Integrated Marketing – Strategic Planning Starts with Understanding People.
Integrated Marketing Communications is a phrase used to describe a strategic approach to the creation of a marketing plan, the goal of which is too ensure consistency of message over time, and usher a prospective customer through a brand engagement or purchase cycle.
But, the role of a integrated marketing communications company or advertising agency is no longer to help companies sell, but rather to help these prospective customers make well informed purchase decisions. It is to help people buy. Today, more than ever, the focus needs to be on who not what, on people, not programs, and on their personal objectives, needs, wants, and desires, not sales objectives. By helping these people solve their problems, fill needs, satisfy their wants and achieve their personal objectives, astute marketers can and will invariably achieve their own business goals and objectives. Which is why we start with an understanding of your target audience – the people making the purchase decisions, their behaviours, preferences, habits and attitudes.
While the integrated marketing communication plan includes online and offline marketing channels, at Focus Integrated Marketing, we typically start with a [[Web 2.0]], digitally-centric solution, the foundation of which is a website that has undergone [[SEO - Search Engine Optimization]]. Why? Almost regardless of the industry, and almost regardless of the demographics, the internet is where people are going to research products, services, brands and companies at all phases of the purchase or brand engagement cycle. We are digitally-centric in our approach, because we are people-centric in our planning.
For most businesses, a well planned, constructed, optimized, written and marketed website serves as the organization’s critical communications hub supporting all internal and external communications activities. Today, all marketing communications is invariably pointing and hopefully driving prospective customers to the web.