IMC

It is essential for organizations to promote their brands well among the end-users not
only to outshine competitors but also survive in the long run. Brand promotion increases
awareness of products and services and eventually increases their sales, yielding high
profits and revenue for the organization.
To understand integrated marketing communication, let us first understand what does
brand communication mean?
Brand communication is an initiative taken by organizations to make their
products and services popular among the end-users. Brand communication goes a
long way in promoting products and services among target consumers. The process
involves identifying individuals who are best suited to the purchase of products or
services (also called target consumers) and promoting the brand among them through
any one of the following means:

Advertising

Sales Promotion

Public Relation

Direct Marketing

Personal Selling

Social media, and so on

Integrated marketing communication refers to integrating all the methods of

brand promotion to promote a particular product or service among target
customers. In integrated marketing communication, all aspects of marketing
communication work together for increased sales and maximum cost effectiveness.
various components of Integrated Marketing Communication:
1. The Foundation - As the name suggests, foundation stage involves detailed
analysis of both the product as well as target market. It is essential for marketers
to understand the brand, its offerings and end-users. You need to know the
needs, attitudes and expectations of the target customers. Keep a close watch
on competitors activities.
2. The Corporate Culture -Every organization has a vision and its important for
the marketers to keep in mind the same before designing products and services.
Let us understand it with the help of an example.

Organization As vision is to promote green and clean world. Naturally its

products need to be eco friendly and biodegradable, in lines with the vision of the
organization.
3. Brand Focus - Brand Focus represents the corporate identity of the brand.
4. Consumer Experience - Marketers need to focus on consumer experience
which refers to what the customers feel about the product. A consumer is likely to
pick up a product which has good packaging and looks attractive. Products need
to meet and exceed customer expectations.
5. Communication Tools - Communication tools include various modes of
promoting a particular brand such as advertising, direct selling, promoting
through social media such as facebook, twitter,
6. Promotional Tools - Brands are promoted through various promotional tools
such as trade promotions, personal selling and so on. Organizations need to
strengthen their relationship with customers and external clients.
7. Integration Tools - Organizations need to keep a regular track on customer
feedbacks and reviews. You need to have specific software like customer
relationship management (CRM) which helps in measuring the effectiveness of
various integrated marketing communications tools.

Integrated marketing communication plan needs to include:

Detailed summary of your marketing plan as to how it intends to promote

products and services among target customers.

Background, history and vision of your organization.

Know your products well. Include features and essential components of your
brand.

Target market needs to be described well. Plan out how your brand can meet and
exceed customer expectations. Have clarity as to how your brand is better than
your competitors and why should consumers only buy your product and not go
anywhere else. It is essential to read customers mind and know their
perceptions.

Compare your brand with the competitors. Write down how your brand is
better than competitors? You need to keep a close watch on competitors
activities.

Do a SWOT analysis which highlights the strengths, weaknesses, threats and

opportunities of the marketing plan.

Specify the tools and methods which would help you create awareness of your
brand.

several components of a successful integrated marketing Strategy

Customer Focus - No strategy would yield results unless and until you value your
customers. Successful marketing strategies ought to start and end with customers.
Customers are indeed Gods who play a crucial role in the success or failure of an
organization. The needs and requirements of the end-users need to be kept in mind..
Customer feedbacks are essential and need to be monitored regularly. Every business
has some set of customers who are loyal and would never think of going to competitors.
Design your initial marketing strategies around such customers as you do not have to
try too hard to convince them.
Co-operation - Interdepartmental cooperation is essential. Individuals need to work in
unison, brainstorm ideas and come to innovative ideas and unique solutions. All
departments, example - marketing, sales, customer care, service delivery need to work
in close coordination for better results and maximum customer satisfaction.
Database Communication - Information needs to reach all in its desired form.
Employees associated with a particular project need to have access to all relevant
information, data, figures and so on required for its successful implementation.
Managers need to share correct information with all related employees.
Leverage - Understand how each marketing channel promotes your brand among
target customers and also find out the costs associated with the same. Analyze which
all channels are the most cost effective for you to effectively integrate for promoting
various products and services to yield maximum profitability.
Profitability - Remember any strategy or idea is successful only when it generates
additional revenues for the organization.. Make sure, marketing strategies influence
customer decisions who in turn remain loyal towards the organization concerned,
eventually yielding higher profits.

1. WHAT IS MEDIA BUYING?

Media buying is the process of purchasing a share of media from a TV channel, a
publication, a radio spot, an outdoor site or a website, for the purpose of advertising.
It is the procurement of media; a core function of an advertising process.
A media buying departments functional role involves negotiating the best rates from
media owners for an optimal placement and earning more value for an advertisers
money.
In return, the advertisers enjoy more advertising
mileage (higher reach or frequency), and hence better return on investment
(ROI) on their marketing budgets.
In an ideal scenario, there are specialized media buyers for each media channel.
Broadcast media buyers (sometimes referred to as traditional media buyers)
Print media buyers
Digital media buyers
Direct response media buyers
Outdoor media buyers
Efficient media buying is a combination of three things:
1. Negotiation skills
2. Strong professional relationship with the media owners (or media
representatives)
3. Media clout
From a media buyers perspective, the overall process can be spread across 3 phases:
1. Pre-Launch
2. Launch
3. Post-Launch
In the Pre-Launch phase, the media buyer analyzes and selects relevant media choices.
Ensuring that the media selection leads to achieving the advertisers media and
advertising objectives is his core focus.
During the Launch phase, the buyers core responsibility is to ensure effective media delivery.
He would have to keep monitoring whether the campaign is being executed as per the media
plan and the deals agreed with the media owners.
In the Post-launch phase, the buyers needs to report back with the campaigns efficiency in
terms of campaign delivery, GRPs (gross rating points) achieved, value additions and overall
savings as a result of negotiations

What Is Media Planning?

You are creating advertising for a new product. To complete this task, you need to go through the
media planning process. Media planning in advertising is the making of decisions to deliver a
message to the target audience.

The Process
Now that you understand what media planning is, it is time to review the process. The process
includes:

Market analysis

Establishing the media objective

Setting the strategy

Implementation

Evaluation and follow-up

Market Analysis
Performing a market analysis involves determining who your audience is. The audience is the
number and type of people your advertising targets. The audience can be classified according to
age, sex, income, occupation, etc. Performing this analysis will help you to project costs and
determine the right media for your campaign.

Establishing the Media Objective

The media objective is the goal of the media plan. To establish this objective, you must determine
your goal for reach, frequency, circulation, cost, and penetration. Reach is the amount of people the
message is in front of over a period of time. Frequency is the average number of times the message
is in front of those people. Circulation is used for printed advertisements. This is the number of
prints that are produced and sent out. Cost is broken down into two different sections: cost per
thousand (CPM) and cost per person (CPP). The cost will tell you which form of media is the best
option for your business. Penetration is the number of audience members reached by the
advertising. The company must determine if it wants to take over a market or just reach a certain
group prior to setting the penetration goals and strategies.

Setting the Strategy

Now that you understand who you are marketing to and how much it will cost you, you will need to
make a decision about what type of media you will use. Some options include Internet, television,
radio, newspaper, consumer and business publications, and interactive media platforms. Which
option reaches the largest audience? How often will it reach the audience? Does it fit in your budget?

Implementation
You have a plan. Now it's time to set it in motion. This is when you buy media. Media buying is the
purchasing of the space in the selected media. This involves committing to the media provider,
submitting the ad, and paying the bill. This is the exciting part. You see all your hard work come
together.

Evaluation and Follow-up

After everything is said and done, it is time to see how successful your media plan was. To do so,
you need to follow-up and evaluate the results. Ask yourself, 'Did we meet media objectives? How
successful were the strategies?' The success of this media plan will determine future media plans.

SETTING MEDIA OBJECTIVE

Establishing Media Objective
Media objectives describes what you want the media plan to accomplish. There are five key media
objectives that a advertiser or media planner has to consider - reach, frequency, continuity, cost, and
weight.
1.
Reach - Reach refers to the number of people that will be exposed to to a media vehicle at
least once during a given period of time.
2.
Frequency - Frequency refers to the average number of times an individual within target
audience is exposed to a media vehicle during a given period of time.
3.
Continuity - It refers to the pattern of advertisements in a media schedule. Continuity
alternatives are as follows:

Continuous: Strategy of running campaign evenly over a period of time.

Pulsing: Strategy of running campaign steadily over a period of time with intermittent
increase in advertising at certain intervals, as during festivals or special occasions like
Olympics or World-Cup.

Discontinuous: Strategy of advertising heavily only at certain intervals, and no

advertising in the interim period, as in case of seasonal products.
2 4.Cost - It refers to the cost of different media
3 5.Weight - Weight refers to total advertising required during a particular period.

MEDIA STRATEGY
A media strategy \is a plan of action that helps businesses reach their
target audience and by reaching their target audience they improve
their overall conversion rate. When trying to capture the attention of a
niche market, it's important to know the exact demographic and what
will get their attention in the most effective way.
Key Components to Consider When Creating Your Media Strategy
Identify Your Target Market
The demographics of your target audience should be taken into consideration. The
more you know about your target market the more effective your overall
marketing strategy will be. You will need to identify your market, where and how
they spend their time, and how the audience can most effectively be reached. For
example, marketing through mobile apps and social media would be more
effective for reaching the teenage demographic than print and traditional
media would be.
Importance of Measurable Objectives
One thing to keep in mind during the strategy process is your overall marketing
objectives and goals. They need to be measurable and specific; if a goal is simply,
"make more money," it can be measured, but there are no
specifics tactics involved. "Increase profits by 20% by Q3" is a much more
specific, realistic goal
Determine Your Marketing Budget
In your media strategy, you must also consider your marketing budget. Without a
budget, it is possible to throw tens of thousands of dollars at a problem without
seeing a clear solution. However, having a set budget encourages you to think each
tactic through and be more creative in your problem-solving and protects you from
overspending or spending money that you do not have.
Learn From Your Results
The most effective media strategies are those that evolve over time. If a company
launches one strategy that doesn't have the expected results, the company can learn
from where it went wrong and improve subsequent launches. This is why

measuring results are important; they provide valuable data that can be
implemented into future media strategies to improve them.

CROSS MEDIA CONCEPT

Cross-media marketing refers to the use of two or more media types print, email, mobile and/or
social in an orchestrated campaign targeting demographic and/or psychgraphic segment. These
campaigns can be retention programs targeted at existing customers or acquisition programs
targeted at prospective customers. A cross media campaign delivers relevant content and a call to
action through multiple media simultaneously as an integrated campaign

Advertising Agencies - Meaning, its

Role and Types of Agencies
The work of a tailor is to collect the raw material, find matching threads, cut the cloth in desired shape,
finally stitch the cloth and deliver it to the customer.
Advertising Agency is just like a tailor. It creates the ads, plans how, when and where it should be
delivered and hands it over to the client. Advertising agencies are mostly not dependent on any
organizations.
These agencies take all the efforts for selling the product of the clients. They have a group of people
expert in their particular fields, thus helping the companies or organizations to reach their target customer
in an easy and simple way.
The first Advertising Agency was William Taylor in 1786 followed by James Jem White in 1800 in London
and Reynell & Son in 1812.

Role of Advertising Agencies

1. Creating an advertise on the basis of information gathered about product
2. Doing research on the company and the product and reactions of the customers.
3. Planning for type of media to be used, when and where to be used, and for how much time to be
used.

4. Taking the feedbacks from the clients as well as the customers and then deciding the further line
of action
All companies can do this work by themselves. They can make ads, print or advertise them on televisions
or other media places; they can manage the accounts also. Then why do they need advertising agencies?
The reasons behind hiring the advertising agencies by the companies are:

The agencies are expert in this field. They have a team of different people for different functions
like copywriters, art directors, planners, etc.

The agencies make optimum use of these people, their experience and their knowledge.

They work with an objective and are very professionals.

Hiring them leads in saving the costs up to some extent.

There are basically 5 types of advertising agencies.

1. Full service Agencies

Large size agencies.

Deals with all stages of advertisement.

Different expert people for different departments.

Starts work from gathering data and analyzing and ends on payment of bills to the media
people.

2. Interactive Agencies

Modernized modes of communication are used.

Uses online advertisements, sending personal messages on mobile phones, etc.

The ads produced are very interactive, having very new concepts, and very innovative.

3. Creative Boutiques

Very creative and innovative ads.

No other function is performed other than creating actual ads.

Small sized agencies with their own copywriters, directors, and creative people.

4. Media Buying Agencies

Buys place for advertise and sells it to the advertisers.

Sells time in which advertisement will be placed.

Schedules slots at different television channels and radio stations.

Finally supervises or checks whether the ad has been telecasted at opted time and place
or not.

5. In-House Agencies

As good as the full service agencies.

Big organization prefers these type of agencies which are in built and work only for them.

These agencies work as per the requirements of the organizations.

There are some specialized agencies which work for some special advertisements. These types of
agencies need people of special knowledge in that field. For example, advertisements showing social
messages, finance advertisements, medicine related ads, etc.

Media & its type

1. Television
Following are the specific characteristics of television:
It is more impact-full as it is the combination of sound, sight, and motion,
It has broad reach and mass coverage,
It is highly intrusive medium,
It has high absolute cost but cost per thousand is moderate.

2. Radio
Following are the specific characteristics of radio:

It can reach out to remote audiences,

It is most cost efficient among all mass media,
Radio can reach mobile population,
Radio has local market identification.

3. Newspaper

Following are the specific characteristics of newspaper:

Newspaper is a better option to provide detailed information,
A publication have different editions for different areas, so there
is a geographic flexibility in newspaper,
Newspaper have different sections, so there is opportunity of
targeting special interest groups,
Newspaper are vehicle for coupon delivery.

4. Magazine
Following are the specific characteristics of magazine:
There are magazines for sports, corporate, business, women. children, etc., so we can say
magazines have specific audience selectivity, as they are specialised,
Magazines have longer life,
Magazines provide them opportunity for message scrutiny, and geographic and demographic
flexibility.

5. Outdoor
Following are specific characteristics of outdoor media:
Outdoor media is easily noticeable, and it provides 24 hours
coverage,
Outdoor is location specific media, it has local market presence,
Outdoor media is Cost efficient medium,
It can be good reminder media.

PYSCHOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION
Vals which is also known as values attitude and lifestyle is one of the
primary ways to perform psychographic segmentation
VALS is different for different people. Lets take income as an example. If you
are a person with high income your lifestyle would probably include habits of
the SEC A class such as dining out of home frequently and that too in top class
restaurants, wearing only branded clothes and buying the best cars out there.
Whereas if you are a middle class income group consumer, you would be more
wary of spending money and would rather concentrate on savings.
The VALS framework

The VALS framework was developed keeping a consumers resources as well as

his capacity to accept innovation in mind. The X axis consisted of primary
motivation (explained below) and the Y axis consisted of resources such as
income, education, confidence etc. Thus these two factors were determined to
be critical to define the values attitude and lifestyle of any consume
Resources Included resources available to an individual such as income,
education, intelligence, emotional support, etc.
Primary motivation Which determined what actually drives the
individual. Is it knowledge, the desire to achieve something or is it to be social.

After researching above 1500 consumers, Arnold mitchell actually divided

consumers into 9 different types based on the amount of resources they had as
well as their capacity for primary motivation. These classes of consumers
based on their VALS were.
Innovators The class of consumer at the top of the vals framework. They
are characterized by High income and high resource individuals for whom
independence is very important. They have their own individual taste in things
and are motivated in achieving the finer things in life.
Thinkers A well educated professional is an excellent example of Thinkers
in the vals framework. These are the people who have high resources and are
motivated by their knowledge. These are the rational decision making
consumers and are well informed about their surroundings. These consumers
are likely to accept any social change because of their knowledge level.
Believers The subtle difference between thinkers and believers is that
thinkers make their own decisions whereas believers are more social in nature
and hence also believe other consumers. They are characterized by lower
resources and are less likely to accept innovation on their own. They are the
best class of word of mouth consumers.
Achievers The achievers are mainly motivated by guess what
Achievements. These individuals want to excel at their job as well in their
family. Thus they are more likely to purchase a brand which has shown its
success over time. The achievers are said to be high resource consumers but at
the same time, if any brand is rising, they are more likely to adopt that brand
faster.
Strivers Low resource consumer group which wants to reach some
achievement are known as strivers. These customers do not have the resources
to be an achiever. But as they have values similar to an achiever, they fall
under the striver category. If a striver can gain the necessary resources such as
a high income or social status then he can move on to becoming an achiever.
Experiencers The group of consumers who have high resources but also
need a mode of self expression are known as Experiencers. Mostly
characterized by young adults, it consists of people who want to experience

being different. This class of consumers is filled up with early adopters who
spend heavily on food, clothing and other youthful products and services.
Makers These are consumers who also want self expression but they are
limited by the number of resources they have. Thus they would be more
focused towards building a better family rather than going out and actually
spending higher amount of money. Making themselves into better individuals
and families becomes a form of self expression for the Makers.
Survivors The class of consumers in the Vals framework with the least
resources and therefore the least likely to adopt any innovation. As they are
not likely to change their course of action regularly, they form into brand
loyal customers. An example can include old age pension earners living
alone for whom the basic necessities are important and they are least likely to
concentrate on anything else.

Psychographic Segmentation
Segmentation is used mainly to target a certain group from within a
population. Psychographic segmentation is one which uses peoples lifestyle,
their activities, interests as well as opinions to define a market segment.
Psychographic segmentation is quite similar to behavioral segmentation. But
psychographic segmentation also takes the psychological aspects of consumer
buying behavior into accounts. These psychological aspects may be consumers
lifestyle, his social standing as well as his AIO. Do refer more to Activities,
interests and opinons.
Lifestyle Everyone has different clothing habits based on their
lifestyle. The customer might be school going, college going, office going or
other. Thus by lifestyle we mean, where does the customer stand in his life

cycle. Similarly, the lifestyle of a rural area customer might be different from
urban areas.
Activities interests and opinions A subset of lifestyle, activities
interests and opinions also affect consumer buying behavior.
Activities The way a person carries out his work or the type of hobbies he
has tells a lot about a person. If he has a tough work and at the same time he is
also involved in numerous sports then we have a highly active person in hand.
Whereas if we have a computer operator who mainly likes indoor sports then
we have somone who is unlikely to head out of home on his weekends.
Interests What is the consumer interested in? Is he interested in food,
technology products, fashion or recreation? A consumers interests also help
marketers as they help him to decide on the right marketing message which
needs to be communicated to the prospect consumer.
Opinions Ask any political party or movie marketer and he will say that
audience opinion is one of the topmost factors affecting the rise or fall of a
political party or a movie. Opinions do matter. And especially in the age of
internet, opinions spread fast. Nowadays there are agencies taking care of
a brand online such that they can immediately give a feedback of what the
public opinion about a brand / product is.
Social class Different consumers fall in different social classes. This
depends mainly on their buying power. The buying power is affected by the
background of the customer, his income as well as his spending habits. The
customer will always buy to maintain his social class. Thus premium brands
like gucci, longines or others always target the Sec A segments because they
know that these would be the classes capable of buying their products.
Harley davidson biker more commonly known as Hogs. They would be
people unshaven, tall, manly who like to live a rough lifestyle. Thats the
personality built for harley over time. Thus brands target their customers even
based on their personality.