Chapter 17: Integrated Marketing Communications

Objectives:

• Identify the components of the communication process,
• Explain the 4 steps in the AIDA model,
• Describe the various integrative communication channels,
• Explain the methods used to allocate the integrated marketing communications (IMC) budget,
• Identify marketing metrics used to measure IMC success. 

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC): Represents the promotion dimension of the four Ps; encompasses a variety of communication disciplines - general advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing, and electronic media - in combination to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum communicative impact. 

I. Communicating with Consumers

• The Communication Process
• The Sender: The firm from which the IMC message originates; the sender must be clearly identified to the intended audience. 
• The Transmitter: An agent or intermediary with which the sender works to develop the marketing communications; for example, a firm's creative department or an advertising agency.
• Encoding: The process of converting the sender's ideas into a message, which could be verbal , visual, or both.
• The Communication Channel: The medium - print, broadcast, the internet - that carries the message.
• The Receiver: The person who reads, hears, sees and processes the information contained in the message or advertisement. 
• Decoder: The process by which the receiver interprets the sender's message.
• Noise: Any interference that stems from competing messages, a lack of clarity in the message, or a flaw in the medium; a problem for all communication channels. 
• Feedback Loop: Allows the receiver to communicate with the sender and thereby informs the sender whether the message was received and decoded properly.
• How Consumers Perceive Communication
• Receivers Decode Messages Differently
• Base on the receiver's own sentiments and current position in the world, messages can be received differently. 
• Senders Adjust Messages According to the Medium and Receivers' Traits
• The adjustments made based on the specific target the message is directed toward. For example, is the message towards, suppliers, retailers, consumers....?
• The AIDA Model: A common model of the series of mental stages through which consumers move as a result of marketing communications: Awareness leads to Interest, which lead to Desire, which lead to  Action. There is not always a direct link between a particular marketing communication and a consumer's purchase. Generally, marketing communications move consumers stepwise through a series of mental stages, for which there are several models. 

• Awareness: 
• Brand Awareness: Measures how many consumers in the market are familiar with the brand and what it stands for; created through repeated exposures of the various brand elements (brand name, logo, symbol, character, packaging, or slogan) in the firm's communications to consumers. 
• Aided Recall: Occurs when consumers recognize a name (a brand name) that has been presented to them.
• Top-of-mind Awareness: A prominent place in people's memories that triggers a response without them having to put any thought into it. 
• Interest: It isn't enough to let people know the product exists, consumers must be persuaded that it is a product worth investigating. 
• Desire: After the firm has piqued the interest of its target market, the goal of the subsequent IMC messages should move the consumer from "I like it" to "I want it".
• Action: If the message has caught consumers' attention and made them interest enough to consider the product as a means to satisfy a specific desire of theirs, they likely will act on that interest by either searching for that product or making a purchase. 
• The Lagged Effect: A delayed response to a marketing communication campaign. 

II. Elements of an Integrated Marketing Communication Strategy

• Advertising: A paid form of communication from an identifiable source, delivered through a communication channel, and designed to persuade the receiver to take some action, now or in the future. Advertising must break through the clutter of other messages and reach its intended audience. 
• Public Relations: The organizational function that manages the firm's communication to achieve a variety of objectives, including building and maintaining a positive image, handling or heading off unfavorable stories or events, and maintaining positive relationships with the media. 
• Sales Promotions: Special incentives or excitement-building programs that encourage the purchase of a product or service, such as coupons, rebates, contests, free samples, and point of purchase displays. 
• Personal Selling: The two way flow of communication between a buyer and a seller that is designed to influence the buyer's purchase decision. 
• Direct Marketing: Sales and promotional techniques that deliver promotional materials individually. 
• Mobile Marketing: Marketing through handheld wireless devices. 
• Online Marketing
• Websites:Websites are used to build brand image and educate consumers about their products or services as well as where they can be purchased. 
• Blogs: A webpage that contains periodic posts: corporate blogs are a new form of marketing communications. A well received blog can communicate trends, announce special events, create positive word of mouth, connect consumers by forming a community, allow the company to respond directly to customer's comments, and develop a long term relationship with the company. 
• Social Media: Media content used for social interactions such as Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. 

III. Planning and Measuring IMC Success

• Goals: Goals can be short term, such as generating inquiries, increasing awareness, and prompting trial. Or they can be long-term in nature, such as increasing sales, market share, and customer loyalty. Goals should be explicitly defined and measured. 
• Setting and Allocating IMC Budget
• Objective-and-Task Method: An IMC budgeting method that determines the cost required to undertake specific tasks to accomplish communication objectives; process entails setting objectives, choosing media, and determining costs. 
• Rule-of-Thumb Methods: Budgeting methods that base the IMC budget on either the firm's share of the market in relation to competition, a fixed percentage of forecasted sales, or what is left after other operating costs and forecasted sales have been budgeted. 
• Measuring Success using Marketing Metrics: Each step in the IMC process can be measured to determine how effective it has been in motivating consumers to move to the next step in the buying process. 
• Traditional Media
• Frequency of Exposure: MEasure of how often the audience is exposed to a communication within a specific period of time. 
• Reach: Measure of consumers' exposure to marketing communications; the percentage of the target population exposed to a specific marketing communication, such as and advertisement, at least once. 
• GRP - Gross Rating Points: Measure used for various media advertising - print, radio, or television; GRP = (Reach) x (Frequency)
• Web-based Media: Sites who use special systems to deliver messages that contribute to defining changing consumer trends based on how the consumers are interacting on the social systems. 
• Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating IMC Programs - An Illustration of Google Advertising
• Search Engine Marketing: A type pf web advertising whereby companies pay for keywords that are used to catch consumers' attention while browsing a search engine. 
• Impressions: The number of times an advertisement appears in front of the user. 
• Click Through Rate: The number of times the user clicks on an online ad divided by the number of impressions. 
• Relevance: The context of search engine marketing (SEM), it is a metric used to determined how useful an advertisement is to the consumer.  
• Return on Investment: The amount of profile divided by the initial amount of investment. In the case of an advertisemnt, the ROI = (Sales) - (Cost of Advertising needed to generate sales) / (The Ad Cost).