INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS PER USA

 

Integrated Marketing Communications per USA.

Integrated Marketing Communications as espoused by G. Belch and M. Belch in 2006 involves coordinating the various promotional elements and other marketing activities that communicate with a firm’s customers. In other words, it is the use of a variety of promotional tools rather than depending solely on media advertising. Combining the efforts of a variety of communication tools such as public relations, direct marketing, sales promotion, publicity, entertainment marketing and sponsorship of events. These communication tools or elements are also known as promotion-mix influence the roles they play in the overall marketing program. In developing the promotional program, the marketer must decide which tools to use and how to combine them to achieve the organisation’s marketing and communication objectives.

Below is an actual marketing case in a proposal format using Integrated Marketing Communications to promote Dark and lovely moisture plus olive oil moisturizer hair leave-in. The case is as follows:

PREAMBLE

Dark and lovely moisture plus olive oil moisturizer hair leave-in is a product among the dark and lovely collection we intend to promote. This is an extra rich velvety cream full of olive oil’s essential fatty acids that nourishes and moisturizes dry, bristle hair. An unctuous texture, deliciously fragranced that melts instantly into hair strands for immediate efficiency. Before settling on this product, we made findings as to which products out of the dark and lovely collection was being used the most. Upon our findings, it was evident that the olive oil moisturizer hair leave-in was accepted and used the most. It goes on record that the product’s performance on the market is commendable and more work needs to be done to maintain this feat. It was also found out that, individuals with extremely soft hair did not find favour with the product as it damaged their hair.

AUDIENCE PSYCHOGRAPHICS

Inferring from our survey conducted through the use of questionnaires and interviews, our audiences were mainly women between the ages of 19 to 49 where majority fell between ages 19 to 29. They were all positive about the product with regards to making their hair smooth and bright, makes the hair relaxed, good for sulphur hair, makes hair heavy and bouncy, softens and moisturizes the hair as well as making hair shiny, soft and wavy. Majority spoke about the fact that it was affordable and easy to acquire as well as it being available to purchase. We also asked our audience concerning what they will change about the product if they had the opportunity to do so. They were of the view that, the lid covering the product was not strong enough; the expensive nature of the product as well as checking for imitation or fake leave-in. With relation to our audiences’ first point of contact with the product, majority said they were exposed to the product by recommendation from friends, their hairstylists and cosmetologists’ whiles others were exposed through the media and seminars. This shows us that personal selling as part of the forms of marketing communication tools is doing well while there is more room for improvement for the rest of the other communication tools.

PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES  

With regards to the promotional strategies as integrated marketing communications is concerned, we intend to use and based on the audience recommendations, we are looking at advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, publicity, sponsorship marketing and point-of-purchase communications.

ADVERTISING

For advertising, it is evident that majority of the people do not comprehend the adverts or commercials running on the media due to the type of language in terms of the scientific jargons used in sending across the messages to the audience. The few that understand these jargons become opinion leaders to the general public. This has intensified the person-to-person communication which wouldn’t be considered inferior but rather we believe that all the forms should move hand in hand. As one of our promotional strategies, we intend to run adverts of the product in very simple language on the various forms of media both mass communication (T.V, radio, posters, billboards and magazines) and direct communication void of too many scientific jargons to aid easy comprehension by our audiences. We will also want to run the adverts in four different languages that are commonly spoken by the people namely Ga, Ewe, Twi and Hausa for easy understanding of the commercial.

PERSONAL SELLING

In as much as this form of integrated marketing communications is doing very well, we believe that there is still more room for improvement for the brand to still become a household name. From our survey, our audience had their information from their hairstylists, cosmetologists, friends and associates. We intend encouraging these stakeholders (hairstylists, cosmetologists) to still add the product to their existing lines of leave-in and cosmetics products. These efforts will be simplified by providing introductory discounts to these stakeholders and assuring them that heavy advertising, sampling and couponing initiatives would successfully move the Dark and lovely moisture plus olive oil hair moisturizer leave-in out of their stores.

SALES PROMOTION

This strategy attempts to stimulate quick buyer action or immediate sales of the product. We intend doing this based on two levels; that is trade oriented sales promotion and consumer oriented sales promotion. For the trade oriented, we are looking at using the various types of allowances (off-invoice & display allowance) to encourage wholesaler and retailer response. The consumer oriented sales promotion targets our immediate customers and prospective ones. This comes with the use of coupons, free samples, premiums, contests and rebates. We as well intend to run these promotions on our website where both consumers and distributors can activate and have access to these offers.

SPONSORSHIP MARKETING

With sponsorship marketing, we plan promoting the company and the product brand by associating the brand with specific programs and events that take place across the continent particularly those that evoke feminine appeal. We plan to associate with TV3s’ Today’s Woman, soap operas, beauty pageant shows like Miss Ghana & Miss Malaika as well as T.V reality shows like Ghana’s Most Beautiful, Stars of the future and Mentor.

PUBLICITY

As a corporate communications department we are responsible for reputation building of the company’s image to our prospective audiences and publicity is a tool employed for this purpose. This will be achieved through the writing and publishing of news items, newsletters, articles and brochures about the product to the various media outlets. As part of this, we are going too spun out voluminous press releases that will provide magazines and other news media with stories about Dark and lovely moisture plus olive oil moisturizer hair leave-in.

POINT- OF- PURCHASE COMMUNICATION

This encompass the use of displays such as posters, signs and notices at various point of sales be it shopping malls, cosmetic shops, saloons and others in order to influence buying decisions at this points.

To conclude, we can say, we look forward to a successful promotion of the dark and lovely moisture plus olive oil moisturizer hair leave-in. We will also encourage that, the marketing department and the production department take into consideration the various recommendations made by our audiences with regards to the product. Thank you and counting on management co-operation.

MaxSelormey

MAX SELORMEY

(CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER)