We are currently in an era of disruption that demands innovative, resilient, and agile brands to adapt to a changing environment, which significantly impacts the development of marketing strategies and practices within organizations. As a response, integrated marketing communication has been employed to maximize the impact on consumers and other end users at an optimal cost. The importance of public relations has now become fundamental in the process of a successful integrated strategy.

For instance, public relations can cultivate trust among stakeholders by disseminating your brand’s value proposition, thus strengthening the company’s marketing initiatives. Another example could be leveraging social media channels to enhance brand awareness, promote your products or services, and monitor customer feedback.

What is Integrated Marketing Communication?

Integrated communication is an approach that creates a unified and seamless experience for consumers to interact with the brand on every touchpoints. These strategies blend elements of multi-platform content, PR tactics, traditional and digital communication channels, influencer marketing, and paid promotion to function as a cohesive force.

This approach is crucial because in a world where digital presence empowers buyers, your brand must be present across all touchpoints in your customers’ buying cycles. In fact, over 94% of B2B buyers conduct online research, and 70% of consumers use three or more channels for their purchasing research. Nowadays, there is no single platform or channel to learn more about a brand.

Communication channels in B2B strategies can include email, professional social networks such as LinkedIn, and chatbots. On the other hand, B2C consistently keeps its customers informed through various touchpoints, such as email and social media, including voice assistants and video.

When creating your integrated communication strategies, you can refer to the elements of the strategic integrated marketing communication plan, which can be guided by the PESO model coined by Spin Sucks in 2014. This model advocates for the continuous, consistent use of owned, earned, shared, and paid media across the spectrum to reach different generations of the target audience.

Owned media: These are your own contents, from your Facebook page to your website, blog posts, or e-books; you control them and address relevant topics for your brand. Having the right content on owned media can help you attract new prospects or retain your regular customers through education. You can support your strategy with valuable, optimized, shareable, and long-lasting content to address your customers’ main questions and show them how your brand can help them solve their difficulties.

Earned media: This happen when someone outside of your owned channels, such as a customer, a blog post, an influencer reference, a blogger, a review, a prosumer, or a journalist, says something about your products or services because they want to, not because they are paid to. They are the most credible and powerful because they provide social proof of your brand’s excellence.

Shared media: Specifically designed content for circulation on social networks and generated by users. It provides an opportunity for the audience to contribute to increasing the conversation with your brand and interact with your content in an honest way. When current customers react to your social media posts, they act as an external validator of your message, promoting engagement and community with your brand. Valuable content encourages your followers to share it with their friends, and as more users spread the message, you will continue to gain ground and acceptance in the market. Moreover, it is a form of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) that enhances your marketing efforts to achieve objectives such as increasing brand awareness and visibility, generating potential leads, or increasing customer loyalty.

Paid media: It is not uncommon in marketing to pay to promote content; however, in public relations, they should be used to increase the visibility of owned or earned media. Investing some funds to boost content is becoming increasingly popular as an effective way to ensure that the content reaches the people who want to see it. Paid media should be used to amplify owned and earned media in front of the right people at the right time to ensure that your message reaches your entire target audience.

The Importance of Integrated Marketing Communication

Generates trust and brand recognition – If a brand can reach its intended consumer multiple times through various channels, it begins to resonate with its audience. If different channels do a good job of communicating the brand and the message consistently, it is more likely that people will recognize and trust the brand.

Reaches a wider audience – Using more channels to communicate increases the number of people a company can reach. If a brand were to launch an advertising campaign strictly on subway posters, they would miss the audience that commutes to work by overlooking radio ads and billboard advertising. Having knowledge of integrated marketing communications allows a company to create a multi-front marketing campaign that targets a broader audience.

Drives higher revenue – Once a company is able to convey a clear brand message through various channels to a wide audience, expenses will naturally decrease. Companies are highly competitive and use a combination of efforts to generate revenue, including their research team, strategists, public relations team, social and digital marketing team, design team, and more.

Public Relations in Integrated Communication

Public relations activities can provide significantly greater benefits to integrated communication strategies because they often involve working with many other individuals within and outside the organization. Public relations ensures that the right messages reach the right people at the right time and helps ensure that information is consistently disseminated in the market.

The interdependence of marketing and public relations is the reason why in many organizations, both departments work together or hand in hand with a public relations agency to create and execute a strategic integrated marketing communication plan.

Isaac Newton once said, «If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.» Elevate your brand on the shoulders of integrated communication to gain the loyalty of your regular customers and attract the attention of potential customers, and leverage the benefits that public relations can bring by reinforcing your marketing activities.

Discover our approach and request consultation to enhance your brand with Integrated Communication!