IMC strategy – How to build an effective one in 6 steps

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is essential to the business’s marketing plan. What are the steps to create an effective IMC strategy for the company, like any other process?

Integrated Marketing Communications is a close, unified combination of communication and marketing tools businesses own, helping companies achieve short-term revenue goals and build business growth: brand and long-term brand value.

Join CleverAds to learn 6 steps to build an effective Integrated Marketing Communication strategy!

Step 1: Review your Marketing plan

As part of the business’s marketing plan, the content, such as the target purpose or the target audience of the IMC strategy, must be associated with the direction that the Marketing plan sets out.

Therefore, before embarking on building an IMC-integrated marketing communication strategy, we should review all the essential contents in the Marketing plan, including

1/ Analysis of the environment

2/ Marketing Objectives

3/ Marketing mix strategy

4/ Action Strategy

5/ Criteria for evaluating the plan

Understanding the above contents will help us understand the role of advertising and promotional elements in the Marketing plan, thereby visualizing the position of IMC activities in this plan.

Step 2: Analyze the conditional factors of the IMC strategy

Similar to analyzing the business environment for the Marketing plan, analyzing the media environment for the IMC strategy will help us understand the advantages and disadvantages of the business’s ability to execute the campaign.

Like the business environment analysis, the primary models used in this step include the PESTLE, the five competitive forces, and the SWOT model.

Step 3: Analyze the communication process

Analysis of the communication process, in a word, is an analysis of the communication process between the brand and the receiving public, with the ultimate aim of finding effective communication methods and messages to attract customers. 

Activities to do include:

1/ Analyze target audience (demographic, psychographic, behavioral)

By analyzing information related to the demographics and the target audience’s sociology, we can find insights and big ideas – the duo that makes up the soul of any media campaign. 

2/ Set goals and objectives for the communication strategy

The goals and objectives of the IMC strategy should be consistent with the existing resources of the enterprise.

In addition, unlike marketing objectives, sales volume, market share, or final profit, communication objectives aim to create, enhance or change consumer perception, build or develop, and preserve the brand image.

3/ Formulate an action strategy

In this step, we will look at the use of IMC tools, answering two questions: “Use what?” and “How to use it?” with 5 main tools of IMC, including Advertising, Direct Marketing, Sales Promotions, Public Relations, and Personal Selling.

Step 4: Estimate the cost

At this step, we need to answer two questions: “How much will the IMC programs cost?” and “How will the money be allocated to each activity?”.

Step 5: Planning IMC activities

Each IMC tool is used with its purpose, so after setting goals and considering the advantages and limitations of each IMC tool, we need to come up with plans, budgets, and implementation—details for each tool.

In other words, this is the step of planning IMC tactics, specifically planning the execution of the entire campaign.

Step 6: Evaluate and control

In addition to strategic and tactical planning for the IMC program, we also need to pay attention to the indicators and methods to evaluate the effectiveness of communication activities, thereby drawing experiences for the IMC program—future campaigns.

CONCLUSION 

In modern marketing, using IMC tools and precise IMC strategic planning will contribute significantly to helping businesses achieve their overall marketing goals.

With nearly 15 years of experience in Digital Marketing, CleverAds is proud to be the first partner of Google in Vietnam and one of the preferred partners of Facebook and Tiktok. At CleverAds, customers are guaranteed to have the most effective overall marketing solution, reach the most potential customers, and increase revenue quickly.

If you need an optimal solution for Marketing, don’t hesitate to contact us via our website: https://cleverads.com.ph.