Need for Integrated Marketing Communications

Shifting from mass marketing to targeted marketing, and the equivalent use of a richer mixture of communication channels and promotion tools, poses a difficulty for marketers. Consumers are being exposed to a higher variety of marketing communications from and regarding the company from a broader array of sources. On the other hand, customers don't distinguish among message sources the way marketers do.  In the consumer's mind, advertising messages from different type of media such as magazines, television or online sources blur into one. Messages delivered using different promotional approaches-like as, personal selling, advertising, public relations, sales promotion or direct marketing-all become part of a single message regarding the company. Conflicting messages from these different types of sources may result in confused company images and brand positions.

All too frequently, companies fail to integrate their many communications channels. The result is a hodgepodge of communications to consumers. Mass advertisements declare one thing, a price promotion sends a different type of signal, a product label still build another message, company sales literature says something overall different, and the company's Web site seems out of sync along everything else.

The difficulty is that these communications frequently come from different company sources. Messages of advertising are planned and implemented by the advertising agency or advertising department. Sales management develops personal selling communications. Other type of functional specialists are responsible for, sales promotion, public relations, online sites, direct marketing and other forms of marketing communications. Recently, such type of functional separation has been a major problem for various  companies  and  their  Internet  communications  activities,  which  are  frequently  split  off  into separate organizational units. In the history, no person was responsible for thinking through the communication roles of the many promotion tools and coordinating the promotion mix. Nowadays, however, more companies are adopting the concept of integrated marketing communications (IMC).

The IMC solution calls for identifying all contact points where the customer can encounter the company, its products, and its brands. Each of the brand contact will deliver a message, whether bad, good or indifferent. The company has to strive to deliver a consistent and positive message at all of the contact points.

Integrated marketing communications manufacture better communications consistency and higher sales impact. It handed the responsibility in someone's hands where none existed before to unify the company's image since it is shaped by thousands of company activities. It leads to overall marketing communication strategy aimed at indicating how the company and its products may help customers solve their problems.