How we put it all together is what sets us apart.

Integrated Marketing Communications is far more than a logo manual or coordination of a company’s outgoing message between different media and the consistency of the message throughout. It is an aggressive marketing approach that captures and acts upon customer feedback in setting and tracking your ongoing marketing strategy.

Five steps in an Integrated Marketing Communications system are:

1. Customer Database
   This is an essential element that helps to segment and analyze customer brand attitudes and purchase behavior.
2. Strategies
   Insight from analysis of customer research is used to shape marketing, sales, and communications strategies.
3. Tactics
   Once the basic strategy is determined the appropriate marketing tactics can be specified which best targets the specific markets.
4. Evaluate Results
   Customer responses and new information about buying habits are collected and analyzed to determine the effectiveness of the strategy and tactics.
5. Complete the loop; start again at #1.

Integrated Marketing Communications is the key to succeeding in the age of the 4 C’s.

Bob Lauterborn, Professor of Advertising at the University of North Carolina, has updated the 4 P’s of marketing with the 4 C’s

Consumer wants and needs (vs. Products)

You can’t develop products and then try to sell them to a mass market. You have to study consumer wants and needs and then attract consumers one by one with something each one wants. Author of the movie Field of Dreams, J.P. Cancilla may have exclusive rights to the phrase “build it and they will come”. In most cases, you have to find out what people want and then “build” it for them, their way.

Cost to satisfy (vs. Price)

You have to realize that price – measured in dollars – is one part of the cost to satisfy. If you sell hamburgers, for example, you have to consider the cost of driving to your restaurant, the cost of conscience of eating meat, etc. One of the most difficult places to be in the business world is the retailer selling at the lowest price. If you rely strictly on price to compete you are vulnerable to competition – in the long term.

Convenience to buy (vs. Place)

You must think of convenience to buy instead of place. You have to know how each subset of the market prefers to buy – on the Internet, from a catalogue, on the phone, using credit cards, etc. Lands End clothing, Amazon Books and Dell Computers are just a few businesses who do very well over the Internet.

Communication (vs. Promotion)

You have to consider the communication instead of promotion. Promotion is manipulative (ouch!) – it’s from the seller. Communication requires a give and take between the buyer and seller (that’s nicer). Be creative and you can make any advertising “interactive”. Use phone numbers, your web site address, etc. to help here. And listen to your customers when they are “with” you.
Developing a brand takes into account these considerations. Developing a brand is developing a promise. When you take into consideration the “4 C’s” noted above, you begin the process of developing a brand!