ch. 7

• IMC means integrated marketing communication, involving program coordination and development.
• It enables employees, customers, and the general public to have constructive brand encounters through various media.
• Integration equates to wholeness, and wholeness in communications creates synergy.
• A marketing plan serves as a written guide for an organization's present and future marketing activities.
• Marketing objectives should consider the company's financial investment capacity, marketplace knowledge, and the competitive environment.
• Marketing objectives logically follow a review of the company's current situation, management's prediction of future trends, and the company's objectives hierarchy.
• Corporate objectives are the company's goals stated in terms of profit or return on investment.

Marketing Objectives

• Goals of the marketing effort expressed in terms of the needs of specific target markets and specific sales objectives.
• Derived from corporate objectives, which are goals of the company stated in terms of profit or return on investment.
• Also referred to as need-satisfying objectives and sales target objectives.

Need-satisfying Objectives

• A marketing objective that shifts management's view of the organization from a producer of products or services to a satisfier of target market needs, enabling the firm to view its business broadly.
• Managers must see through the customer's eyes by setting need-satisfying objectives, asking, "What are we planning to do for the customer?" and "What is the value of that to our customer?"

Sales Target Objective

• Marketing objectives that relate to a company's sales.
• May be expressed in terms of total sales volume; sales by product, market segment, or customer type; market share; growth rate of sales volume; or gross profit.
• A specific, quantitative, realistic marketing goal to be achieved within a specified period.
• An important question to consider is, "What are we planning to do for ourselves?"

Marketing Strategy

• How the company will accomplish its marketing objectives.
• Strategy keeps everyone on the same course to maximize the effectiveness of marketing.

3 Steps of Marketing Strategy

• Define the target markets, determine the strategic positioning, and develop an appropriate marketing mix for each target market.
• Positioning is an association of a brand's features and benefits with a particular set of customer needs, clearly differentiating it from the competition from the customers' perspectives.

Impact on Advertising

• A company's marketing strategy significantly impacts its advertising including determining the role amount of advertising in the marketing mix, its creative thrust and the media employed.

Marketing Tactics (action programs)

• A company's objectives indicate where it wants to go, and the strategy indicates the intended route.
• Tactics are the specific short-term actions that will be used to achieve marketing objectives, such as advertising campaigns.

IMC: The Concept and the Process

• Helps in building and refinancing mutually profitable relationships with stakeholders and the general public by developing and coordinating strategic communications programs that enable construction encounters with a brand through social media.
• Technology allows markets to adopt flexible manufacturing, customizing products for different markets.
• Being "market-driven" means bundling services together with products to create a "unique product experience," with companies and customers working together to find solutions.

The 4 Sources of Brand Messages

• A company that embraces IMC accepts that everything it does (and doesn't do) sends a message.

Planned Messages

• Traditional marketing communications messages, including advertising, sales promotion, publicity releases, and personal selling, merchandising materials, and event sponsorship.
• Have the least impact because they are seen as self-serving.

Product Messages

• Messages are communicated by a product, its packaging, price, or distribution elements where every element of the marketing mix, not just promotion, sends a message.

Service Messages

• Messages result from employee interactions with customers and typically have a greater impact than planned messages.
• This happens by operations not marketing.

Unplanned Messages

• Messages that emanate from gossip, unsought news stories, rumors, or major disasters.
• Companies have little control over unplanned messages but can dramatically affect customers' attitudes.

The Integration Triangle

• Illustrates how perceptions are created from the various brand message sources.
• Planned messages are "say" messages because they are what companies say about themselves.
• Product and service messages are "do" messages because they represent what a company does.
• Unplanned messages are "confirm" messages: what others say and confirm (or not) about what the company says and does.
• Constructive integration happens when a brand does what its maker says it will do, and then others confirm that it delivers on its promises.

Advertising Plan

• Directs the company's advertising effort.
• A natural outgrowth of the marketing plan analyzes the situation, sets advertising objectives, and lays out a specific strategy from which ads and campaigns are created.

Reviewing the Marketing Plan

• The advertising manager first reviews the marketing plan to understand the company's goals, how it plans to achieve them, and what role advertising plays in the marketing mix.

Setting Advertising Objectives

• Advertising objectives must be specific, realistic, and measurable, based on what tasks advertising must take on according to the marketing plan.

The Advertising Pyramid

• Serves as a guide to setting objectives.
• A key objective is awareness: when the customer is acquainted with the company, product, service, and/or brand.
• Comprehension entails that some percentage of the aware group will understand the product's purpose, image or position and perhaps some of its features.
• A key objective is conviction: to persuade a certain number of people to actually believe in the product's value.
• Desire: To get some people to be moved to desire the product.
• Action: To get some who desire the product to take action.

Advertising Strategy

• States what the advertiser wants to achieve with respect to consumer awareness, attitude, and preference and describes how to get there.
• Consists of the creative strategy and the media strategy.

Creative Strategy

• A written statement that serves as the creative team's guide for writing and producing an ad and it decides the most important issues that should be considered in the development of the ad (the who, what, where, when, and why), including the objective of the advertising.
• Includes a definition and description of the target audience; the key benefit to be promised; the product features that support that promise; the style, approach, or tone to be used; and generally, what the copy should communicate.

Media Strategy

• A document that helps media planners determine how messages will be delivered to consumers.
• Defines the target audience, the communication objectives that must be achieved, and the characteristics of the media that will be used for delivery of the messages.
• Advertising is considered a long-term investment.

Allocating Funds for Advertising

• The cost of a new factory or warehouse is an investment in the company's future ability to produce and distribute products; advertising is an investment in future sales.
• Advertising builds consumer preference and promotes Goodwill, which enhances the reputation and value of the company name and brand, thus prompting customers to make repeat purchases.

Relationship of Advertising to Sales and Profits

• An increase in market share is related to an increase in the marketing budget in consumer goods marketing.
• Sales increase with additional advertising but flatten and decline at some point.

Methods of Allocating Funds

• Percentage of Sales: based on percentage of the previous year's sales, the anticipated sales for the next year, or combination of the two.

Important Factors to Consider

• Percentage of profit
• Unit sales
• Competitive parity
• Share of market/ Share of voice: based on determining the firm's goal for a certain share of the market and then applying a slightly higher percentage of industry advertising dollars to the budget.
• Objective/Task Method: defines objectives and how advertising is to be used to accomplish them, like defining the objectives, determining the strategy, and estimating the cost.