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Here’s a simple truth: customers don’t experience your brand in neat little silos. They scroll past your social posts, spot your name in a news story, click your PPC ad, sign up to your email list, and check out your website – sometimes, all in the same afternoon.

That’s why different marketing channels have to work in harmony. Integrated marketing communications, or IMC for short, is how you make that happen. It’s the strategy of joining the dots across every platform, campaign, team, and channel so your brand sounds (and feels) the same wherever people encounter it.

And in 2025, it’s more than smart. It’s essential.

According to Salesforce, 76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments. But most companies still struggle to deliver. In this guide, we’ll unpack what IMC really means, what it involves, why it matters — and how to measure if it’s working.

Let’s start at the beginning.

What do we mean by “integrated marketing communications”?

It’s a mouthful, yes. But once you break it down, it’s a lot more grounded than it sounds.

What do we mean by “integrated”?

It means joined up. It means your digital team isn’t working in isolation from your branding or events team. That the tone of voice in your PR matches your paid ads. That what you say on social aligns with your sales pitch. Everything connects.

And when you connect things well, it pays off. HubSpot found aligned teams generate 208% more marketing revenue.

What do we mean by “marketing”?

It’s every effort you make to attract, engage, and keep your customers. That includes the 4 Ps — product, price, place, and promotion — but the real point is understanding what customers need, and giving it to them in ways that stand out.

Modern marketing isn’t static. It’s multi-touchpoint, always-on, and increasingly personalised.

What do we mean by “communications”?

It means telling your story. Clearly, consistently, and with purpose – whether that’s on a podcast, billboard, press release, social post or marketing email. It’s not just about information, but emotion. Connection. Clarity. Conversation.

Done well, communications aren’t just broadcast. They’re a two-way relationship. One that builds trust, shows value and earns loyalty.

What does an integrated marketing communications strategy include?

An integrated marketing communications strategy goes beyond launching a few LinkedIn posts and calling it a campaign. It’s a total approach to how you reach, impress and convert your audiences at every stage of their journey.

Here’s what it should include.

1. A clear purpose and focused objectives

Before any campaign goes live, you need a firm grip on why you’re doing it and what success looks like.

  • Are you building brand awareness?
  • Generating leads?
  • Driving loyalty?
  • Supporting product launches?

These goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

Integrated marketing communications ensures every message, visual and medium works toward those goals — not pulling in different directions. As Harvard Business Review puts it, integrated strategies reduce wasted spend and improve results.

2. A deep understanding of your audiences

You can’t communicate clearly if you don’t know who you’re talking to. That’s why audience research sits at the heart of integrated communications.

  • Build personas based on data, not guesswork.
  • Segment your audience by needs, behaviours, touchpoints – not just demographic variables.
  • Understand how they interact with your brand across devices and channels.

And don’t forget the internal audience. Internal communications are just as important. Your people – your employees, your partners – are all part of how your brand is experienced.

3. The right mix of channels

Integrated campaigns pull together multiple types of media — what’s known as the PESO framework:

  • Paid (ads, PPC, sponsored content)
  • Earned (PR, customer reviews, social sharing)
  • Owned (your website, emails, blogs)
  • Shared (your social media platforms and engagement)

No two campaigns will use every single one, but they should all work together around a single creative direction — with tailored messaging mapped to each channel’s strengths.

Today, the average buyer uses three or more devices and multiple touchpoints before making a decision. A TV ad campaign might grab attention, but it’s the consistency across Instagram, Google, and your website that turns browsers into buyers.

4. An integrated team (or partner) to run the show

So, how does it actually happen?

Whether it’s an integrated comms agency, internal team, or blended mix, integrated marketing teams:

  • Define your core narrative and campaign goals
  • Create unified messaging frameworks and content calendars
  • Coordinate execution across functions – from PR to SEO
  • Measure impact in real time and optimise on the fly
  • Run workshops to get everyone aligned and excited

In other words: they keep everyone on the same page – and pulling in the same direction.

How do you measure the success of integrated marketing comms?

Success looks different depending on the channel, but measurement should always link back to your original objectives. Here’s what to track across the main types:

PR

  • Media coverage (quantity + sentiment)
  • Share of Voice (vs competitors)
  • Referral traffic
  • Earned Media Value
  • Brand sentiment (tracked over time)

SEO

  • Organic traffic
  • Keyword position tracking
  • Backlink profile
  • Conversions from search
  • Dwell time and bounce rate

Paid media

  • Cost per click (CPC)
  • Cost per acquisition (CPA)
  • Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
  • Click-through rate (CTR)
  • Frequency and reach
  • Post-click conversion rates

Social media

  • Engagement rate (likes, shares, comments)
  • Reach and impressions (organic and paid)
  • Follower growth
  • Assisted conversions
  • Brand mentions + Share of Voice

Email

  • Open rate
  • Click-through rate (CTR)
  • Conversion rate
  • Revenue per email (RPE)
  • Unsubscribes/spam complaints

Influencer/partner Campaigns

  • Engagement rate on partner content
  • Traffic + sales via UTM links or promo codes
  • ROI comparison (cost vs reach + impact)
  • Post-campaign brand lift
  • Reuse of content across other platforms

Cross-channel and strategic metrics

  • Brand lift (before and after – via surveys)
  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
  • Marketing/Sales Qualified Lead growth
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)
  • Multi-touch attribution (crediting assists, not just goals)

And remember: none of this matters unless it’s trackable. Use dashboards and tools like GA4, Looker Studio, HubSpot or Tableau to gather everything in one place.

What tools help make it all happen?

You don’t need a shiny new tech stack — but you do need alignment. Here are some tools that tie comms together:

  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems
  • Marketing automation tools
  • Content/brand asset management platforms
  • Reporting and analytics tools
  • Social scheduling tools
  • Task management and project planning systems
  • Specialised, channel-specific software (e.g. Muck Rack for PR, or Semrush for SEO)

The tools you choose should let you coordinate messaging, measure performance, and keep teams aligned — without drowning in dashboards.

The real benefits of getting integrated marketing communications right

There are loads (we couldn’t count them all), but here are a few of the most important:

  • You stop duplication — saving budgets and time
  • Customers enjoy a more seamless experience
  • Messaging hits harder, more consistently
  • Brand recall increases
  • It’s easier to manage and scale campaigns
  • Performance improves across the board

And the challenges to watch out for

Integrated communications sound ideal, right? But it’s not without its hurdles:

  • It needs tight coordination between departments. No more “Oh, I didn’t know we were running a webinar.”
  • ROI can be trickier to pin down with so many moving parts.
  • Creative consistency can slip if messaging isn’t rooted in a shared framework.
  • You’ll need to integrate more than marketing tools – yes, we’re looking at you, sales teams!

The trick? Stick to the 4 C’s.

  • Coherence: does every message build the same story?
  • Consistency: does your brand sound (and feel) like itself everywhere?
  • Continuity: does messaging evolve meaningfully over time?
  • Complementary: does each channel support the others, not regress into a budget-spending contest?

Real examples of integrated marketing communications campaigns

It’s one thing to define an integrated marketing communications strategy. It’s another to see it in action.

Here are a couple of memorable campaigns from Definition that show what happens when different channels, messages and teams work in perfect sync.

Social Enterprise UK & eBay for Change: Driving growth through joined-up comms

Social Enterprise UK teamed up with eBay for Change to help retail-based social enterprises build skills, scale up, and sell online. But many potential members hadn’t yet discovered the programme – or were unfamiliar with e-commerce altogether.

So we built an integrated communications strategy to spark interest from all angles: content creation, video case studies, paid social, and a PR push tied to SEUK’s annual Transitions Report. Our goal was simple: get the right people to sign up to a webinar — and see the value of getting involved.

The results were more than just ‘nice to see’. Memberships rose by 150%. They saw the best webinar attendance yet. And, crucially, we brought in totally new audiences — social enterprises that had never engaged with SEUK before. Our campaign clocked over 3.6 million impressions in three months, with a click-through rate of 0.61% — well above the B2B benchmark. That’s what happens when content, creative and channels all work together.

GE Hydropower: Shining a spotlight on “the forgotten giant” of renewables

GE Hydropower came to us with a bold brief: help promote a documentary series featuring Swiss explorer Bertrand Piccard on a 1,000 km journey across Switzerland in a renewably powered electric vehicle – and use the series to put hydropower in the spotlight.

Our job? Create a campaign that spoke to policymakers, investors, the general public — and Gen Z, the most climate-conscious generation of all. We built a brand from scratch, launched new social channels under the banner ‘Driving the Future’, and brought PR and social together for maximum impact.

Timed to launch on the very first Global Hydropower Day, the campaign combined supercut video edits and climate-conscious memes with high-profile thought leadership and earned media. In ten weeks, our brand-new socials reached more than 2 million people and racked up 3,600 interactions. Meanwhile, our PR push landed a reach of 121 million, backed by coverage in major industry media. One message, many audiences – and a serious wave of momentum for the world’s “forgotten giant”.

Why integrated comms matters more than ever in the age of AI

AI changes how fast we can operate and how much content we can produce. And the pace is only picking up.

But faster output needs tighter coordination.

Otherwise, you risk flooding your brand with off-message noise. Integration helps ensure that what your AI creates stays meaningful — and on-brand.

And as buyer journeys become more fragmented, that big-picture view is everything.

Final word: what to take away

You can have the smartest campaign idea in the world, but if it doesn’t connect across your channels, audiences won’t remember it.

Integrated marketing communications makes sure your brand sounds like one voice everywhere it shows up. It helps your teams stay on-message. Your budgets go further. Your results improve.

If your marketing feels disconnected, muddled, or meandering — it’s time to knit it all together.

Your story makes more sense when it’s told as one.

Why not let us help you tell it?

Get in touch with our integrated comms experts today.

Matthew Robinson, Senior PR and Digital Strategist

Written by Matthew Robinson, Senior PR and SEO Strategist at Definition

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