With September over, it’s time to wrap up our Back-to-School blog series. Over the last month, we’ve been posting about concepts commonly taught in marketing classes that have real-world marketing applications.
Our final post in the series is about IMC or Integrated Marketing Communications, something that’s used in just about every modern marketing strategy.
IMC Defined
The American Marketing Association defines IMC as the following:
A planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.
The key takeaway from this definition are the words “relevant and consistent.” The reason that phrase is so important is because it lays the groundwork for reinforcement. IMC is useful because it creates a marketing situation where brand messages reinforce each other.
Hotel Example
Let’s say you’re an independent luxury hotel with limited marketing materials, but you’re looking to expand your marketing efforts. Here’s how you would apply IMC to make sure your marketing efforts were as effective as possible.
What’s your brand message?
You’d start by identifying your brand messaging. Do you have a logo, word mark, or other branding tools? Are you using a specific color scheme? What about messaging; what tagline, phrase or attitude are you trying to convey? The most important part of this stage of the process is to make clear decisions about your brand message. You can’t be conflicted or unsure about a logo or color scheme.
Is your brand message being applied properly?
Once you’ve decided on a clear brand message and know how to communicate it, make sure that it’s being applied across all of your marketing materials. Review not only your current marketing materials but anywhere where customers have an opportunity to interact with your brand.
There are plenty of opportunities to reinforce your brand over the course of a guest’s stay.
Some lesser used areas where an IMC approach can be applied:
Presentation Slides – Consistent template for power points that reflect color scheme logo branding.
Social Media Photographs – Original images can include a subtle logo in the corner, often images get shared so much on social media that the original source is forgotten. Adding a logo can solve this problem, the same goes for infographics.
Hashtags – Make a hashtag that works with your branding. For example, W hotels uses the catchphrase “whatever-whenever” which they recently incorporated into a photo contest on their twitter account by prompting guests to take pictures and tag them with #posewhenever
Answering the Phone- Another favorite of W-Hotels is to use their catchphrase when answering the phone, “This the W-Hotel New York, where it’s whatever whenever.” While this tactic can be easily overused, W-Hotels pulls it off well.
That’s it. Implementing IMC is really just about those two stages – First, identifying or creating your brand message, and second applying that message. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Just remember that the more consistent and clear your messaging the easier it will be to apply.
Hope you learned something! Be sure to check out our entire “Back to School” Blog Series
Part 1: Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning
Part 2: Unique Selling Proposition
