Question

The questions for IMC:

• What are the key decisions in the tactical development of Integrated Marketing Communication?
• When would you use push versus pull strategies?
• How do communication objectives differ based upon stage of customer development?
• What are different methods for determining the communication budget? Which method is best?

Answer 1

What are the key decisions in the tactical development of Integrated Marketing Communication?

Key decisions in the tactical development of Integrated Marketing Communication are:

Determination of objective: Before developing any plan it is necessary for the firm to understand the objective because objective is the base for the formulation of any strategies and plans to achieve success.

Determining and Understanding the selected customer group: Before developing any Integrated Marketing plan it is necessary for an Organization to understand and analyses their customers and their needs. An IMC plan will only be effective after evaluating the customer requirement.

Internal and external environment analysis: before developing the IMC plan it is necessary for a company to do internal and external environmental analysis. This is also called SWOT analysis and helps to understand the internal factors that prove as strength for an Organization as well as to analyse the external factors whose structured use helps to give a competitive advantage to the company.

Formulation of IMC plan: After understanding the customers and the internal and external environmental analysis,now the company can develop a tactical IMC plan that will help to differentiate companies in the market.

Identification and allocation of budget: After all these strategies and plans have been developed the other step is to identify and allocate the budget for the selected plan depending upon its priority. Budget allocation is the most important step because this will impact the financial strategy of the firm.

Implementation and evaluation of strategy: After all these steps now it's time to implement the strategies into action.So implementation is the action stage and evaluation is to analyse the impact of those strategies on the customer ,so it is an outcome evaluation step.

These all are key procedures that should be considered before developing the IMC plan for the company in order to achieve success.

When would you use push versus pull strategies?

Push Strategy

Push strategies used to create demand for the product through promotion. It is a sales oriented strategy. Produces or manufactures try to push their product to the customers and for this purpose discount has been provided to customers.

Pull strategy

Pull strategy is a market oriented strategy that brings customers towards the product here customer requests the company to launch some new and innovative product .

Use of push and pull strategies

Push strategies are used when a company launches its new product or tries to stand out in a nice or a crowded marketplace.

Push strategy uses discounting method to push their product to the market

For example: Companies sell many electrical products at lower or discounted prices in order to grasp the market.

Pull strategies are used to attract customers towards the product therefore and are used when the company enjoys its brand value and goodwill.

Pull strategy focuses on advertisement publicity word-of-mouth or reference to attract the customer without providing much discount.

For example: Apple already has a good brand value therefore whenever they launch a new product they don't need to invest more on the advertisement because customers are already attracted towards its new product

How do communication objectives differ based upon the stage of customer development?

It is necessary for a company to understand the customer development stage before developing and implementing the strategies because each stage has different needs and requirements. Even though understanding the customer development is stage is necessary for all the companies but it has major advantage for the startup companies There are various stages of customer development are:

1.CUSTOMER DISCOVERY: This stage identifies the customer group for which the strategy for communication has been developed. In this stage the promotional strategy is only to identify the need of the customer and implanting the product according to the customer's need.

2.CUSTOMER VALIDATION: This stage validates the targeted customers selected in the customer discovery phase. Under this stage the company launches its product to the desired customer segment and tries to evaluate their feedback.

3.CUSTOMER CREATION: In this stage customers are created by building demand and awareness for the product in addition to existing customers. Therefore effective marketing and advertising strategy should be used at this stage.

4.COMPANY BUILDING: Under this stage the company builds its positive and firm image in the eyes of customers and for a startup company the startup has turned into a strong build company.

Communication objectives differ based upon the stage of customer development:

communication objective differ on each stage of customer development in this way:

Under the customer discovery phase the communication objective is only to identify the desired customer segment therefore one can use the market research activity to identify customers.

Under Customer validation stage the major communication activity is to advertise and promote products in the eyes of customers so that they can be aware about the product,so the strategies can be used such as word-of-mouth communication ,direct sales sales promotion, advertising,personal selling etc.

Under customer creation stage communication objective is to be focused on holding the existing customer and by creating the new customer by using effective promotional strategies.

Company building stage is the last stage where a company should use timely promotion strategies to maintain its image. The timely promotional strategy can be the after sales services ,getting the feedback of customers through emails ,service phone calls,feedback form,feedback surveys etc.

What are different methods for determining the communication budget? Which method is best?

Communication budget is a method of determining and allocating the financial or monetary units for the promotional strategies used by the firm.

Different methods for determining the communication budget are:

Return on Investment: this method focuses on the return on the investment made on the promotional strategies. It measures the profit gained by the company through increased sales by using the promotional strategies.

Percentage of Sales: under this method the budget allocator measures the past and the future sales percentage and by getting the difference between both the percentages he allocates the budget to the promotional strategies accordingly.

It is the most simplest method of allocating budget to the communication Strategies and is widely used because it uses the past data as well as the future forecasting.

Affordable method :As its name implies all the company can afford to allocate budget to the promotional strategies. The budget for the promotional strategies has been given only after allocating budget to all other expenses of the company.

The Objective and Task Method:This method is also known as the Research Objective Method. This is the most logical method because the objective of the advertisement has been fixed after doing proper market research.

Market research helps to identify the pros and cons of the market and after identification of those the company can develop the marketing promotional strategies accordingly.

Competitive Parity Method: Under this the firm set the budget to the communication strategies only after understanding,analyzing and evaluating the competitors budget for the promotional strategy.

It is a defensive method which believes that a firm will maintain its market share equally to its competitors ,if it allocates the same budget on communication as those to competitors.

All Available Funds Method: This is the most risky and aggressive method where a company allocates all its available funds to budgeting communication strategies.

According to me the best method for allocating budget to the communication strategies is Objective And Task Method because it focuses on a deep market research before developing any promotional strategies. This will help to understand the market in a better way and helps in the allocation of budget in a simpler and effective way.