Integrated Marketing Communications - Social Media Marketing For Business Success
Integrated marketing communications have to mesh with your search engine optimization efforts. This week, I've asked a marketing-savvy expert and good friend Colleen Dermody to tell us a little bit more specifically about social media marketing success for businesses.
Take it away, Colleen!
What do you have to be and what does your company have to do to be successful? As any first year MBA student learns you and your company have to be: Better, Different, Special, and Unique. “But,” you say, “I have done all those things and my bottom line is still not edging up! What’s wrong?”
Maybe the problem is that very few of your potential customers know of your better, different, special and unique status. You’ve been too busy building the perfect widget or the most unique service offering on the planet to actually tell anyone about it. That’s where a marketing communications strategy that integrates social and traditional marketing communications into one dynamic communications plan can change your paradigm. Your product or service is on its way to automating world peace so now it’s time to tell your story, to get the word out, to gather the visibility your company deserves. Here’s how you do it.
The transformation from traditional advertising to using content on social media to persuade customers has become so ingrained in daily life that imagining a world without it is about as difficult as imagining the world before telephones and cars. In marketing communications, widespread adoption of social media has created a new way for brands and organizations to engage directly with their target audiences. Integrating your marketing strategy with multiple social and traditional media platforms is the key to engaging your customers to see you and your company’s better, different, special and unique “self.”
The American Marketing Association defines Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) as “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 IMC process has been compared to composing a musical score. In a piece of music, while every instrument has a specific task written for it, the goal is to have them come together in a way that produces beautiful melodies and harmonies. With IMC, each media channel or “instrument” has its part to play in the “symphony” of your company’s offering.
3 Tips to Scoring with Integrated Marketing Communications
- Define Your Communications Strategies ― Creative communications planning and strategy that defines your company’s target audiences, its potential growth markets, and its brand offerings will be your map to the pot of gold at the end of your rainbow.
- Get Out that Measuring Tape ― Regularly reviewing key performance measures and metrics will help provide you the “joystick” or control mechanism for the strategic implementation of your outreach game-plan. Regular reviews also warn when corrections or adjustments need to be made so as to reduce the cost implications of your integrated marketing communications.
- Time It! ― Do some Google research around “optimum timing” or “best and worst times for social posts” and you will find that each social media channel has a “best” time to post. Review your timing to make sure you are posting when your customers on various social media will see what you have to say.
And there you have it. Integrate your enterprise SEO program with these tips to get better traction in social media and online interaction with your prospects. Want to learn more about social media, SEO, video and content marketing? Take an SEO class with Invenio SEO - you'll be glad you did!
Hand in hand with integrated marketing communications is your inbound marketing strategy. Read more about it here.
About the author:
Out to Market Communications (OTM) is a strategic communications and marketing solutions company. OTM Founder, Colleen Dermody, is a nationally recognized expert in marketing communications. Her work with clients results in increased brand awareness and target-audience recognition. She leads national and international communications and marketing programs but most enjoys working to help clients hone messages that resonate with their target audiences.
