Integrated Marketing Communications: online leads the way

The increasingly integrative focus of marketing communications can be attributed to the notion of synergy. The marketing mix may be composed of different, isolated elements but all of these individual components are working towards achieving a set of common objectives, such as increasing market share and sales.

They therefore need to be considered in conjunction with one another, fragmented pieces that can be brought together to create a more coherent picture of success, i.e. the 2 + 2 = 5 phenomenon.

But where does digital marketing fit into this picture?

Shimp (2000) defines IMC as ‘An organisation’s unified, coordinated effort to promote a brand concept through the use of multiple communication tools that ’speak with a single voice’.

However, to conceptualize the internet as a single one of these ‘tools’ would lead to belittling its actual significance. Nowadays, linking both online and ‘off-line’ communications in a complementary fashion is imperative to reinforce the generic brand message and assist in facilitating the creation of a unique market positioning.

Moreover, the current financial turmoil lends itself to the adoption of a more performance based marketing approach akin to the digital arena.

Economic turbulence has caused a fuelling of online marketing spend, with a new report by Rackspace claiming that many companies intend to spend the majority of their 2009 budgets online. In this sense, while other industries suffer, digital marketing may be one of the few sectors to boom in the downturn.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Marketing Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply