Distribution and Promotion

Integrated Marketing
Communications
• Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is a
concept under which a company carefully integrates and
coordinates its many communications channels to deliver
a clear and consistent message.
Objective
1. Provide information: provide necessary information for
consumers to help them make buying decision.
2. Create demand for products: to stimulate people to
desire what they do not have and inspire them to earn the
money to acquire items.
3. Communicate value: convey a product’s benefits in a
memorable way
4. Communicate product uniqueness: illustrate their
brand’s unique qualities to build preference in their
target markets.
5. Close the sale: move buyers to action the first time and
reinforce their positive experience

6. Build relationships and loyalty

• Identify target audience:
The process should start with clear target audience in mind
- Potential buyers of company’s product
- Current users
- Deciders
- Influencers
- Individuals
- General Public.
• Determine Objective:
- Brand awareness
- Brand attitude
- Brand purchase intention
• Design Communications:
Formulating the communications to achieve the desired
response will require solving three problems:
- What to say (Message strategy)
- How to say it(Creative strategy)
o Informational appeal- Elaborates on product or service
attributes. Ex: Saridon stops headache.
o Transformational appeal: Elaborates on non-product related
benefit or image. It may depict what kind of person uses a
brand(Raymond’s advertisement depicts relatively young,
successful and elegantly dressed men) or What kind of
experience results from using the brand (Liril is advertised
as the freshness soap)

- Who should say it (Message source)

• Select Channels:
Selecting efficient means to carry the message becomes
more difficult as channels of communication become
more fragmented and cluttered.
- Personal communication channel: Two or more persons
communicate face to face, person to audience, over the
telephone or through e-mail.
 Advocate Channel: Company sales people
 Expert Channel: Independent Experts
 Social Channel: Family, friends, neighbor
-Non personal Communication channels:
Communications directed to more than one person
1. Media
2. Sales promotion
3. Events
4. Public relations
• Establish Budget:
- Affordable method
- Percentage-of-sales method
- Competitive parity method
- Objective and task method
• Decide communication mix:
Companies must allocate marketing communication budget
over the eight major modes of communication
- Advertising - Events
- Sales promotion - Direct marketing
- Public relation - Interactive Marketing
- Word-of-Mouth - Sales force
• Measuring communication results:
Senior managers want to know the outcomes and revenues
from their communication investments.
• Manage Integrated Marketing Communications:
Marketing communication plan evaluates the strategic
roles of a variety of communications disciplines for
example, general advertising, sales promotion, public
relations .
Advertising
• Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation
and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified
sponsor.
Advertising Objective
• Advertising objectives can be classified according to
whether their aim is to inform, persuade, remind, or
reinforce.
- Informative advertising: Aims to create brand awareness
and knowledge of new products or new features of
existing products.
- Persuasive advertising: Aims to create liking, preference,
conviction, and purchase of a product.
- Reminder Advertising: Aims to stimulate repeat purchase
of products and services.

- Reinforcement advertising: Aims to convince current

purchasers that they made the right choice.
Advertising Budget
Methods of preparing advertising budget:
• Competitive Parity: Firms following this practice make
their advertising budget comparable to that of their
competitors. This budgeting often fails to reflect firm’s
advertising needs.

• Affordability: Here, a firm will allocate for advertising

whatever it can afford. Small firms follow this method.
• A fixed percentage of turnover: The advertising budget is set in
terms of a specified percentage of sales.

• Budget based on functions to be performed: Objective approach

to advertising appropriations- budget based on functions to be
performed.

• Statistical techniques and models: Here using past data, the

relationship between past advertising expenditures and resulting
sales is studied to understand the sales response to ad expenditure.
Advertising Copy
• The term ‘copy’ includes every single feature that appears
in the body of the advertisement.

• Copy is an all-embracing term, covering all that appear in

an advertisement- the written matter, pictures, labels,
logos and designs.
Steps in copy development
1. The fact finding stage: In this step, the advertiser’s
actual requirements have to be identified and pinpointed.
- What are the overall communication objectives?

- What is the specific communications objective of the

proposed campaign?
2. The idea finding stage: In this stage, tentative ideas
developed under different ‘idea heads’. They are further
processed, developed and screened. The less promising
ones are eliminated.
To develop ideas, different routes are adopted.
- Interviewing
- Brainstorming
- Focus groups
AIDA Model
• Awareness: creating brand awareness or affiliation with your product
or service.
• Interest: generating interest in the benefits of your product or service,
and sufficient interest to encourage the buyer to start to research
further.
• Desire: for your product or service through an 'emotional connection',
showing your brand personality. Move the consumer from 'liking' it to
'wanting it'.
• Action: Move the buyer to interact with your company and taking the
next step ie. downloading a brochure, making the phone call, joining
your newsletter, or engaging in live chat, etc.
Push-Pull Strategies of Promotion
 Push Strategy:
• The term 'push strategy' describes the work a
manufacturer of a product needs to perform to get the
product to the customer.

• This may involve setting up distribution channels and

persuading middle men and retailers to stock your
product.
• The push technique can work particularly well for lower
value items such as fast moving consumer goods
(FMCGs).
• This term now broadly encompasses most direct
promotional techniques such as encouraging retailers to
stock your product, designing point of sale materials or
even selling face to face.
• New businesses often adopt a push strategy for their
products in order to generate exposure and a retail
channel. Once your brand has been established, this can be
integrated with a pull strategy.
 Pull Strategy:
• 'Pull strategy' refers to the customer actively seeking out
your product and retailers placing orders for stock due to
direct consumer demand.
• A pull strategy requires a highly visible brand which can
be developed through mass media advertising or similar
tactics. If customers want a product, the retailers will
stock it - supply and demand in its purest form, and this is
the basis of a pull strategy.
 Examples Of Pull Tactics

• Advertising and mass media promotion

• Word of mouth referrals
• Customer relationship management
• Sales promotions and discounts