Why Are We Spending More on Marketing but Seeing Less Growth? The Role of Integrated Marketing Communication

As businesses invest in social media campaigns, paid advertising, content creation, website development, video production, influencer marketing and a plethora of other promotional efforts, their marketing budgets continue to climb.

Yet, at one point or another, nearly every business owner is going to ask one question with an uneasy feeling attached to it:

If we are spending more on marketing, why aren’t we seeing a similar increase in brand awareness, enquiries, customers and profits?

It’s a fair question to ask. The root cause is rarely the marketing efforts themselves but instead the lack of a clearly defined strategy, or as it is better known, integrated marketing communication.

This type of marketing makes a business’s various channels-whether it’s public relations, advertising, website, social media, or sales messaging-work together to deliver a singular business objective: growth.

Activity Does Not Always Equal Results

In an industry characterized by many moving parts and countless data points, one of the biggest mistakes is to confuse the amount of marketing activity with the resultant outcomes.

When many companies get caught up in Doing marketing, they find themselves running multiple ad campaigns, churning out countless blogs, amassing many likes, shares and social comments, and bringing in thousands of visitors to their website. At first glance, all this activity would seem to translate to increased customer acquisition and higher revenue.

It’s busy, yes. But being busy is never the same as being effective. Getting more impressions in front of users means nothing when they don’t register your brand; a flood of web visitors does not equate to leads if they’re not engaging with product descriptions or filling out forms; and an abundance of leads can mean nothing if you aren’t able to successfully convert them into customers.

The more relevant question is this: Is this activity working to move your customer through the sales funnel more efficiently?

Integrated marketing communication brings all elements under one umbrella where they must answer the preceding query. Whether it is creating content, optimizing for website searches or writing advertising copy, each component needs to perform with the singular purpose of serving the buyer journey. This will align communications to produce results as opposed to making them an isolated and often counter-productive group effort.

The Reason WhyBrand Awareness does not take you anywhere significant

Of course, raising brand awareness is useful in making sure that your business is present to people, that clients and potential clients know that you exist and are therefore capable of providing them service.However, getting your brand logo on countless objects does nothing in terms of increasing customer acquisition if the audience doesn’t understand the value of engaging with you.

The reason behind this is what professionals refer to as the gap between simple awareness and meaningful brand recognition. Given how consumers are bombarded daily with advertisements and promotional content, there’s a strong chance your brand-no matter what it’s promoting-may just not have a competitive impact.

A well-developed brand should stand out above the clutter because of the constant and consistent communication it provides across all available media. Its marketing plan should incorporate branding strategy for logo, slogan and mission; the type of content it produces; the way it operates its public relations strategy and its advertising and social media approaches. Customers should know with a high degree of confidence what your brand is, what it represents and why its offering is worthy of their purchasing power.

Your Marketing is Driving Traffic but Customers Are Not Enquiring If you think more awareness automatically means more inquiries, you’re mistaken. A customer won’t contact your company (whether that’s via form fill, call, WhatsApp or walking into your shop, etc.) without having been through certain steps beforehand. They first have to: awareness; understand your service/product; have a need; believe your company will address that need; trust you and your company; see enough value; and feel comfortable enough to contact you. 

You are really good at generating awareness, but you aren't building trust with strong communication - your fantastic awareness campaign attracts traffic but no enquiries. You advertised that you fix a problem, but on your landing page, it's confusing, out of date, without testimonials or it simply isn't obvious what you offer and why it's good. You could very well lose them there as they opt out rather than inquire. This is why Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is a far bigger task than just running campaigns. Marketing… generates attention. 

Communication… builds understanding. 

Branding… creates recognition. Content… demonstrates expertise. Customer Experience… builds confidence. 

Sales Communication… converts confidence into action. Marketing That Does not Convert to Profit Ultimately business survives and thrives on revenue and profits. Marketing expenses and salaries and all your operational costs will only be met through business activities translating into profit. 

This does not say your branding efforts, content marketing strategies and awareness building campaigns should immediately convert into a sale. 

These can take longer to realise benefits but must at all costs be related to building toward overall business outcomes. 

• How many enquiries are you generating for the money invested?
• How many leads did the marketing generate and how many actually got the sale? Is the social media buzz getting the eyeballs of prospects not fans? 
• Is your organic search traffic high due to a great content strategy reaching highly qualified prospects? 

It all depends on what kind of business you have and the industry you operate within and where it is located. Therefore IMC aims to link your marketing metrics with tangible business outcomes such as qualified customer enquiries, new customers, conversions, sales per customer, customer lifetime value and profitability. Marketing and Communication must Work Together There are two distinctly different things that look similar and go hand-in-hand. 

There’s Marketing: creates an opportunity for people to learn about your existence. There’s Communication: Helps these people understand, trust and remember you, your product and your services. The branding process provides a unique identity for the business, while content answers common queries. 

Performance marketing will reach people that are more likely to purchase and Sales communication has the ultimate job of getting the customer to buy. 

But it’s by integrating these different communication processes into IMC that you reduce customer fragmentation and deliver a seamless and consistent customer experience and message throughout the customer journey. Simply asking ‘What are we posting this week?’ is not conducive to the process. Instead focus on questions such as; 

•What are we trying to achieve with marketing/sales/customer communication? 

•Who are we targeting?

•What do we want our target audience to understand/believe/feel/remember?

•What should the target audience do next and by when?

•How do we plan to measure its success?

These kinds of questions create better quality and direction around planning and implementation. Taking Marketing From A Cost To An Investment High-spending marketing businesses aren’t always winning. Successful and sustainable business growth is about effective strategy – and when that strategy’s supported by investment in an objective-driven audience and well-researched messaging… the outcomes are much clearer. 

Before spending a fortune on a new product/service’s marketing try, once again, work to identify and understand what is working, the reason behind this, and what can be learnt. For example, have the more successful marketing activities helped provide good quality leads/ enquiries for your product/service?

What about social media-engagement, is it leading to inquiries or just ‘likes? Where is the customer dropping off in the journey between finding your business and contacting it? And which customers are most profitable for the company and why? 

What’s breaking down the relationship communication with them?

The answer is rarely “just more marketing”, it’s “Better marketing & communication”.

 A More Practical Business Growth Model A simplified business growth model based around 5 stages could be centered on IMC:

1. Awareness: Reach out to relevant audiences. 

2. Relevance: Prove that what your offering is relevant to their needs.

3. Trust: Develop and build trust.

4. Action: Encourage customer enquiry/purchase.

5. Value: Customer delight and relationship building.

This model allows businesses to frame marketing as a business’s full customer journey, not just isolated campaign activity.

What Businesses Should Measure Instead of Vanity Metrics

Some metrics, of course, are not useless. The trap is getting stuck onMetrics without a working understanding of their impact on your business, including… (these types are typically referred to as Vanity Metrics for obvious reasons, but we can do more work when we’re together.))Likes,Followers,Views,Impressions,ClicksandSo on.

But what do you measure?

Consider:Qualified enquiries,Conversion rate,Cost per qualified lead,Customer acquisition cost,Sales generated,Repeat purchase rate,Customer lifetime value,Revenue attributed to campaigns,Marketing investment returns… (and these others). The exact blend of metrics depends heavily upon your business. 

A local healthcare provider, property investment business, manufacturing concern, university, restaurant, or the like will have different customer buying journeys and their associated Conversion Metrics compared to, for instance, e-commerce operators. 

This reinforces the importance of what we term integrated marketing communications.

Integrated marketing communications aims to connect the results of communicative efforts with the behaviour of consumers and a business's commercial targets. 

The Local Market Matters Too

Marketing doesn’t take place in a void. The words you choose, local dialects and culturally embedded expectations of your target customers, the state of your local competition, buying trends, and regional circumstances affect how the public receives your brand. Strategies that work beautifully in Boston might very poorly impact Des Moines. And if you’re interested in engaging local clientele, local SEO tactics, use of local language (not just literal translations!), local user reviews, and uniformity of your local businesses location on the Web.

If you serve an all-India market, for example, communication will need to address various regional variations in consumer behaviour, language, culture and customer expectations. Using integrated marketing communication ensures your message, whilst retaining consistent brand identity, resonates locally. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is integrated marketing communication?

Integrated marketing communications (IMC)is the strategic approach of synchronizing varied communication and advertising channels under a cohesive brand message and set of common business objectives.IMC may involve print media advertising, television commercials, radio broadcasts, direct mail promotions, social media marketing campaigns, public relation activities, brand building endeavors, website optimization, sales promotions, and client relationship management. 

 Why is my marketing generating awareness but not enquiries?

Just generating awareness may not be enough to convert prospects into business opportunities. Customers often require relevance, credibility, a strong value proposal, and ease in taking the next step. Flaws in the communication message, customer website experiences, offers, targeted advertising, or even client communications within the sales funnel may hinder conversions even where a general level of product / service recognition already exists. 

How does marketing help businesses be profitable?

Marketing efforts contribute to profit generation by influencing the volume of customers, conversion ratios, reduction of customer acquisition cost per purchase, customer retention, repeat purchases and increment in customer lifetime value (CLTV). Business goals and marketing efforts need to be directly linked.

How does integrated marketing communications improve a businesses growth?

The IMC concept of seamlessly connecting your website, social media, email messages, brochures, radio ad slots and other media efforts into a singular, cohesive customer experience enhances trust and engagement. With all marketing campaigns focused on common objectives prospects will gain far greater visibility of what your business offers.

Should businesses target brand awareness or sales?

Yes, generally. Brand awareness fosters long-term brand recognition and helps to drive interest and considerations, while performance-marketing efforts often aim for and can produce measurable sales and immediate action. This balancing act depends on where your business is at and how your products are received by potential customers in your niche and in the wider marketplace. 

The Way ForwardIf you’re doing more and more marketingwithout seeingcorresponding benefits in terms of website visits, or enquiries,or profitability,don’t spend more money trying to fix it.