MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
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Executive Summary
When marketing techniques are done right, all the other faces of an organizational structure experience the relief that comes with the ease of pressure earlier amounted to them. This is now the real definition and responsibility of integrated marketing. The linking and coordination of messages across an organization using the various marketing and communication channels will ultimately pay-off with a rise in brand awareness creation and revenues realized from purchases intended to be made. With the introduction of multiple channels of communication over the last century, and especially on the digital platforms, makes us review the integrated marketing communications strategies concerning the major promotional tools that will be of greater help to Foodbank in its quest to meet its financial goals.
Table of Contents
1.1.3 Positioning Statement. 6
Chapter Two: Promotional Mix. 7
2.1.1 Publicity and Public Relations. 9
List of Figures
Figure 1.0: Promotional Mix Elements ……………………………………………….. 7
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1.0 Background Summary
A traditional outlook of an integrated marketing strategy takes us to the characteristics of an integrated marketing communications strategy earlier summarized by (Pickton and Broderick, 2005, pp.105-110) as the necessary 4 C’s of integrated marketing communications. Coherence, Continuity, Consistency, and Complementary are the notable characteristics of any IMC.
An earlier evaluation by the Account Planning Group (APG) (ANON,2013) highlights the success stories allied to the implementation of any Integrated Marketing Communication as a defining factor best explaining its role in strategic management and marketing. That an IMC should show effectiveness by demonstrating how the communication strategy has performed. An IMC should also provide insights about the consumers who are also customers. Insights about the brand need to be relayed out to the consumers as well.
1.1.1Target Market
Concerning the target audience of the strategic marketing approach, we can ration the target market coordinates with the kinds of media used to relay the strategy’s communication and paid Media bases on offline and direct marketing strategies. Owned Media relays messages on a live online platform, whereas Earned Media is engineered behind content marketing and Public Relations. (Nowak, Phelps and Ferrell, 1999) brought a whole new argument when they identified other IMC realities, which goes hand-in-hand with Coordinated Marketing Communication. The concept was based on the experiences derived from a practitioner’s point of argument. Employing the ideas created by Nowak and Phelps in this matter will only seek to act as a guide to this report after the study was conducted. Therefore, the strategic and direct emphasis is to find a more efficient and effective methodology where identity and contact with the rightful intended audience are made. In this manner, Foodbank would have synergized the campaign for brand awareness and IMC while delivering behavioral responses that wouldn’t be achieved by a single campaign.
1.1.2 Consumer Profile
Luck, Barker, Sassenberg and Chitty, (2017, p.11) derived an approach to a serene Relationship Communication Model (RCM) between a firm and its consumers or clientele to keep up with a healthy consumer profile. All these were arrived at after evaluating the effects of the internal and external factors that tend to exert some push and pull forces to message integration. The written historical records of how Foodbank relates to its consumers define how any other new consumers create meaning to the firm’s operations. With the historical data, the consumer’s experience, a firm’s administrative body can foresee future expectations from both the organization’s ownership and its consumers. The immediate community surrounding Foodbank makes the external factors that mean a lot to the IMC implementation, their cultural affiliation (University, 2020, p.8-11), economic realities surrounding them, and their traditions, too dictate what kinds of communication strategies are suitable to employ. The internal factors that influence IMC on a consumer profile would constitute individual consumers’ attitudes to the used marketing and communication tool. RCM therefore can be used to manage IMC as it focuses on consumers. The consumers are allowed to evaluate what is best suitable for them.
1.1.3 Positioning Statement
The main idea here is for us to understand how different IMC activities can be used at ago dependently or independently to make us achieve our objectives. This forms the basic part of a major problem for the execution of IMC strategies. Attention has been given to media dynamics and synergy over a long time (University, 2020, p.7-9) despite the real importance of the firms that practice these being scarcely understood or known. Therefore, it is prudent when we outlined that the importance and main theme of incorporating IMC are to process a rigorous element of the marketing mix concept which informs us that synergies on the sales and revenues realized are created in unison and not independently.
Chapter Two: Promotional Mix
2.0. Introduction
As discussed earlier, any marketing plan is aimed at reaching the target market. Five elements make up the promotional mix. This is shown in figure 1.0. However, this report gives credit to the primary and essential three elements.
| PROMOTIONAL MIX ELEMENTS |
(Wymer, Knowels and Gomes, 2016, p.156)
2.1.0 Advertising
Any form of a paid non-personal presentation to promote the goods and services or ideology is what can be defined as Advertising (Kotler and Armstrong, 2016, p.136-142). This happens to be the most practiced and sought-after form of mass communication about products, services, and other formal and valuable ideas. An identified sponsorship is used to finance the operations of advertising whichever channel that offer the services. Advertisements run majorly on media channels, radios, televisions, and even in outdoor media like billboards.
The characteristics of advertisements make it a major sought after promotional mix chosen by many due to its accommodating nature to any changes. Even when it is a paid form of communication, advertisements have proven to be costly in promoting sales; however, the efficiency can’t be ignored since they are a one-way form of communication directed to the consumer; this reduces the per-contact cost compared to other elements of promoting sales. Foodbank will, therefore, have to consider this as one of the features to be included in their plans to reach their consumers. This is a popular tool in the bid to achieve market promotion and is therefore not trivial. The audio-visual media and the print media that happen to contain information about Foodbank products and services are characterized as advertisements.
Businesses have realized the importance of this form of product promotion on their sales margins. This is ultimately a primary promotional mix for many organizations, with Foodbank being one of them. One major deliverable that makes Advertisement necessary by firms is geographical distribution and mass consumption by consumers. Products are displayed on infomercials. These help consumers understand and compare different products’ features and make the last call of choice that matches their preferences.
2.1.1 Publicity and Public Relations
The institute of public relations defines it as ‘a deliberate, planned and express effort to maintain the good relationship and mutual understanding amongst organizations, and between organizations and its clientele’. PR has proven to be an expensive element of promoting firms’ revenue structures as it remains a strategic move rather than a permanent solution to the marketing subject.
Foodbank’s communication with its public consumers such as suppliers, employees, creditors, the state and many other external individuals connected to the firm in one way or the other encompasses Public Relations. PR can also be subdivided into two, either formal or informal. The striking force however is that the connection between firms and the public is of much concern to the firm than to the individuals, it is from the PR moves that firms maintain their customers. Public relations gives room for the delivery of quality services or goods to the consumers or customers of a firm. Many of us do confuse the obligations and ideas carried by Public Relations to those that are enshrined in advertisements as a promotional mix element. It should be noted that messages in a PR element are not purchased or controlled but rather free, it is the items in a PR element that attracts attention from the public thereby creating traffic and attention to the advantage of the firms brand name and products (Luck, Barker, Sassenberg and Chitty, 2017, p.11) Professionals in this promotion element often mix press releases with PR as a tool to market a product r idea to the listeners who mostly happen to be consumers. Preannouncements in form of media events are also another tool that is used to fulfill the responsibilities of a perfect PR strategy in marketing. They are used to gain the listeners’ attention to the real deal of product introduction and promotion.
2.1.2 Sales Promotion
Rather than pushing for advertisements or publicity, sales promotions mostly involve the actual marketing practice to stimulate the customer to consider buying and trying our product. This can be done using, coupons, contests, giving out of sample, and many other ways (University, 2020, p.7-9). Sales promotions to have a classification, this is following who groups’ sales promotion is based on the tools used during the activity. Grouped with basis on the target audience and basis of the discounts offered.
Sales promotions done with the target being trade partners, suppliers, or employees means that the idea here is to make sure the product reaches the final consumer more safely. Such discounts given to such trade partners encourage them to stock more of the products. The higher the quantity a trade partner purchases from Foodbank, the higher the discount rate they receive. Another tool or form of sales promotion is the idea of having case allowances. Here, a product manufacturer offers their customers with quantity discounts based on the number of products they are willing to purchase over the entire deal period. An example of these scenarios is given from the marketing operations of Volvo, an automobile company that offered two hundred dollars as the deal per vehicle to its dealers in an advertising fund allowance; this was done to push up the sales over to double figures (Dahlen, Smith and Lange, 2018, p. 446)
Conclusion
This study is concerned with integrated marketing communication strategies and how they impact the revenues of firms. A recommendation of the best tool to be used in a strategic promotional job is also discussed above. Each of the three tools has been evaluated extensively and their merits are noted down with their demerits.
Marketing managers at Foodbank should consider Advertising since it is the most common element of the promotional mix, it is renowned, and the other form of promotional mix to be emulated is the Public Relations tool or element. This happens to be more secure, cheap, and efficient for Foodbank. A combination of the two IMC and promotional mix elements will certainly improve the organization’s sales revenues. This recommendation has been arrived at by looking at the major critical score points derived from an ideal promotional mix element. Marketing strategies requirements of brand awareness creations, the differentiation of products, and effective product promotions are callous to the market segmentations created by overzealous marketing strategies that do not adhere to the right order of happenings.
A speedy realization of returns into the costs incurred during the marketing and choosing of a legible IMC should be considered too. The marketing of company products and services is an investment choice. Ultimately, the marketing team expects results from the portfolio made. With the current competitiveness in the markets and especially all market structures, firms that manufacture products have become more engrossed in the market shares related to the marketing strategies that are the determining variables. It is our ideology that all the market shares and behavioral modules at certain market structures be used to determine the market performance indices of firms, especially manufacturing firms.
This report still serves the rhetoric of providing the readers to prompt themselves into furthering various researches based on the same subject of promotion mix elements and their relationship to IMC and how indifferent or how they can help firms in a given industry. This kind of evaluation should be directed to the specific aspects of Integrating Market Communication systems as they will ultimately seek to provide more in-depth analysis and results for the firms’ development.
Reference List
Dahlen, M., Smith, T., and Lange, F., 2018. Marketing Communications: A Brand Narrative Approach. WILEY, p.446.
Kotler, P., and Armstrong, G., 2016. Principles of Marketing, Global Edition. Pearson Education Limited, pp.136-142.
Luck, E., Barker, N., Sassenberg, A., and Chitty, B., 2017. Integrated Marketing Communications. 6th ed. New Zealand: Cengage AU, p.11.
University, M., 2020. Consumer Behaviour. [EBook] MacQuarie Business School, pp.8-11. Available at: <http://MKTG1001%20Week%204%20Lecture%20-%20Students%201%20slide%20to%20a%20page.pdf> [Accessed 14 October 2020].
University, M., 2020. MKTG1001 Marketing Fundamentals. [EBook] MacQuarie Business School, pp.7-9. Available at: <http://MKTG1001%20Week%203%20Lecture%20-%20Students%201%20slide%20to%20a%20page.pdf> [Accessed 14 October 2020].
University, M., 2020. MKTG1001 Sales Promotion. [EBook] MacQuarie Business School, pp.7-9. Available at: <http://MKTG1001%20Week%203%20Lecture%20-%20Students%201%20slide%20to%20a%20page.pdf> [Accessed 14 October 2020].
Wymer, W., Knowels, P., and Gomes, R., 2016. Nonprofit Marketing: Marketing For Charitable and Non-Governmental Organisations. SAGE, p.156.