The 4Cs of Integrated Marketing
A complicated and fragmented landscape confronts today’s marketers, making their jobs more challenging. After years of frequent exposure to commercials, people have become desensitized to them. And therefore, how do firms — particularly D2C brands — break through the noise? In what ways can they reach out to new customers while also saving time and money? Remember, not every business can afford to spend hundreds of thousands or millions on different marketing channels to reach their target demographic. This is where integrated marketing takes place.
For anything to be “integrated” means that all of its elements must be brought into harmony and made whole. To put it simply, we’re aiming to prevent consumers from encountering our marketing campaigns in a way that causes a negative response, or reaction.
As a marketer, you need to bring the whole together by binding all the elements of your marketing campaign I.e. channels, audience persona, key messaging, etc. This is to avoid consumers feeling or experiencing disconnected and relevant to the brand.
In 2001, Pickton & Broderick introduced the 4Cs for integrated marketing and communication professionals. Now as a professional expert, you need to keep these on top of your checklist.
Consistency
It is the foundation of any marketing campaign. It is imperative that as a brand every communication that you do, or say must be consistent across the channels. Executing the concept of consistency is easy. All it means is to ensure all your marketing activities reflect your core message and don’t contradict each other, whether that’s a clever slogan or your company’s brand message. Content, advertising, Public Relations, or social media should fit into one frame of key messaging. When a potential customer comes across any advertisement, article, or website, the consistency apart from visual elements plays a big role in creating a brand recall.
Coherence
Coherence is business formulating ideas that are connected logically. Since the marketing communications are dispersed across channels, your key messaging should be unified. To connect with the target audience, the brand must ensure that the information it disseminates is connected across the various channels optimized. For example, It’s best to use landing pages rather than the homepage of your website in videos, or social media posts that promote products and services. However, if you don’t want to go that far, the landing page should at least be relevant to the promotional content. Since the user would want to know more about the product and would tap on the product link creating a lead/or conversion.
Continuity
While marketing content can change over time, brands with a strong core message can maintain long-term consistency. This would not only allow the key messaging to evolve subsequently but will also create a brand recall. For example, any social media campaign should have hashtags that are common across the platforms and are also used contentiously. This will avoid the loss of recognition among target audiences. Too many different messages confuse customers, who then wonder if your business/service/product is right for them after being bombarded with so many different messages.
Complementary
Take a look at all your campaign components and see if they are in synergy. For example, think of a room that has been designed keeping multiple elements in it and how they look individually, but when all put together they create that WOW effect.
All the parts of your marketing campaign should be used in conjunction with one another, rather than individually so that the message is stronger. It is only when all three elements come together that the brand can achieve its full synergistic effect, as the target audience will have fully understood what the brand represents and will want to be a part of it.
Conclusion
Brands need to put the customer at the center of our marketing with the 4Cs marketing mix. Niche and custom products continue to be popular with customers, perhaps at an even faster pace. By using the 4Cs marketing mix, you can focus on the customer and build products that satisfy their needs and wants.
Authored by:
Nandini Bhupat, Director – Marketing & Brand Communications, Ikokas Digital Technologies