Joann L.

Sacol

BSA 1-25

Integrated Marketing Communications

-A planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for
a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.
-is a holistic approach to promote buying and selling in the digital economy through many
online and offline marketing channels. - Marketing Power Dictionary
-The term integrated marketing communications (IMC) is used to describe the combination of
all marketing activities that are designed to stimulate demand. These demand-creating activities are
referred to as the communications mix.

Sources of IMC Impressions include:

Promotion Elements
1. Personal Selling
- Selling that involves a face-to-face interaction with the customer.

-is the most effective tool at certain stages of the buying process, particularly in building
up buyer's preferences, convictions, and actions. it involves personal interaction between two or more
people.
2. Advertising
- The placement of announcements and persuasive messages in time or space
purchased in any of the mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government
agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/ or persuade members of a particular target
market or audience about their products, services, organizations, or ideas.
-can reach masses of geographically dispersed buyers at a low cost per exposure, and
it enables the sellers to repeat a message many times.
-Magazines, newspaper, outdoor posters, direct mail, radio televisions, etc.

3. Sales Promotion
- The media and non-media marketing pressure applied for a predetermined, limited
period of time at the level of consumer, retailer, or wholesaler in order to stimulate trial,
increase consumer demand, or improve product availability.
-- attracts consumer attention, offer strong incentives to purchase, and can be
used to dramatize product offers and to boost sagging sales. sales promotion effects are often
short-lived, however, and often are not as effective as advertising or personal selling in building
long- run brand preference.

-Displays, shows and exhibitions, coupons, contests, samples

4. Public Relations
-That form of communication management that seeks to make use of publicity and other
nonpaid forms of promotion and information to influence the feelings, opinions, or beliefs about
the company, its products or services, or about the value of the product or service or the
activities of the organization to buyers, prospects, or other stakeholders.
- is very believable news stories, features, sponsorship, and events seem more real and
believable to readers than ads do. Public relations can also reach many prospects who avoid
salespeople and advertisements-- the message gets to buyers as news rather than as a sales
directed communication. And as with advertising, public relations or can dramatize a company
or product.
5. Direct Marketing
- Direct marketing is non public. it is normally directed to a specific person. Direct
marketing is immediate and customized.
-Techniques used to get consumers to make a purchase from their home, office or other
nonretail setting
-Direct mail, catalogs, mail order, telemarketing, electronic retailing

Push vs. Pull strategy

Push through communications target channel intermediaries to motivate them to become
more aggressive in customer communications. The overall objective is to increase reseller
support and market coverage.
that calls for using the sales promotion to push the product through channels., The
producer promotes the product the product through wholesalers, the wholesalers
promote to retailers, and the retailers promote to consumers.
brands that may be undifferentiated in the marketplace or in categories where
consumer brand preferences are difficult to generate and sustain.
where the distributor plays an important role by providing information or some
expertise.

-Trade Promotions and Allowances

-Sales Force
-Public Relations
Pull through communications are used to target final consumers and to create consumer
demand (pull). The objective is to move goods and services forward in the distribution
channel by pre-selling final consumers.
brands that are strongly differentiated or in categories where final consumer
preference can be generated and sustained.

 calls for spending a lot on advertising and consumer promotion to build up

consumer demand. If the strategy is successful, consumers will ask their retailers
for the product, the retailers will ask the wholesalers, and the wholesalers will ask
the producers.
-Advertising
-Consumer Sales Promotions
-Direct Marketing
-Public Relations

Setting the Total Promotion Budget Mix

1. Affordable Method
They set the promotion budget at the level they think the company can afford.
2. Percentage of Sales Method
Setting their promotion budget at a certain percentage of current or forecasted sales. they
budget a percentage of the unit sales price.
3. Competitive - Parity Method
Setting their promotion budgets to match competitors outlays. They monitor competitors
advertising or get industry promotion spending estimates from trade associations.
4. Objective and Task Method
Most logical budget setting method. This budgeting method entails
1. Defining specific promotion objectives
2. Determining the tasks needed to achieve these objectives
3. Estimating the costs of performing these tasks.
Communication Process
To communicate effectively, marketers need to understand how communication works. This
understanding will help marketers allocate their communication dollars more efficiently and

effectively.

1. SENDER/ENCODER
The sender also known as the encoder decides on the message to be sent, the best/most effective
way that it can be sent. All of this is done bearing the receiver in mind. In a word, it is his/her job
to conceptualize.
The sender may want to ask him/herself questions like: What words will I use? Do I need signs or
pictures?
2. MEDIUM
The medium is the immediate form which a message takes. For example, a message may be
communicated in the form of a letter, in the form of an email or face to face in the form of a speech.
3. CHANNEL
The channel is that which is responsible for the delivery of the chosen message form. For example
post office, internet, radio.
4. RECEIVER
The receiver or the decoder is responsible for extracting/decoding meaning from the message. The
receiver is also responsible for providing feedback to the sender. In a word, it is his/her job to
INTERPRET.
5. FEEDBACK
This is important as it determines whether or not the decoder grasped the intended meaning and
whether communication was successful.
6. CONTEXT
Communication does not take place in a vacuum. The context of any communication act is the
environment surrounding it. This includes, among other things, place, time, event, and attitudes of
sender and receiver.
7. NOISE (also called interference)
This is any factor that inhibits the conveyance of a message. That is, anything that gets in the way of

the message being accurately received, interpreted and responded to. Noise may be internal or
external. A student worrying about an incomplete assignment may not be attentive in class (internal
noise) or the sounds of heavy rain on a galvanized roof may inhibit the reading of a storybook to
second graders (external noise).
The communication process is dynamic, continuous, irreversible, and contextual. It is not possible to
participate in any element of the process without acknowledging the existence and functioning of the
other elements.