Question

Citynet is a West Virginia based provider of telecommunications services. They provide a host of Internet and phone services throughout the state and surrounding areas including Pittsburgh, PA. Citynet recently hired Sarah Pilgrim as their new marketing manager. Sarah is reviewing the strategy for Citynet's support media which they have used extensively in recent years. Citynet will have to make numerous decisions regarding the success, failure, and future direction of each support media element as they plan for the upcoming fiscal year. In her previous job at AFN Communications, Sarah was responsible for measuring the audiences for support media and found the measures useful in formulating an overall support media strategy. Perhaps the major weakness with most support media is the lack of audience measurement and verification that is done. Unlike many other types of media, most nontraditional or support media do not provide audience measurement figures. So the advertiser is forced to make decisions by finding and using the best available data. Read the report and answer the questions to the right to generate a support media strategy based on the measurements to help Sarah Pilgrim with the strategy for Citynet. Sarah was surprised at how little measurement had been done in examining the effectiveness of support media at Citynet. Sarah outlined the strategic decisions she had to make for her task of measuring the effectiveness of the support media strategy and providing guidance for the year ahead. Her first task was to identify how she would measure the firm's out-of-home, promotional products and Yellow Pages advertising. Based on the results from these sources, she would then need to make suggestions to the management team about support media strategies for the upcoming year. Sarah was confident that effective measurements would make this upcoming year for Citynet a successful one. She set out to measure Citynet's support media and make her strategic recommendations. 1) Owing to the nature of the industry, promotional products advertising has no established ongoing audience measurement system. She is looking for some general information to help in analyzing the firm's future plans using promotional products. Which of the following is current research results regarding the effectiveness of promotional products marketing?Sarah has a budget of $21,000 for out-of-home advertising. She discovered through the "Eyes On" measure that all but two of their outdoor advertising sites scored very highly on a "likely to see" basis. As such, what should Sarah recommend?

Answer 1

Sarah needs to capitalize on the potential of integrated marketing communication. IMC or Integrated marketing communication is the communication plan, which is used by the company, to brand the company’s offerings, promote them in the market and create comprehensive awareness about the features and functionality of the various products. Usually there are 6 critical elements in an IMC:

• Digital marketing
• Packaging
• Public Relations
• Advertising
• Sales promotions
• Personal Selling

The core objective or fundamental ideology with which a IMC plan for a product is developed by the company, is that the various modes or channels of the company’s communication strategy to the outside world, must collaborate and work in alignment to the culture of the company, in order to propagate and make the company brand, more strong and popular among the masses. IMC plans help in adding value to the business strategy by bringing the desired visibility to the products and services offered by the company.

The primary steps which Sarah can use, to develop effective communication strategy of the company’s offerings are:

• Identify the target audience for the marketing communication: The companies try to narrow down the scope of marketing campaigns and try to aim at the primary customers of the company.
• Determine the primary objective of the marketing communications plan: The objective of the marketing communications plan must be very clear. This helps in developing a crisp campaign. Usually companies try to enhance awareness about its new initiatives through the marketing campaign and this emerges as their primary objective.
• Choose the media to transmit the marketing communication: With the advent of social media, the company has various options to choose the marketing media as the launch platform for the communication plan. Social media platform poses to be quite cost effective as well as attractive for the millennial customers.
• Select the message source: This will portray how the company will be involved in the marketing plan- whether the portrayal will be direct or indirect.
• Develop the marketing message: Based on the above-mentioned decisions, the marketing plan is finalized and the marketing message is developed.