Integrated Marketing Communications - Effective Communications Elements

Effective Communications Elements

The goal of selecting the elements of proposed integrated marketing communications is to create a campaign that is effective and consistent across media platforms. Some marketers may want only ads with greatest breadth of appeal: the executions that, when combined, provide the greatest number of attention-getting, branded, and motivational moments. Others may only want ads with the greatest depth of appeal: the ads with the greatest number of attention-getting, branded, and motivational points within each.

Although integrated marketing communications is more than just an advertising campaign, the bulk of marketing dollars is spent on the creation and distribution of advertisements. Hence, the bulk of the research budget is also spent on these elements of the campaign. Once the key marketing pieces have been tested, the researched elements can then be applied to other contact points: letterhead, packaging, logistics, customer service training, and more, to complete the IMC cycle.

One common type of integrated marketing communication is personal selling. Personal selling can be defined as "face to face selling in which a seller attempts to persuade a buyer to make a purchase."

Personal selling is occasionally called the "last 3 feet" of the marketing functions. It is called the "last 3 feet" because this is usually the distance between a salesperson and his customer on the retail sales floor. The “last 3 feet” also applies to the distance across the desk from a sales representative to his prospective business customer. Personal selling occurs in two main categories:

1. Retail sales

2. Business-to-business selling