The Power of a Strong Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy

What is Integrated Marketing Communications?

Integrated marketing communications is a powerful marketing strategy that aims to deliver clear and consistent marketing communications across all media channels for a company. Having a solid integrated marketing communications strategy is essential for businesses of all sizes. For example, think about your boutique gym or fitness studio; you are likely using multiple media channels to accomplish your marketing goals. You are likely using some form of social media, e-mail marketing, and search ads at the minimum to drive traffic to your site and find new members. Integrated marketing communications aims to create a strategy that makes all of your marketing channels and communications uniform. When your strategy across channels is uniform, you build a greater sense of trust among your target audience. Building trust among your target audience is accomplished through a solid integrated marketing communication strategy; your target audience will build brand recall through consistent messaging through various marketing channels. 

Tips to Start Building Your Strategy 

1. Define a Clear Message: 

Start by defining a clear message. Since integrated marketing communications is an overarching strategy, you want to think big here. What’s the overall message you’re trying to communicate? Who is your business? What do you do? What makes you unique? You, your team, and your members/clients should all understand the message. Your message should be simple and easy to understand. For example, if you’re a boutique Pilates studio with the best prices and best instructors in town, you want to make these facts a crucial part of your messaging, as this is what sets your business apart.

2. Pick appropriate channels: Utilizing the appropriate channels to reach your target audience is another critical element to a solid integrated marketing communication strategy. Knowing the best channels isn’t a simple tasking; it will take some research and testing. But in general, it’s essential always to make sure our channels are the most effective way of reaching our specific audience. For example, with a boutique fitness studio, curating a community is huge, and because of that, social marketing on Instagram and Facebook can be highly effective. However, running ads on Pinterest, another social platform, may not be so effective. 

Takeaway 

Having a robust integrated marketing communication strategy is vital to success as it ensures clear and consistent messaging that will build trust with your target audience. Stay tuned for next week’s post, where we will start to dive deeper into strategies to develop a consistent message and appropriate marketing channels for your target audience.