, Google Ad Words and other comparable.

Online advertisements, any business advertises through DPR (Digital Public Relations) will generate a positive recognition to their organization. This enables them to create optimistic online public relations such as tweets, blogs, and positive posts on Facebook etc.

Viral marketing, most trending, and fascinating videos will be shared virally through social media. It is the smartest way of advertising through which the message will be communicated to a large number of target audience within a limited time frame.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisations) marketing, is one of the tools in digital marketing. This enables the business to achieve the top positions in the SEOs like Google, Bing etc. When it grabs the attention of any new visitors it will automatically retain them for CTA (Calls-To-Action) and this will make the visitors travel along with the organization’s marketing channel. (Friesner, n.d.)

THE EVOLUTION OF IMC

In traditional marketing, segmentation is the first step in marketing. It is a process of breaking up the market into various sets homogenously by geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral. Defining the target market is the next step as it aids in choosing the segments according to the market attractiveness. Here the consumer and the brand is vertically related to each other. Whereas in the digital marketing era, the consumers have a horizontal relationship with each other by communities created through webs and other social-medias by themselves based on their behavior, interest, profession etc.

Targeting the market is followed by positioning. Traditionally a company’s brand name, logo, and slogan will be created as a set of images and the marketers will try to capture these images into the minds of their target audience through their traditional marketing tools. Now in the digital market, companies communicate directly to the consumers and make them influenced with their attractive advertisements. Here, marketers adapt and update themselves according to the change in the technology and changing trends. (Kotler et al., 2016)

Formerly, customers have to make their decisions on the available products and services in the market. They were left without any choice rather than choosing on what the marketers offer. But now, in the digital world, the marketers produce products and services according to the consumer’s wants in order to satisfy their needs.  The consumers have the power with them and they have the right to voice on what they have been offered. Today the access to information became ease to the consumers and even to raise their interests and opinions publicly through search engines, websites, social media, blogs, and other networks etc. In this new ear of advanced technologies, it is nearly impossible for the marketers to hide anything from the consumers. (Gang Chen, 2014)

IMC is otherwise called relationship marketing, it is a process of interacting with a definite set of people, communicating a particular message by utilizing particular media. The objective is to bring together the consumers and the brand in order to build a relationship between them by means of exchange of information. The digital communication tools play a major part in communicating the right message to the right customers. (Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995)

In the 1990s, IMC integrates all the digital communication tools and enables to reach the consumer with a customized message. Today, consumers are loaded with numerous advertisements in their day to day life, IMC helps the consumers to choose the message they want and ignore the rest. This enables the customers to have a clear message which is relevant to them and can able to understand, relate and recollect the information in the message.

Trace back to the history of marketing communication, it is, however, dealing with mass advertising, the occurrence of intermediates where the customer and the manufacturer never communicated. Now, with advanced technologies relationship marketing is developing with emerging digital marketing tools where the consumers and the producers can directly connect each other from different parts of the world.

CAUSES FOR THE SHIFT FROM PHYSICAL TO DIGITAL IMC

CHANGE IN MARKETING MIX

PRODUCT, earlier customers have to opt with the products and service which the marketers offer to them. In this digital economy, it became upside down, the consumers demand their personalized needs and want to the producers.

PRICE, Traditionally, organizations use a dynamic pricing strategy where they change the price according to the consumers on the basis of their past purchase records, customer profiling etc. Now, the price is like money which varies relying only on the demand in the market.

PLACE, Olden times, the place was a major constraint for the marketers to reach consumers. The access to stores and the availability and distribution of products and services were limited. But today, the digital world connects the consumers and marketers from any parts of the world. Peer to peer is the most prominent distribution idea in this connected world. For example, Zipcar, Airbnb, hiring cars, auto, taxi, Uber, etc. organizes ease of access to the products and services for the consumers.

PROMOTION, it was the one-way communication tool for the marketers to send their messages to the consumers. But recently with advanced technologies, consumers can reply to the messages sent by the marketers. Like rating system enabled consumers to post their reviews /rating about a brand’s product or service consumed. (Kotler et al., 2016)

TRENDS IMPACTING INTEGRATED ADVERTISING AND MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

In the early days, manual surveys on testing the market, consumer’s behavioral test towards their purchasing power helped the marketers to forecast on demand and attitude of the consumers in the market. To obtain information about the consumers were challenging, expensive and non-reliable. Currently, with the help of information technology, it became easy to collect data about consumers. Through the development of Universal Product Code (UPC), provides a bar code for every product across the world. This was mainly introduced to keep a track on the inventories. But later it was developed to extract the data about the consumers. UPC barcode will be scanned on every purchase of the consumer which aids the company to extract and analyze the consumer’s data. Further, these data are used to correlate with demographic, behavioral and psychographic aspects of the consumers. Based on these data and the forecasting analysis, retailers decide on how the goods of any brand should be arranged on their showroom shelf, in order to grab the attention of the customers. By utilizing the scanning system the retailers will have an account on their sales and can keep a track on the market demand. Advanced technologies make the traditional retailers benefit on stocking the products from the suppliers according to the market demand. (Clow, 2010)

CONSUMERS TOWARDS DIGITAL

The accessibility of internet spreads throughout the world, which made life easier for the consumers to know about the current trend and updates in the market. Consumers quickly step forward into the digital world. The innovative advancements in technologies attract the consumers to stay online for a longer time and they anticipate the same from the markets.

AIDS TO GET KNOWLEDGE ABOUT CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Marketers get the help of the internet to know about the consumer’s behavior while they stay online. Technological innovations provide information on which webpage consumers visit frequently, how frequently they visit those web pages, which are the gadgets they use to visit the website and what words they use for their search.

ONLINE ANALYTICS - Shows the consumer’s interested topics and products. It also determines their search for the brands.

CONSUMER’S E-MAIL BEHAVIOUR - Determines when and how consumers interact with the brands.

ANALYTICS ON CONSUMER’S DEVICE - Determines the consumer’s frequency and medium of interaction with the brand. (Experian Ltd, 2016)

EMERGENCE OF INTEGRATED MARKETING CAMPAIGN

The integrated marketing campaign is the new form of marketing approach, it blends both the traditional and the digital marketing communication tools to form a different method to communicate the content.

A successful marketing campaign uses various channels such as mobile applications, text messages, through direct mail, and other digital media. Currently, with the innovations, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and VR (Virtual Reality) are used for most of the marketing campaigns which is more attractive and is evolving rapidly.

TO OVERCOME THE COMPETITIVENESS

Digital world provides easy access to the customers to purchase the products from different locations. As there is no constraint on the location, it also creates competition for the marketers. Customers across the world would always prefer the company which delivers the products on time in good quality and at the best price with discounts irrespective to the location. Nowadays, almost all the companies deliver to satisfy the customers anywhere in the world. To overcome this competitiveness, marketers should be a more competitive advantage than others and attract consumers towards their brand. This can be only achieved through the utilization of advanced technologies.

DIGITAL IMC ENHANCE MORE LEADS WITH LOW COST

Way back, advertisement and marketing campaigns involve huge cost. Companies have to spend many thousands of dollars to reach globally. But today, it’s vice versa, companies can reach the consumers worldwide within a few seconds and especially for free. Companies need not worry about their marketing budget as it involves low cost, risk, and high changes to be successful.

INTERACTIVE CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT

Internet communication expands and creates opportunities for marketers to interact actively through digital media from anywhere in the world. This also provides interactive personalized messages with consumers like chatbots. Virtual Reality is booming for experimental advertisements which is like a cream work for the companies.

ACCURATE TRACKING OF CUSTOMER METRICS

Digital campaigns allow so much data to be tracked easily which can inform future business plans as well. So, you not only get to measure how successful the campaign is, you get to collect a whole bunch of customer information as you do it. Back in the day, there was no way to do this as accurately or quickly.

PRECISE TRACKING OF CONSUMER METRICS

Advanced technologies enable the marketers to analyze the past and current data of the campaign. With the use of technologies marketers not only can track and measure but also can forecast how successful the campaign will be. Through AI (Artificial Intelligence) marketers can accurately track the consumer’s metrics in order to predict the success rate of the campaigns. (Schultz et al., 2013)

EXAMPLES

Figure 2: Coca-Cola– Soft Drink

COCA-COLA is no more a TV advert, instead of advertising through the traditional way of marking they began to implement integrated marketing communication by story-telling (content marking) through digital means. To coke, consumers are part of their content marketing. They try to interact with consumers through social media ads. Coke gets the content from their fans and usually produce ads on certain occasions like Christmas, world cups etc.

“Drinkable advertisement” is an innovative way to make the people experience a friendly trial. This enables the people to consume a virtual coke. Through advanced technology, they made this work with a software which syncs the digital billboard, digital post and makes the people experience drinking a virtual coke through their smartphones. This turned up to a huge success where people began to share their likes and experience across all the social media platforms and created a curiosity among the others who are yet to experience it. “Share a coke” campaign resulted in a huge hit which created a customized brand experience, this enthused the people and they made more than 2 lakh tweets. Coke perfectly used the social media platforms to create and launch their marketing campaigns. (Jthayer, 2016)

Figure 3: McDonald’s – Fast food company

McDonald’s now move from TV advertising to utilizing digital strategies to grab the interest of the new generation consumers. They concentrate more on customized and below the line marketing. McDonald’s use of multi-device and multi-platform to reach a large number of consumers. It uses to call “Active Audiences” which syncs its CRM system data with the marketing cloud, which integrate the journey builder across SMS, mail and other social advertising channels. With the help of this tool, McDonald’s extracts the data about the existing consumers which enables them to leverage to reach on new consumers. They now move towards inside-store touchscreen kiosks, consumers now can select their food through the app, check for nearest McDonald’s store on their travel way, walk-in to the store, scan the QR code, make the payment quickly and can grab their meal. (Leonie, Roderick, 2017)

CONCLUSION

As time changes, people’s behavior, a way of living, their taste and preference also changes. With the advancement in technology, there is more machine to human interactions. This enables changes in the way marketers to communicate with their target audience. In this digital world, people are more attracted towards sophisticated life and began to spend more time online. Thus marketers integrate both the traditional and digital marketing channels in order to attract both traditional and modern consumers. This enables the marketers to be more innovative in their content and achieve their ultimate target.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clow, B., 2010. Integrated Advertising, Promotion and Marketing Communications 23.

Introduction to IMC – Elsevier Store [WWW Document], 2008. URL http://booksite.elsevier.com/samplechapters/9780750679800/9780750679800.pdf (accessed 12.1.18).

Experian Ltd, 2016. The art of customer profiling.

Friesner, T., n.d. Digital Marketing Communications. [WWW Document]. marketingteacher. URL http://www.marketingteacher.com/digital-marketing-communications/ (accessed 12.1.18).

Gang Chen, 2014. Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications 2014.

Houndstooth Media Group, 2018. The Differences Between Traditional and Digital Marketing. Houndstooth Media Group.

Jthayer, 2016. Coca-Cola: A Marketing Journey – Social Media for Business Performance [WWW Document]. smbp.uwaterloo. URL http://smbp.uwaterloo.ca/2016/07/coca-cola-a-marketing-journey/ (accessed 12.1.18).

Kliatchko, J., 2008. ‘Revisiting the IMC construct: A revised definition and four pillars’, International Journal of Advertising,.

Kotler, P., Kartajaya, H., Setiawan, I., 2016. Marketing 4.0: Moving from Traditional to Digital. John Wiley & Sons.

Leonie, Roderick, 2017. McDonald’s on the next stage of its digital transformation. Marketing Week.

Marketing-Schools, 2012. Traditional Marketing | Explore the Strategy of Traditional Marketing [WWW Document]. URL http://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/traditional-marketing.html (accessed 12.1.18).

Schultz, D., Patti, C.H., Kitchen, P.J., 2013. The Evolution of Integrated Marketing Communications: The Customer-driven Marketplace. Routledge.

Sheth, J.N., Parvatiyar, A., 1995. The evolution of relationship marketing. International Business Review, Relationship Marketing 4, 397–418. https://doi.org/10.1016/0969-5931(95)00018-6

Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Ltd, n.d. Integrated marketing communications [WWW Document]. Smart Insights. URL https://www.smartinsights.com/traffic-building-strategy/integrated-marketing-communications/ (accessed 12.1.18).

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