1. Functional Silos
Resources, support and guidance of upper management are needed to build a successful integrated marketing communications campaign. The job of upper management is to make sure that all the resources are thoroughly no matter is for budgets, sharing data or people across teams. However, the problem now is integrated marketing communication don’t control by one manager only. All the managers involve in the information transmitting process have to work together in controlling the process. It mean that all the manager of advertising team, public relation team and also the marketing team have to coordinate in the process of delivering information about the product and service of the company to the target customer. When the control is shared among all the team manager, which can prove to be a difficult concept for some member of upper management, creating a barrier to integrated marketing communication.
2. Restricts Creativity
Integrated marketing communication can restrict creativity. With a variety of team involved in launching an integrated marketing campaign, each team have to ensure that all the task carry out must fit the overall goals and message of the campaign. As an example, when the promotional team comes up with a creative idea for a sweepstakes, it must match with the integrated campaign goal to ensure the communication process effectiveness. But, if it doesn’t fit with the realm of integrated marketing goals, the creative plan cannot implement by the particular team no matter how high the level of creativeness it may seem. All the teams have to follow the unified strategy to convey a consistent message to send to our target customer.
3. Lack of Resources
When the integrated marketing communication is practiced, it requires the entire member in the organization to take part in the process of transmitting the information to the customer. So, in order to make sure the process of transmitting consistent and useful information to carry out smoothly, the entire member in the organization needs to have the required knowledge and skill to executive the strategic plan. Because skills and knowledge are the key needs, some staff members receive training in areas they may not familiar with to ensure the success of the transmitting information about the product and service the company offer. Hence, it will increase the company cost and hence it will become more costly to practice integrated marketing communication. Besides, integrated marketing communication also required proper planning and time management to ensure the communication transmitting process become more effectively. When the marketing team delays their work process, it will affect the sales rape work task because they are interdependence. So, information transmitting process tends to become less effective when practice integrated marketing communication.
4. Different Corporate Cultures
Integrated marketing communications generally include more than just one company working to put together in a campaign. For example, pitching articles to the press about a product launch is in charge by the public relations firm and a print advertisement may develop by an advertising agency. The problem occur when each company take part in the customer transmitting process tend to operate in its own unique culture, but when it is needed to meshed with a new company culture, the result is not always positive. There is one of the potential barriers the organization must overcome when the company practice integrated marketing communication. As an example, the advertising company may take relaxed approach to completing task, paying little or no attention to looming deadlines, but the public relation firm may be dead-line driven. This different culture between the companies may cause the integrated marketing communication process less effective to carry out.