SEO
What Is IMC? Integrated Marketing Communications Explained
Integrated marketing communications is a requirement for long-term marketing success. The effectiveness of all your marketing campaigns largely depends on it.
One can easily get lost in what it entails, though. Some universities even offer degrees in marketing communications. On top of that, there are now more media and marketing channels than ever before.
But don’t worry, we’ll only focus on the most important aspects of integrated marketing communications. In this article, we’ll go through the following:
Let’s start with a proper definition.
Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is the process of unifying a brand’s messaging to make it consistent across all media that the brand uses to reach its target audience. It’s a strategic approach that guides communication and tactics used across all marketing channels.
Every organization uses multiple channels to communicate with its audiences. We’ve come a long way from having a relatively small number of “traditional” channels like TV, radio, newspapers, out-of-home advertising, and mailboxes. In today’s digital world, it can get difficult to keep track of all the media you can reach your potential customers with.
Focusing on multiple marketing channels at once is a necessity for many companies. This omnichannel marketing requires a strategic approach to make it all work together toward achieving marketing objectives. This is when IMC comes into play.
There are four main reasons why IMC is important:
- Need for consistency throughout the whole customer journey
- IMC helps with brand-building
- Properly using right mix of marketing channels helps boost campaign effectiveness
- IMC contributes to marketing channels reinforcing each other
Let’s expand on each point a bit more. Some of the research findings included may even change the way you look at marketing.
1. Need for consistency throughout the whole customer journey
The next time you buy something, think about when you first heard of the brand of the product, the product itself, and how you arrived at the decision to make the purchase.
Besides commodities, chances are that you’ll not buy a product the first time you see it. You usually go through a whole buying journey that may be done from start to finish on the same day (clothes) but can also span several years (cars):
This is related to the marketing funnel. It’s a model that depicts how people become customers—from first learning about the brand to making the purchase:
In principle, increasing your customer base is straightforward: get as many people to the top of the funnel as possible and minimize the leaks between stages of the funnel. The way you achieve that is, of course, much more complicated (otherwise we marketers wouldn’t have jobs).
But one thing is certain.
Communicating in a consistent and recognizable way across all your marketing channels creates a smooth customer journey throughout the whole marketing funnel.
You ideally want to build on the product and brand associations you create in the Awareness stage and guide the potential customers further down the funnel. This is what IMC largely contributes to.
Take Wise, for example. No matter when and how you encounter its communications, that will always revolve around the company promising the best exchange rates and no hidden fees for its money transfer and exchange services. This is all accompanied by blue, its brand color.
Here’s an excerpt from one of its top-of-the-funnel organic search landing pages:
Then we have an example of its PR campaign:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKOAZkuP6_E
And lastly, here are a few of its most visited PPC search ads that people can encounter further down the funnel in the U.K.:
Sidenote.
Consistency is one of the four Cs of IMC introduced by David Pickton and Amanda Broderick in 2001 in their book, “Integrated Marketing Communications.” The other Cs stand for coherence, complementary, and continuity.
I’m covering the four Cs of the IMC model here in this article, but I refuse to refer to them as such. That’s because there’s already a more famous four Cs marketing model that refers to the marketing mix. Just be aware of the ambiguity of the four Cs.
2. IMC helps with brand-building
Let me expand on some of the previously mentioned points. Communicating in a consistent and recognizable way is a big part of brand-building. You want people to join the dots between all your campaigns to build and strengthen the set of associations they have with your brand.
It should now be obvious that you should strive to deliver the right message at the right time. But the key to brand-building lies in accompanying all your communications with brand codes to increase distinctiveness.
A brand code, or distinctive asset, is anything that you consistently use in your communications. See how this intertwines with IMC? Codifying your communications should be part of integrating it. That way, you can better link together all your campaigns, maintain salience, and bolster your brand image.
The most common brand code is a logo. Every company has one. The logo alone doesn’t cut it, though. Most companies also have certain visual styles, but that’s about it. You should strive to have three to five brand codes in total.
At Ahrefs, besides our logo and the color blue, we also have two more brand codes. The first is our custom font:
The second is our bearded guy mascot, who’s often accompanied by a corgi. You may have noticed them in the header image of this article:
If not, here they are again:
One last point is regarding brand codes and IMC. When you start to think that you’re pushing the codes into your communications too much, codify even more. As marketers, we perceive this differently from the target audience. What’s overwhelming for us may just be the threshold for people consistently noticing the codes.
3. Properly using right mix of marketing channels helps boost campaign effectiveness
IMC makes you rethink what marketing channels you’re on and how you use them. There are now myriads of ways to reach people online and offline. But let’s face it: Unless you’re selling products to the mass market, you should be rather picky with your choices. You can’t likely do much with an industrial B2B product on TikTok, and it is hard to integrate that with the rest of your communication channels.
On the other hand, you should strive to have a great presence on all the relevant channels and media. Research suggests the more media channels in the mix, the more effective the campaign is likely to be. I know. It’s easier said than done, given the limited resources in every company.
Speaking of resources…
Generally, the most ideal approach to integrating your communications is to spend 60% of your budget on the brand-building part and the remaining 40% on uplifting sales. This is based on one of the most insightful and valuable marketing researches of the past two decades:
Your marketing channels mix should reflect the approximate 60:40 ratio. Some are more suitable for brand-building (TV, billboards, YouTube ads), while others are better for sales activation (search ads, remarketing ads). There will be overlaps in the purpose of many channels too, so don’t worry about trying to be accurate here.
4. IMC contributes to marketing channels reinforcing each other
When you do communication right, marketing channels have the ability to make each other more powerful as your company grows. This concept of “marketing flywheel” was popularized by Rand Fishkin, and the best way to explain it in detail is to show you one of the flywheel diagrams:
As long as your marketing channels are properly integrated, you can rely on this flywheel effect. Ahrefs is proof of that. The main marketing driver behind our growth is the long-term, compounding effect of word-of-mouth marketing combined with SEO and content marketing.
Enough theory. Let’s take a look at three specific examples of well-integrated marketing communications in practice.
Patagonia – Reflecting what it stands for
There are not many companies like Patagonia, a brand that reflects core values in its communications and actions.
Patagonia constantly succeeds in making the point that it cares about the planet and sustainability. This was its Black Friday ad, for example:
It sometimes goes way beyond anyone’s expectations, such as cutting off one of its main marketing channels for good:
Patagonia stopped all paid advertising on Facebook platforms in June 2020 because they spread hate speech and misinformation about climate change and our democracy. We continue to stand by that boycott 16 months later.
— Patagonia (@patagonia) October 28, 2021
This directly affects its business and goes against the practice of utilizing as many suitable marketing channels as possible. But this may be balanced by the reinforcing of its brand image and it staying true to the company values.
If that’s not enough, the company even gets political at times. Patagonia sued former President Donald Trump’s administration to support its environmental causes with this:
I don’t know how this activism affected sales, but one thing is clear: Patagonia is consistent and believable in what it stands for. You can’t say that about many other companies promoting a “higher good.” Just recall some controversial Pepsi or Gillette ads.
Sephora – Masterclass in codifying communications
Remember the part about codifying what you put out into the world to the point where it seems exceedingly overwhelming to you? Sephora does a great job at maximizing the exposure of its distinctive assets.
First of all, it has a carefully selected palette of brand codes:
Sephora utilizes its name, the curved “S” logo (some people refer to it as “flame”), black and white stripes, and the color red as a contrasting element. These are simple yet effective when you look at the brand’s communications.
Here’s one of its sales activation FB ads running at the time of me writing this article:
Basically, when the target audience sees a cosmetic ad that’s black and white with some red elements, Sephora is most likely what comes to mind for most of them—and they may not even need to check the ad’s details.
But I think Sephora’s real-life presence is even better (from a communications and branding perspective). Its store design is a branding masterpiece:
Then you can see its customers walking around with this:
Yes, even a simple paper bag can be a tool that you can integrate with your communication strategy.
To wrap this up, here’s a good celebration and summary of its brand codes usage in a rather unusual ad format:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0WuHSaSa1s
Ahrefs – Everything revolves around the product
It would be hypocritical to sell you the idea of implementing IMC if we didn’t adhere to its principles ourselves. So here’s an example based on our own approach to marketing and communications.
Ahrefs is a product-led B2B SaaS company. We didn’t have a single dedicated marketing team member in the first four years of our existence. We still don’t have a sales team despite being a $100M+ ARR company. The value of our SEO product is the main driver behind our growth.
We now have solid marketing operations in place, but the focus is still on the product. We don’t shy away from communicating this focus on our product even in somewhat unusual ways:
Nevertheless, the most important part of our communications is product-led content. Browse through our blog, watch our YouTube videos, and check out our social media posts. You’ll encounter countless ways of our product naturally being part of the conversation:
Talking about SEO and showing Ahrefs’ interface as a natural part of discussing multiple ways to reduce customer acquisition cost.
This YouTube comment on one of our videos perfectly sums up what we’re going for:
We even have our own private community (made up of our customers) that gets to learn about all the news first:
But rest assured. This information then gets shared on all the other distribution channels mentioned earlier.
Final thoughts
If I have to summarize the essence of IMC and its best practices, I’ll do so with these four points:
- Be consistent with the message you send out to the world
- Make all your marketing channels work together in the long term
- The more channels you use, the better—as long as you can find your audience there
- Split your marketing budget into approximately 60% brand-building and 40% short-term sales-boosting
Basically, if you have a good marketing strategy based on solid market research, you’ll be great at IMC without even knowing you do IMC.
Got any questions? Ping me on Twitter.
![Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Holistic-Marketing-Strategies-That-Drive-Revenue-SaaS-Case-Study-400x240.png "Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]")
![Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Holistic-Marketing-Strategies-That-Drive-Revenue-SaaS-Case-Study-80x80.png "Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]")
SEO
Client-Side Vs. Server-Side Rendering
Faster webpage loading times play a big part in user experience and SEO, with page load speed a key determining factor for Google’s algorithm.
A front-end web developer must decide the best way to render a website so it delivers a fast experience and dynamic content.
Two popular rendering methods include client-side rendering (CSR) and server-side rendering (SSR).
All websites have different requirements, so understanding the difference between client-side and server-side rendering can help you render your website to match your business goals.
Google & JavaScript
Google has extensive documentation on how it handles JavaScript, and Googlers offer insights and answer JavaScript questions regularly through various formats – both official and unofficial.
For example, in a Search Off The Record podcast, it was discussed that Google renders all pages for Search, including JavaScript-heavy ones.
This sparked a substantial conversation on LinkedIn, and another couple of takeaways from both the podcast and proceeding discussions are that:
- Google doesn’t track how expensive it is to render specific pages.
- Google renders all pages to see content – regardless if it uses JavaScript or not.
The conversation as a whole has helped to dispel many myths and misconceptions about how Google might have approached JavaScript and allocated resources.
Martin Splitt’s full comment on LinkedIn covering this was:
“We don’t keep track of “how expensive was this page for us?” or something. We know that a substantial part of the web uses JavaScript to add, remove, change content on web pages. We just have to render, to see it all. It doesn’t really matter if a page does or does not use JavaScript, because we can only be reasonably sure to see all content once it’s rendered.”
Martin also confirmed a queue and potential delay between crawling and indexing, but not just because something is JavaScript or not, and it’s not an “opaque” issue that the presence of JavaScript is the root cause of URLs not being indexed.
General JavaScript Best Practices
Before we get into the client-side versus server-side debate, it’s important that we also follow general best practices for either of these approaches to work:
- Don’t block JavaScript resources through Robots.txt or server rules.
- Avoid render blocking.
- Avoid injecting JavaScript in the DOM.
What Is Client-Side Rendering, And How Does It Work?
Client-side rendering is a relatively new approach to rendering websites.
It became popular when JavaScript libraries started integrating it, with Angular and React.js being some of the best examples of libraries used in this type of rendering.
It works by rendering a website’s JavaScript in your browser rather than on the server.
The server responds with a bare-bones HTML document containing the JS files instead of getting all the content from the HTML document.
While the initial upload time is a bit slow, the subsequent page loads will be rapid as they aren’t reliant on a different HTML page per route.
From managing logic to retrieving data from an API, client-rendered sites do everything “independently.” The page is available after the code is executed because every page the user visits and its corresponding URL are created dynamically.
The CSR process is as follows:
- The user enters the URL they wish to visit in the address bar.
- A data request is sent to the server at the specified URL.
- On the client’s first request for the site, the server delivers the static files (CSS and HTML) to the client’s browser.
- The client browser will download the HTML content first, followed by JavaScript. These HTML files connect the JavaScript, starting the loading process by displaying loading symbols the developer defines to the user. At this stage, the website is still not visible to the user.
- After the JavaScript is downloaded, content is dynamically generated on the client’s browser.
- The web content becomes visible as the client navigates and interacts with the website.
What Is Server-Side Rendering, And How Does It Work?
Server-side rendering is the more common technique for displaying information on a screen.
The web browser submits a request for information from the server, fetching user-specific data to populate and sending a fully rendered HTML page to the client.
Every time the user visits a new page on the site, the server will repeat the entire process.
Here’s how the SSR process goes step-by-step:
- The user enters the URL they wish to visit in the address bar.
- The server serves a ready-to-be-rendered HTML response to the browser.
- The browser renders the page (now viewable) and downloads JavaScript.
- The browser executes React, thus making the page interactable.
What Are The Differences Between Client-Side And Server-Side Rendering?
The main difference between these two rendering approaches is in the algorithms of their operation. CSR shows an empty page before loading, while SSR displays a fully-rendered HTML page on the first load.
This gives server-side rendering a speed advantage over client-side rendering, as the browser doesn’t need to process large JavaScript files. Content is often visible within a couple of milliseconds.
Search engines can crawl the site for better SEO, making it easy to index your webpages. This readability in the form of text is precisely the way SSR sites appear in the browser.
However, client-side rendering is a cheaper option for website owners.
It relieves the load on your servers, passing the responsibility of rendering to the client (the bot or user trying to view your page). It also offers rich site interactions by providing fast website interaction after the initial load.
Fewer HTTP requests are made to the server with CSR, unlike in SSR, where each page is rendered from scratch, resulting in a slower transition between pages.
SSR can also buckle under a high server load if the server receives many simultaneous requests from different users.
The drawback of CSR is the longer initial loading time. This can impact SEO; crawlers might not wait for the content to load and exit the site.
This two-phased approach raises the possibility of seeing empty content on your page by missing JavaScript content after first crawling and indexing the HTML of a page. Remember that, in most cases, CSR requires an external library.
When To Use Server-Side Rendering
If you want to improve your Google visibility and rank high in the search engine results pages (SERPs), server-side rendering is the number one choice.
E-learning websites, online marketplaces, and applications with a straightforward user interface with fewer pages, features, and dynamic data all benefit from this type of rendering.
When To Use Client-Side Rendering
Client-side rendering is usually paired with dynamic web apps like social networks or online messengers. This is because these apps’ information constantly changes and must deal with large and dynamic data to perform fast updates to meet user demand.
The focus here is on a rich site with many users, prioritizing the user experience over SEO.
Which Is Better: Server-Side Or Client-Side Rendering?
When determining which approach is best, you need to not only take into consideration your SEO needs but also how the website works for users and delivers value.
Think about your project and how your chosen rendering will impact your position in the SERPs and your website’s user experience.
Generally, CSR is better for dynamic websites, while SSR is best suited for static websites.
Content Refresh Frequency
Websites that feature highly dynamic information, such as gambling or FOREX websites, update their content every second, meaning you’d likely choose CSR over SSR in this scenario – or choose to use CSR for specific landing pages and not all pages, depending on your user acquisition strategy.
SSR is more effective if your site’s content doesn’t require much user interaction. It positively influences accessibility, page load times, SEO, and social media support.
On the other hand, CSR is excellent for providing cost-effective rendering for web applications, and it’s easier to build and maintain; it’s better for First Input Delay (FID).
Another CSR consideration is that meta tags (description, title), canonical URLs, and Hreflang tags should be rendered server-side or presented in the initial HTML response for the crawlers to identify them as soon as possible, and not only appear in the rendered HTML.
Platform Considerations
CSR technology tends to be more expensive to maintain because the hourly rate for developers skilled in React.js or Node.js is generally higher than that for PHP or WordPress developers.
Additionally, there are fewer ready-made plugins or out-of-the-box solutions available for CSR frameworks compared to the larger plugin ecosystem that WordPress users have access too.
For those considering a headless WordPress setup, such as using Frontity, it’s important to note that you’ll need to hire both React.js developers and PHP developers.
This is because headless WordPress relies on React.js for the front end while still requiring PHP for the back end.
It’s important to remember that not all WordPress plugins are compatible with headless setups, which could limit functionality or require additional custom development.
Website Functionality & Purpose
Sometimes, you don’t have to choose between the two as hybrid solutions are available. Both SSR and CSR can be implemented within a single website or webpage.
For example, in an online marketplace, pages with product descriptions can be rendered on the server, as they are static and need to be easily indexed by search engines.
Staying with ecommerce, if you have high levels of personalization for users on a number of pages, you won’t be able to SSR render the content for bots, so you will need to define some form of default content for Googlebot which crawls cookieless and stateless.
Pages like user accounts don’t need to be ranked in the search engine results pages (SERPs), so a CRS approach might be better for UX.
Both CSR and SSR are popular approaches to rendering websites. You and your team need to make this decision at the initial stage of product development.
More resources:
Featured Image: TippaPatt/Shutterstock
SEO
HubSpot Rolls Out AI-Powered Marketing Tools
HubSpot announced a push into AI this week at its annual Inbound marketing conference, launching “Breeze.”
Breeze is an artificial intelligence layer integrated across the company’s marketing, sales, and customer service software.
According to HubSpot, the goal is to provide marketers with easier, faster, and more unified solutions as digital channels become oversaturated.
Karen Ng, VP of Product at HubSpot, tells Search Engine Journal in an interview:
“We’re trying to create really powerful tools for marketers to rise above the noise that’s happening now with a lot of this AI-generated content. We might help you generate titles or a blog content…but we do expect kind of a human there to be a co-assist in that.”
Breeze AI Covers Copilot, Workflow Agents, Data Enrichment
The Breeze layer includes three main components.
Breeze Copilot
An AI assistant that provides personalized recommendations and suggestions based on data in HubSpot’s CRM.
Ng explained:
“It’s a chat-based AI companion that assists with tasks everywhere – in HubSpot, the browser, and mobile.”
Breeze Agents
A set of four agents that can automate entire workflows like content generation, social media campaigns, prospecting, and customer support without human input.
Ng added the following context:
“Agents allow you to automate a lot of those workflows. But it’s still, you know, we might generate for you a content backlog. But taking a look at that content backlog, and knowing what you publish is still a really important key of it right now.”
Breeze Intelligence
Combines HubSpot customer data with third-party sources to build richer profiles.
Ng stated:
“It’s really important that we’re bringing together data that can be trusted. We know your AI is really only as good as the data that it’s actually trained on.”
Addressing AI Content Quality
While prioritizing AI-driven productivity, Ng acknowledged the need for human oversight of AI content:
“We really do need eyes on it still…We think of that content generation as still human-assisted.”
Marketing Hub Updates
Beyond Breeze, HubSpot is updating Marketing Hub with tools like:
- Content Remix to repurpose videos into clips, audio, blogs, and more.
- AI video creation via integration with HeyGen
- YouTube and Instagram Reels publishing
- Improved marketing analytics and attribution
The announcements signal HubSpot’s AI-driven vision for unifying customer data.
But as Ng tells us, “We definitely think a lot about the data sources…and then also understand your business.”
HubSpot’s updates are rolling out now, with some in public beta.
Featured Image: Poetra.RH/Shutterstock
SEO
Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]
![Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Holistic-Marketing-Strategies-That-Drive-Revenue-SaaS-Case-Study.png "Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]")
Brands are seeing success driving quality pipeline and revenue growth. It’s all about building an intentional customer journey, aligning sales + marketing, plus measuring ROI.
Check out this executive panel on-demand, as we show you how we do it.
With Ryann Hogan, senior demand generation manager at CallRail, and our very own Heather Campbell and Jessica Cromwell, we chatted about driving demand, lead gen, revenue, and proper attribution.
This B2B leadership forum provided insights you can use in your strategy tomorrow, like:
- The importance of the customer journey, and the keys to matching content to your ideal personas.
- How to align marketing and sales efforts to guide leads through an effective journey to conversion.
- Methods to measure ROI and determine if your strategies are delivering results.
While the case study is SaaS, these strategies are for any brand.
Watch on-demand and be part of the conversation.
Join Us For Our Next Webinar!
Navigating SERP Complexity: How to Leverage Search Intent for SEO
Join us live as we break down all of these complexities and reveal how to identify valuable opportunities in your space. We’ll show you how to tap into the searcher’s motivation behind each query (and how Google responds to it in kind).
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