Role of IMC in Marketing
Opportunity Analysis
A careful analysis of the marketplace should lead to alternative market Opportunities for existing product lines in current or new markets, as well as new goods for current or new markets.
Market opportunities are sectors with positive demand patterns, where the organization feels customer demands and opportunities are not being met, and where it can compete successfully.
Competitive Analysis
When designing the firm’s marketing strategies and plans for its goods and services, the management must carefully consider the competition that will be encountered in the marketplace. For example, in recent years, the high-end luxury industry in the United States has grown significantly, with more people spending more money on luxury items than ever before. This shift in customer buying patterns benefits high-end brands such as Coach, Tiffany’s, and Ralph Lauren.
This may vary from direct brand rivalry (including its own brands) to indirect forms of competition, such as product replacements.
To design a successful marketing strategy, it’s crucial to identify a unique competitive advantage that sets a company apart from rivals.
Target Marketing
Identifying markets
Identifying target markets helps identify customers with comparable lives and demands, leading to a better understanding of their specific requirements.
The more marketers can find common ground with consumers, the more successful their communications strategies will be in addressing these criteria and educating and/or convincing prospective customers that the product or service offering will fulfill their needs.
Marketing Segmentation
- Divide a market into discrete groups with comparable demands and responses to a marketing procedure. The process includes the following steps:
- Finding strategies to categorize customers based on their requirements.
- Finding methods to categorize the marketing actions—typically the items provided to the company
- Create a market-product grid that connects market groupings to the firm’s goods or activities.
- Identifying target segments for marketing efforts.
- Taking marketing activity to reach target groups.
Market Positioning
It has been described as “the art and science of fitting the product or service to one or more segments of the broad market in such a way as to set it meaningfully apart from competition.” Positioning strategies often concentrate on either the customer or the competitor.
Create a Positioning Strategy: To establish a position for a product or service, managers must ask themselves six fundamental questions:
- What place, if any, do we now have in the prospect’s mind?
- What position do we wish to hold?
- Which firms must be outgunned if we are to achieve that position?
- Do we have sufficient marketing funds to occupy and maintain the position?
- Do we have the courage to persist with a single consistent positioning strategy?
- Does our creative approach align with our positioning strategy?
Creating the marketing planning program.
The formulation of a marketing strategy and the selection of target markets inform the marketing department about which consumers to target and what needs to be addressed. The next step of the marketing process is integrating the many aspects of the marketing mix into a unified, successful marketing strategy. Each marketing-mix component is multifaceted and involves a variety of decision points. Similarly, each individual must consider and contribute to the overall IMC program.
Product Decisions
An organization exists because it has a product, service, or concept to give customers, usually in return for money. This offering might be a tangible commodity (a soft drink, a pair of clothes, or a vehicle), a service (banking, airlines, or legal aid), a cause (United Way, March of Dimes), or even a person (a political candidate). The product is anything that can be sold and, when used or supported, provides pleasure to the user. Product symbolism relates to what a product or brand signifies to customers and the experiences they have while buying and utilizing it.
Price Decisions
The price variable describes what the buyer must give up in order to acquire a product or service. While price is often mentioned in terms of the financial amount paid for an item, the cost of a product to the user includes time, mental activity, and behavioral effort. According to IMC, the pricing must be compatible with product perceptions and the marketing strategy. better prices, of course, indicate better product quality, and lower prices represent bargain or “value” beliefs.
Distribution Channel Decisions
One of a marketer’s most crucial marketing considerations is how it makes its items and services accessible for purchase. A company may have a good product at a low price, but it will be of little value unless it is accessible where and when the client wants it, as well as with adequate support and service. Channel choices include choosing, controlling, and motivating intermediaries such as wholesalers, distributors, brokers, and retailers that assist a company in making a product or service accessible to clients. The distribution plan should include consider communication goals as well as the channel strategy’s influence on the IMC program.
Developing Promotional Strategy:
Trade promotion encompasses all aspects of the promotional mix. Company sales staff contact resellers to explain the product, discuss the company’s intentions for increasing demand among end users, and outline special trade programs such as introductory discounts, promotional allowances, and joint advertising campaigns. The corporation may employ trade advertising to get wholesalers and retailers to buy its items for resale to their consumers. Trade advertising is often seen in industry-specific periodicals.
A push approach attempts to persuade resellers that they can profit from a manufacturer’s goods and encourages them to purchase the item and distribute it to their clients. Manufacturers may encounter pushback from channel members who are unwilling to take on a new product line or brand. In these instances, businesses may use a promotional pull approach, investing money on advertising and sales promotion activities aimed at the end customer. A pull approach aims to generate customer demand and urge them to seek the goods from the shop. Seeing customer demand, shops will order the goods from wholesalers, who will then request it from the producer. Thus, driving end-user demand drives the product via distribution channels.
Role of Advertising and Promotion
Marketers utilize a variety of promotional-mix components, including advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, publicity/public relations, and personal selling, to notify customers about their goods, pricing, and availability. Each promotional mix component helps marketers accomplish their promotional goals, and all factors must work together to create an integrated marketing communications campaign. The formulation and execution of an IMC program is built on a solid foundation of market analysis, target marketing and positioning, and coordination of the many marketing-mix components.