Integrated Marketing Communications - Essay Example

? INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION IMC Plan for Bodyfit Studio Words-count 1997 …………………. College/ ………….. …………. Introduction   Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) has become an extremely important marketing strategy that ensures greater returns and far positive outcomes from an effective integration among various methods of communication and promotion activities. Today’s business environment is highly dynamic as products offerings of most of the companies in a particular industry are similar in design, price, features, performance and core benefits, and therefore it is highly important for a marketer to differentiate them through benefits augmentation to attract targeted customers. This piece of research paper reviews a brief literature on Integrated Marketing Communication and presents a strategic integrated marketing communication plan for Bodyfit Studio, which is a local gym and health-fitness centre in London. This paper addresses the relevance of IMC in today’s business and analyzes various steps involved in implementing the IMC plan. Integrated Marketing Communication Lamb, hair and McDaniel (2008, P. 413) described that IMC is an effective management program that coordinates and integrates among various promotional tools like advertising, sales promotion, public relation, personal selling, event marketing and interactive selling etc in order to ensure consistency in the messages to be communicated to the customers. As Schultz and Schultz (2004, p. 3) noticed, IMC enables a business accelerate its returns on investment mainly by linking its organizational goals and communication programs. As shown in the diagram, IMC is closely related to the promotion mix elements of the 4Ps of marketing, they are Product, Price, Promotion and Place. IMC has been found to be an effective marketing strategy that helped firms improve operational efficiency, maintain stronger market share, create brand image, maintain better relationship with customers and thus to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. Planning, designing and developing of brand communication program play vital roles in the success of IMC program. IMC is widely used as a marketing technique that designs and develops systematic and measurable brand communication program with stakeholders of a business including customers, employees, suppliers etc. (Belch and Belch 2007, p. 11). For any business, the brand, mission and vision statements and proposition messages are very critical elements and these are to be communicated to its customers. IMC ensures effective communication, keeping consistency in messages, of the relevant messages to the potential customers. Factors to be considered in setting up an IMC plan Basically, IMC is a marketing program that involves planning, coordination, integration, and implementation of various types of advertising and promotional activities (Shimp, 2008, p. 10). The major factors and features to be considered for planning and designing the IMC for the Bodyfit Studio are: Starting with studying, analyzing and evaluating the requirements and attitudes of targeted customers, Design and develop brand communication program, Identify the appropriate tools that can be used for the task Consider to maintain consistency in messages, Emphasizing on relationship building rather than focusing on engaging in flings’ Maintaining long-term focus on the ultimate objectives (Shimp, 2008, p. 11- 18). IMC plan for Bodyfit Studio Bodyfit Studio, that offers gym, Yoga and body fitness classes and healthcare services, wishes to retain its customers and attract more through an effective communication program. Though there are competitions between Bodyfit and quite a few numbers of other gym-centers like Virgin Active, Squash Class in its surroundings. Below is an IMC plan for the Bodyfit company to communicate effectively to its customers with an intention of retaining them and attracting more as well. As Belch and Belch (2007, p. 24) stressed, an effective IMC is one that must be able to combine different marketing mix elements in a way that strengths and weaknesses of each element is adjusted to design and create a sound communication program. An IMC program involves basically four stages, they are a) planning, b) designing and developing the program, c) evaluating the IMC and d) controlling the IMC and different promotional mix elements. 1- Planning the IMC for Bodyfit Studio For implementation of any strategy to be successful, planning is essentially a critical stage. In order to plan the program, predict the potential and estimate the costs and profits and project the organizational and marketing outcomes, the Bodyfit Studio has to review the marketing objectives, recognize the present marketing conditions through both internal and external analysis of the firm and analyze business potential through finding strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Company thus requires to find its potential in comparison to its competitors like Virgin Active and Squash Class. All the analysis techniques like SWOT, Pestel, Porter’s five force cab be used to analyze the firm both internally and externally. Planning thus helps Bodyfit recognize where to start its IMC plan from, whom to target with IMC and what specific messages can reach maximum potential customers and how it can be used to help attract maximum numbers of customers. As Thorson and Moore (1996, p. 137) found, an IMC plan must consider a much wider ranges of communication methods because there are different channels of communication that all may not be profitable and highly useful for all firms, but some may be better than the others. 2- Determining the Budget for the IMC The financial department has projected a plan of ?100,000 as total available amounts to be spent on the IMC, out of which Television and Print advertising will likely to be cost around ?68,000, public relation to cost around ?7,000, office and other requirements to cost around ?21,000, and other activities to cost around ?4,000. As company has free-access to print and photocopying, the company plans to use them extensively to boost the results of IMC. 3- Developing the IMC for Bodyfit Studio Once the planning is carried out, the IMC program requires to be developed by considering various modes of advertising media and promotion mix like broadcast, print media, event marketing, sponsorship advertising, point of sale advertising, sale promotion, internet, digital billboard, posters, e-mail marketing, public relation, and so on. As far as Bodyfit is concerned, the main objective is to reach maximum numbers of potential customers with its brand messages, gym and body-fitness services, discounts and offers in its services etc. As shown in the figure below, the IMC program planned for the Bodyfit Studio comprises of five promotional elements. They are 1) sales promotion, 2) E-mail marketing, 3) print advertising, 4) Broadcast advertising and 5) Public relation. 1- Broadcast media advertising Television Advertising has been found to be a highly useful methods of brand and service communication because it creates very strong brand image and long-term brand loyalty for the advertiser. Bodyfot proposes to use television advertising so that it can communicate its services, gym, body-fitness health services, discounts, offers and other important things, along with images and more attractive videos. In recent days, people spend more than 85% of their time watching Television (Duncan, 2005, p. 344). Television advertising will help Bodyfit create long-term brand positioning and brand image with more consistent messages. 2- Print media advertising Bodyfit has already free access to printing and photocopying and therefore it plans to extensively use posters and direct-postal advertising in its local regains. The company finds it to be useful to reach more than one million customers and this can potentially increase its customer base. As marketing department expects, both posters and direct-postal advertising will attract more numbers of new customers. Apart from the above mentioned print media, Bodyfit thinks that newspaper is certainly an important way of advertising that can be used to give more details and information about the services being offered. 3- E-mail marketing In recent days, large numbers of marketers are largely depending on e-mail marketing due to the fact that online and e-mail marketing are much more effective if they are properly managed. E-mail marketing has been found to be a very powerful element in brand communication program (Schneider, 2008, p. 199). Bodyfit has already been using more than 250 e-mails to send its messages, and the same technique can be used as an integral part of the IMC it developed with an effort to increase the number of e-mails. 4- Public Relation As Belch and Belch (2007, p. 23) stated that a firm necessarily requires to involve in public relation activities to distribute information systematically to control and manage the images of the company. Bodyfit studio will require to function to evaluate public attitudes, response and feedback to the policy and procedures of the company in relation to developing its marketing programs. The company may depend on various social groups to achieve its organizational goals and therefore the company must have an intention to attain and maintain accord with these social groups (Koekemoer and Bird 2004, p. 399). When adding public relation as integral part of IMC, Bodyfit needs to use various elements like special publication, brochures, fund raising, sponsorship program, and so on(Belch and Belch, 2007, p. 23). 5- Sales Promotion Bodyfit proposes to offer various discounts and offers like off-peak gym, membership advantages etc, in order to ensure maximum returns from the customers over the seasons. The sales promotion program of the IMC of Bodyfit will comprise of all those marketing activities that are likely to add values or incentives to the company and agents who find customers for the company. One of the main reasons why Bodyfit considers sales promotion as an integral part of its IMC is to promote the existing customers to retain them and find more numbers of newer customers to be attracted. 4- Integrating various methods of promotion Mainly, five methods of the promotion and advertising methods are planned to be included in the IMC of Bodyfit, they are broadcast advertising, print advertising, e-mail marketing, sales promotion and public relation. When designing and preparing the advertising messages, images and vides to be broadcasted and advertised, it is extremely important that the IMC department should consider ‘consistency in messages’. No matter what ever media is chosen, the message should be same and similar in nature. If messages communicated through different media are quite different, it will create confusion among customers and the outcome will be negative. As Torp (2008, p. 190) emphasized, IMC is a notion that aligns symbols, messages and procedures that a firm uses to communicate with consistency, coherence and clarity. Kotler and Keller (2006, p. 558) also stressed that IMC should be planned and developed by considering consistency and coherence in messages being communicated. 5- Evaluating the IMC program of Bodyfit Once the IMC program has been planned, implemented and executed, the next step is evaluating and monitoring the results of the program, by assessing the performance and evaluating the standards that were set at the time of planning it. It is highly important that the marketing department or management responsible for the IMC should use methods like benchmarking to assess how effective was the IMC program and how far is was successful to help the company achieve its specific goals. Some of the very important aspects to be assessed are finding the consistency in messages being communicated to the customers, checking the impacts on IMC on its business, finding how many more customers have been attracted and retained, recognizing how it created brand awareness, brand loyalty and brand images etc. 6- Controlling the IMC Once the IMC has been implemented and evaluated, the management should function to control the variations from the standards set in planning the IMC. Controlling is thus a managerial function to find solution to the issues and deficiencies in the IMC program of the company. Conclusion This paper has presented a theoretical analysis on IMC based on literatures review and presented an IMC plan for Bodyfit Studio, explaining important stages in the implementation of the IMC, they are planning, budgeting for the IMC, developing the IMC, evaluating and controlling. References Belch, GE & Belch, MA 2007, Advertising and Promotion, An integrated marketing Perspective, McGraw Hill Irwin Clow, KE & Baack, D 2009, Integrated Advertising, Promotion and Marketing Communications, Fourth edition, Prentice Hall Duncan 2005, Principles Of Advertising And Imc, Second edition, Tata McGraw Hill Koekemoer, L & Bird, S 2004, Marketing Communications, Juta and Company Ltd Kotler,P & Keller, KL 2006, Marketing Management, Twelfth Edition, Prentice Hall, Pearson education Inc Lamb CW, Hair JF & McDaniel JC 2008, Essentials of Marketing, Sixth and illustrated edition, Cengage Learning Schneider, G 2008, Electronic Commerce, Eighth edition, Cengage Learning Schultz, DE & Schultz, HF 2004, IMC, the next generation: five steps for delivering value and measuring returns using marketing communication, illustrated edition, McGraw Hill Professional Shimp, TA 2008, Advertising Promotion, and Other Aspects of Integrated Marketing Communications, Illustrated eighth edition, Cengage Learning Thorson, E & Moore, J 1996, Integrated communication: synergy of persuasive voices, Illustrated edition, Routledge Torp, S 2009, Integrated communications: from one look to normative consistency, Corporate Communications: An International Journal Vol. 14 No. 2, Emerald Group Publishing Limited Read More