1.

IMC Planning Process

Step 1) Communications research – customer-oriented and product-oriented.

Product-specific research:

-Key selling points & features

-Desirable benefits

Customer-oriented:

-Context of product use

-Anthropological approach (observation of usage)

-Sociological analysis (social class, family)

-Psychological motives (personality, hobby)

Step 2) Target market

Market segment – a set or group of individual consumers with distinct characteristics

Market segmentation – the process of identifying the specific consumers that are more
likely to purchase the brand based on their interest, values and needs.

Market segmentation methods:

1) Geographic segmentation divides market into different geographic units for example streets, cities, courtiers, nations.
GEO-TARGETING (sending messages to individuals based on specific regions) GPS technologies in smartphones,
digital ads, recognition technologies.
2) Demographic segmentation based on gender, age, income, ethnicity, occupation, education, religion.
MARKETING TO WOMEN- tell the story that resonates, provide details, be positive, focus on practical not trivial,
engage them with the brand, focus on how the brand can improve their life.
Marketing to men.
MARKETING TO MEN- focus on product performance, now men are doing more shopping, looking for specific
information, prefer products that reflect status, like well-known brands.

3) Psychographic segmentation based on social class (upper, middle, working), personality(conservative, adventurous),
lifestyle(life activities, interests)
4) Behavioral segmentation based on people’s knowledge, attitude and use or response to a product.

Step 3) Product positioning – it summarizes the customer’s perception of the brand

and its products relative to competitors. Consumer determines the brand’s position.

Marketing communication task is to strengthen the existing positioning or shift the

perception.

Approaches to positioning:

1. Product Attributes
2. Competitors
3. Use or Application
4. Price-Quality Relationship
5. Product User
6. Product Class
7. Cultural Symbol

Step 4) Marketing Communications Objectives

Most IMC campaigns emphasize one communication objective but may accomplish other objectives in the process.

Key task – match the objective with the message and the media.
Benchmarking – a helpful tool for measuring the effectiveness of marketing efforts.

2. Common Communication Objectives

3. Budget Approaches
1. Percentage of sales

 Sales of current year, or next year 4. Objective and task

 Simple
 Tends to work in the opposite direction  Budgets determined by objectives
 Does not meet special needs  Best method of budgeting
 Used by 50% of firms
2. Meet the competition
5. Payout planning
 Seeks to prevent market share loss
 Highly competitive markets  Ratio—advertising to sales or market
 Dollars may not be spent efficiently share
 Larger percent at product launch
3. Affordable method  Lower percent when brand established

 Set after all other items budgeted 6. Quantitative models

 Do not view marketing as important
 Computer simulations
 Develop models based on historical data

4. Types of Schedules

Pulsating schedule - advertising throughout the entire year with bursts of additional spending at select times, such as holidays.

Flighting schedule - allocates the budget only during peak times, with no other times during the year.

Continuous schedule - divides the budget equally throughout the entire year.
Types of consumer promotions
1) Coupons
They can be a percentage off the retail price (%) or an absolute amount ($). Coupons are distributed through:
-Free-standing inserts
-Print media
-Digital media
-Direct mail
-In-store

Instant-redemption coupons (lead to trial purchase)

Bounce-back coupon (Encourage repeat purchase)
Scanned-delivered (encourage brand switching)
Cross-ruffing (encourage purchase of an addition product)

2) Premiums
Prizes, gifts or other special offers consumers receive when purchasing products.
The consumer pays full price for the original good and receives something free or at a reduced price.

Key to premiums:
 We need to study our customers (we need to offer something that is going to be desirable for them)
 We have to do it exclusively (no one gets that unless they buy our product first)
 It has to be in in alignment with our product.
 Integrate the premium with other IMC tools (especially advertising and Pop up displays)
 Don’t expect that your sales will be increased. It doesn’t affect the short-term profit (focus on image of
the brand and image).

3) Contests- it requires the participants to perform an activity, best performance wins. Might require a purchase to
enter. The best performance will be decided by someone.

Sweepstakes- randomly selected. Do not require purchase to enter. It must state clearly the conditions of
participations and prize.
We need to think of value that customer will receive (perceived value)
Extrinsic value-attractiveness of prize. Intrinsic value-fun, skill. Intrinsic rewards draw more customers back.

We need to think of what customers are getting from it? Intrinsic rewards draw customers back.

4) Refund and rebates

You buy a product, and get some cash for that for the next purchase.
Refund -cash returns for soft goods (food, clothes)
Rebates- cash returns for hard goods (automotive, appliance)
 You can experience revenue decrease, if you use it too often. Because customer will wait for promotion to
redeem the promotion.
Redemption rate is 30%
65% for rebates over 50%

5) Sampling – Increase brand interest, generate leads, introduce a new product, help to identify and collect data
about your target. Off-line and online (digital sampling)
6) Bonus packs – Boost sales, for people to switch their brands (buy 2 get 1)
7) Price-offs

Promotion-prone consumers
Price sensitive consumers
Brand preference consumers
Loyal consumers

the process by which a positive image and customer preference are created through third-party endorsement.

1. PR Tools

2. PR Functions
 Identify internal and external stakeholders

 Assess the corporate reputation

 Audit corporate social responsibility

 Create positive image-building activities

 Prevent or reduce image damage

3. Marketing Types to Support PR

  Purpose Marketing (Pro-Social Marketing)

 Green Marketing

 Cause-Related Marketing – the charity organization has to be in alignment with the message and goal of the
company.

 Sponsorship Marketing (Teams & Individuals)

 Event Marketing (the whole event)

Alternative Marketing types

1.Buzz Marketing - Also called word-of-mouth marketing, emphasizes consumers passing along product information. It is
done through: Individuals who truly like a brand Individuals sponsored by a brand Company or agency employees.

2.Guerrilla Marketing- attacking customers unexpectedly in small chunks.

Programs designed to obtain instant results using limited resources by relying on creativity, high- quality relationships, and
the willingness to try new approaches.

3.Lifestyle Marketing

Companies organizing their marketing activities at the places associated with hobbies and entertainment.

Contacting consumers in areas where they go for :

 Relaxation
 Excitement
 Socialization
 Enjoyment
4.Experiential Marketing – or engagement marketing invites customers to participate in a real-life situation to interact
with a business. Using hands-on and tangible branding material, the company can not only showcase a product but also tell
what it stands for. Zappos and Google shoed a great example of it, by collaborating with each other and sharing the
audience.

5.Product placement – planned insertion of the product into the videoclip, movie, show book…

It is great to:

 Increase awareness
 Create positive attitude towards the brand
 No immediate result on sales

I. Message Evaluation Techniques 1. Advertising Tracking Research 2. Copytesting 3. Cognitive

Neuroscience

1. Advertising Tracking technique – companies that track TV ads after launch. Used to
evaluate the results of the currently running campaigns to give a feedback and decide whether take It away or
not.

They invite participants, and they have access to different markets. And they show them a piece of ad with brand logo
removed. And then they are asked these questions:

 Brand and ad recognition (what do you know about the brand)

 Memorability (what exactly do you remember)
 Likability
 Unaided brand awareness (What do you know about the brand from your memory. Important for launching new
brands and new products)
 Unaided and aided message recall (Can you remember other parts of the ad, what was the tagline, or where it
was shown, what was shown)
 Unaided and aided campaign recall

Benchmarking- comparing previous results with current results. Can be done through report cards.

New campaign performance:

 Compared to competitors
 Compared to previous results

Disadvantage- no diagnostics as to why. Why they remember or why they don’t remember. That is why now
companies add open questions.

2. Copytesting technique
is done before the campaign is launched. To protect yourself from launching the campaign that is not going to work out.
Also to search for mistakes or misleading information.

Random respondents fitting the target market are given the number of print ads or video. They need to evaluate each of
them, and they don’t know which is being analyzed

 For finished ads or ads at the final stage of development

 Evaluates main messages and format
 Immediate results and lower costs
 Consumers pay more attention to ads and therefore better measures and ad potential
 Can be done online

They measure breakthrough ability, brand message and image, how memorable ad and brand are, persuasive power of the
ad etc.

Pros and Cons of copytesting (not all the companies do copytesting)

-It seems like customer who see the ad would evaluate creativity

-Focus groups are not good judges of creativity

+Issues accountability for the agency (we support our work with what potential customers say)

+Provides key consumer insights on what works and what not with consumers

3) Cognitive neuroscience we measure the condition of the body to get the idea of what processes are
happening in the person’s head. It helps to minimize biases because the body does not lie. It provides a valuable
information about what person really thinks and feels about the ad. For example, it can reveal the moments in the video
when the respondent loses his interest, or in contrary, when he feels excitement and he is engaged.

Online evaluation metrics (digital, social media, web chatter) They are much easier to track.
1) Digital (media types)

Online Evaluation Definitions

 Click-throughs - the number of people who click on the ad and go to the website.
 Length of engagement measures how long a person stays at a website, regardless of where they
 are on the site.
  Dwell rate - the proportion of ad impressions that result in users engaging with an ad. (skip button if we click or
not and continue watching the add)
 Dwell time- measures the amount of time users spend engaged with a particular ad.

Web Metrics

 Number of visits (Hits)

 Number of visitors

 New vs. repeat visitors

 Page views

 Page views per visit

 Time on pages and site

 Entry and exit pages

 Bounce rates

2) Social media metrics (volume)

 Views
 New likes
 Location of the customers
 Time and day of visit
 New subscribers

Social media metrics (Engagement)

• Mentions Social media metrics (Conversation)
• Shares - Reposts/re-tweets  Click-through rate (CTR)
• Likes  Conversion ratio Cost-per-conversion
• Comments (CPC)
• Time on page  Average order value (AOV)
• Visits per (day, month)  Revenue per visit (RPV)
• Bounce rate  Funnel efficiency

3) Web chatter – Listening tools

Different types of software that help us measuring when users talk about us (mentioning, hashtags and etc)
3. Behavior evaluation methods we are looking at the actions (sales and purchases, easy to
use them as we can track them.
Behavioral Measures

1. Sales - to check any changes in sale. UPC code tracking. Scanner data. Retailers. Manufactures.

2. Response rates & Redemption rates- good for sales promotion. Telephone inquiries, response cards, internet
responses, direct response marketing results.

3. Test markets- when we launch something we try it locally. For example soft opening of the hotel.
Used to access: Advertisement, consumer and trade promotion, pricing tactics, new products.

Competitive response:
 May introduce special promotion in test area
Not intervene but prepare for a counterattack.

4. Purchase Simulation Tests

 Bias in purchase intention questions

 Simulated purchase tests
 Research Systems Corporation
 Does not rely on opinions and attitudes