Barriers to Integrated Marketing Communication

Integrated marketing communication is essential to businesses who are dedicated to reaching their consumers and potential consumers through various forms of media, with a consistent message about their businesses and products. Integrated marketing communication helps businesses reach prospects from various angles in hopes to capture their attention and gain their loyalty. While integrated marketing communication has many advantages, many barriers stand in the way of businesses getting their campaigns in place.

An integrated marketing campaign requires both financial and people resources, as well as time.

Individuals who are highly skilled in specified areas like direct marketing, web marketing, print advertising and public relations are an essential part of any integrated marketing communications campaign. They have the knowledge and skills needed to execute strategic plans. Because skills and knowledge are key, some staff members receive training in areas they may not be familiar with to ensure the success of the campaign.

Integrated marketing communications required proper planning and time management to ensure that campaigns are executed in a timely, strategic fashion. If the timing of one aspect of a campaign is inaccurate, it could negatively impact the other aspects of the campaign, resulting in skewed campaign results.

A successful integrated marketing communications campaign needs the support, guidance and resources of upper management, or it creates a barrier for employees. Upper management has to work to ensure that the proper resources are available; from people and budgets to sharing data across teams. Integrated marketing communication campaigns don't put one manager in control. Instead control is shared, which can prove to be a difficult concept for some members of upper management, creating a barrier to integrated marketing communication.

Integrated marketing communications typically involve more than just one company working to put together a campaign. An advertising agency may develop a print advertisement, while a public relations firm may be in charge of pitching articles to the press about a product launch. Each company has its own unique culture, but when meshed with a new company culture, the result is not always positive. As a result, there's a potential barrier the teams must overcome. One company may take a more relaxed approach to completing task, paying little to no attention to looming deadlines, while the other may be dead-line driven.

With a variety of teams involved in launching an integrated marketing campaign, each team has to ensure that the piece of the campaign they're working on fits in with the overall goals and message of the campaign. This means that if the promotions team comes up with a creative idea for a sweepstakes, but it doesn't fall within the realm of the integrated campaigns goals, the team cannot implement the plan, regardless of how creative it may seem. The goal is to follow a unified strategy to create a message to send to consumers.