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Measuring Integrated Marketing Communication from Start to Finish

By Julie A. Woods

Overview

The definition of integrated marketing communication (IMC) can vary based on the perspective of the company, department and sometimes even the market segment. However, most educators and professionals agree that IMC is an evolving approach to marketing that seeks to demonstrate the benefits of synergistic marketing communication across all functions of a company that affect customers. Understanding how customers perceive a company or brand and how that impacts their buying behavior is critical to planning strategic and tactical programs to increase customer loyalty, improve retention and encourage recommendations. It's also the most cost-effective way to design programs to increase sales to new and existing customers.

But many companies have taken a limited view of the impact that marketing communication can have on overall corporate objectives, reducing their understanding of the value of marketing communication. One reason for this resistance is that the value of IMC can be complex to measure in a world where marketing usually moves at a dynamic pace and is driven by a changing competitive landscape and seemingly unpredictable shifts in customer attitudes. Another problem is that many people view marketing and communication as creative functions that defy measurement. However the potential revenue and customer satisfaction benefits of implementing an IMC program can be so dramatic that companies shouldn't ignore the movement any longer.

The Need for IMC

If you think about all the ways that messages can reach and influence customers, you can quickly see the need for creating synergy and consistency between communication programs and touch points. IMC generally involves all corporate communication, public relations, customer relations, sales promotions and employee communication functions. Each communication component, whether it be a press release, e-mail, catalog or survey, must be designed to incorporate the messages that are best suited for the target customer. Inconsistency in messaging can result in annoyed customers and missed opportunities that can clearly impact sales. It's a waste of money to send an upgrade notice to someone who's not a current customer and it can be damaging to send a promotional e-mail designed for young males to middle aged women. These may sound like obvious problems that can be avoided, but we've all seen cases where we've been targeted incorrectly. By developing communication programs and messaging in isolation, departments run the risk of pushing away prospects and reducing satisfaction among customers.

Four Stages of an Integrated Marketing Communication Program

There are four primary stages for an IMC program from strategic research and analysis through tactical implementation.

1. Research - Perform a media audit of all messaging and customer communications, analyze customer perception, perform a SWOT Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) against competitors.

2. Develop a Strategic Communication Plan - Create a messaging matrix for the company, each market segment, each customer demographic, partners, employees and other stakeholders. Define corporate goals and objectives.

3. Design & Execute Tactical Plans - Create multi-channel communication programs with consistent messaging per customer segment. Define tactical goals per program and measure effectiveness during the program.

4. Analyze Overall Effectiveness - On a regular basis, benchmark the impact of strategic marketing communication plans against corporate goals.

Any company can develop an IMC program regardless of their marketing budget or staff size. The key to implementing a successful program is to incorporate measurement and analysis from the beginning. The good news is that there is an increasingly large amount of data available to create meaningful metrics to benchmark your marketing communication programs.

Goals should be defined for both tactical and strategic programs sliced by customer segments. By defining specific goals for each program, you can measure the intended contribution of the program against the tactical goals. For instance, an auto manufacturer can design a regional sales promotion targeted at 18-35-year-old males using e-mail and direct mail. To measure communication success, you can vary promotional messages, and then track response rates for each promotion. Direct mail can be measured using promotional codes; e-mails can be measured by tracking links to local dealership sites and requests for information from the auto manufacturer that are sent to prospects in the region. Results can be measured against different stages of the sales process to determine if they pushed the sales process forward faster, led to better qualification of leads or resulted in increased revenue per customer through up-swelling or cross-selling.

It's important to analyze results on a regular basis in comparison to other similar programs, time periods and market segments. Overall measurement of IMC programs should provide a holistic view of marketing communication against corporate goals and objectives. Corporate goals may include "softer" factors such as customer satisfaction and perceived brand strength. But even these goals can be correlated to synergistic communication initiatives to demonstrate improvements. By performing communication research early on, a company can benchmark its efforts against previous years by factoring in changes in the economy, competition and customer sentiment.

What to Measure

As mentioned above, any company can begin an IMC program by measuring current program objectives against tactical goals. As a first step to developing an IMC program for your company, the table below will give you ideas of communication program elements that can be measured and correlated to tactical and strategic goals. While some people believe that certain benchmarks, such as ad equivalencies, are not meaningful, other benchmarks, such as customer acquisition costs, might be perfect for demonstrating the value of marketing communication throughout your organization. The key is to start measuring right away and define a prioritized list of benchmarks that work for your organization.

Julie A. Woods is EVP of Product Strategy at Cymfony, Inc., a provider of real-time media measurement solutions based in Newton, MA. For more information on Cymfony, please visit their web site at www.cymfony.com.


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