Has your CEO told you that your company needs an integrated marketing communications plan? What does that even mean? We’re going to go over the basics of this plan and outline your next steps.
First, let’s go over the basics.
What Is an Integrated Marketing Communications Plan?
An integrated marketing communications plan gathers feedback from all aspects of your organization or brand and combines it into an actionable plan for your marketing efforts. We are in the age of information, so communication is critical to both your internal and external audiences. This plan informs your marketing decisions across the board, from ad spend to software procurement to organic engagement and reach.
We are in the age of information, so communication is critical to both your internal and external audiences.
IMC plans unify your brand’s voice. It informs any brand communicator: from leadership to human resources to marketing and sales to customer service and retention. For it to work, you also need to involve your internal communications: notes from the CEO, company updates, new hire/promotion announcements, funding rounds and efforts, and more.
It’s also heavily focused on data and metrics, so you should ask yourself, “What am I trying to accomplish? Who is my audience, and how do they interact with the wide world?” Sad to say, a lot of communications—be it marketing, fundraising, technical writing, everything—requires heavy research. Search engine optimization specialists will tell you that the first step to making a site search-friendly is to research your keywords. Programs like HubSpot, Ahrefs, and SEMRush can help with this, but before you get started, you must have an overarching plan.
So, research, research, research. We’ll dive into the different methods later.
Components of an Integrated Marketing Communications Plan
There are several aspects of an IMC plan. Here are the key points:
- Product research and data gathering
- Competitive and market research
- Audience and persona research, including demographics, psychographics, and behaviors
- Goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics
- Budget allocation and return on spend
- Examples of creative
See how I said research three times? That’s how important data is to your IMC plan.
So, let’s dive in.
The Key Element: Research
First and foremost, get your data in order. You’ll need to know who you’re speaking to, how they like to be spoken to, and how others are speaking to them. These three aspects of your communications tell you and your brand what to say and how to say it.
You’ll need to know who you’re speaking to, how they like to be spoken to, and how others are speaking to them.
First, you’ll need to know your product. How do you help others achieve their goals? From politicians to beauty influencers to consumer packaged goods (CPGs) to nonprofit organizations and churches, your brand helps people. (If it doesn’t, maybe it’s time to rethink your mission statement.)
Speaking of, a mission statement is a great start to your IMC plan and learning your brand’s objectives. What is it that your brand started out to do for society? How does your product or service help people’s lives become better in some form?
One of my favorite TED Talks is Simon Sinek’s “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” which explains his “golden circle” of starting not with the what or how, but the why. Once you know why you have a brand, you will learn how to achieve your why and then what you will create or do.
Once you have your “why,” you can move on to the how and what. Research how your customers interact with you and your brand. Think about how you want them to interact with you. Then, you can learn about what your product or service does.
Armed with your research, you start working on your goal.
Goals, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics (GOST)
Sounds spooky, but this part of the IMC plan takes an overarching goal and distills it into SMART objectives, which lead to strategies that have action items called tactics.
GOST is typically split like this:
- One goal
- Three to four objectives
- Each objective has two to three strategies
- Each strategy had six tactics
The Creative Brief
The creative brief is the meat of the matter, and arguably the hardest part. This is where you dig deep into who you really are. (Get ready for the therapy bills.) How do you describe yourself? Are you a big fan of the Oxford comma? Do you speak in puns or corporatese?
This is where you dig deep into who you really are.
The creative brief is also where you get to have fun! Play around with examples of work: templates, guidelines, wireframes, and mood boards. Showcase how you’ll implement each tactic from your GOST in real time with hard examples.
Now you know what you want to do, how you’re going to do it, and why you need to do it. Bad news: it’s gonna cost you.
Final Step: Budget, ROI, and Timeline
Data will speak loudly to the creative mind, but CFOs often need the bottom line: What’s this going to cost us? That’s where your budget and return on investment (ROI) calculations come in.
Data will speak loudly to the creative mind, but CFOs often need the bottom line: What’s this going to cost us?
First, think about the return. Go back again to your GOST and look at the numbers there. Do you want to increase revenue by $6 million? You’ll need to prove that you can do that with less than $1 million. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you it’s a simple add and subtract. I will post a template for calculating ROI later.
IMC plans also include a timeline to help you achieve the “T” in your SMART goals. These keep with your budget, as we all know that time is money. Make your timeline achievable but streamlined. Don’t think you can blog every week? State that you’ll publish 26 blogs in a year, and back it up with your ROI on why that works.
Sound Complicated?
A proper IMC plan can be as long as 60 pages—mine was—but you can also cut through a lot of the work with a simpler plan. (I’ll have a template up for that soon.)
Here is a quick recap:
- Start with the why. The how and what will follow.
- Do your research. Quantitative and qualitative research data are key to a good IMC plan.
- Be SMART with your goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics. Think in terms of specificity, measurability, achievability, relevancy, and timeliness.
- Be creative. Don’t hold back! Be yourself! Draw on paper, download Photoshop, use Pinterest. Whatever it takes to get your creative juices flowing.
- Know your limits. New initiatives cost time and money. Make sure you create a budget and timeline.
If that was all a bit overwhelming, there’s a simpler answer.
Let Us Do the Hard Work
Nine Muses Writing Group is ready to help you create a custom-built integrated marketing communications plan. With our team of experts, we can do the hard work for you. We’ll do the research, personas, competitive analysis, and design a creative brief for you. Fill out the form below to get a free consultation.
