Furthermore, control over the message is necessary to ensure transmitted to and received by the target. Direct marketing and sales promotion are allow for a high level of control over the message because the message is direct transmitted to target audiences which able to avoid audiences received the wrong message. (Warnaby, Bennison, Medway, n.d., pp.19-20)
Overall, organizations should more focus on personal selling and direct marketing because they are more effective compare with other marketing communications in term of interaction with customers. Organizations are able to see the result in a short period not like advertising which can only reach large audience.
3.0 How Marketing Communications Might Work
3.1 Linear model of communications
Source: Adapted from Shannon, Weaver (1962)
The basic model of mass communications is linear model of communications which consists of seven components: source, encoding, signal, decoding, receiver, feedback and noise. The linear model emphasizes the transmission of information, idea, attitudes and emotion from one person to another (Theodorson, 1969 cited in Fill, 2006, p.31).
The quality of the linkages between the various elements in the process can affect the communication success. Hence, our agency will avoid setback that influenced agency’s reputation by understanding the audiences’ perception.
3.2 Sequential models of advertising
Source:
Adapted by Strong (1925), Lavidge and Steiner (1951), McGuire (1978)
Besides that, sequential model is based on the logical sequential movement of customer toward a purchase via specified stages. It able to shows the attitude towards a product as a perquisite to purchase. The representations of three attitude components are including cognitive, affective and cognitive which enables the audiences to make judgments about the quality of advertisement. (East, 2003, p39)
3.3 Elaboration likelihood model
Source: Adapted by Aaker et al (1992)
On the other hand, the elaboration likelihood model refers to which an individual needs to develop and refine information necessary for decision making. Hence, our agency’s employees will possess a high level of motivation and the ability to process information to keep the elaboration high. (Aviva, n.d.)
3.4 Multi-step model of communication using opinion leaders and formers
Other than that, multi-step model of communication by using opinion leaders and formers are important due to volunteer their positive opinion about the offer. Opinion leadership will be simulated in advertising by the use of product testimonials. Our agency is recommended to use ordinary people by express positive comments about a product to others compare with opinion formers who are only exert to personal influence. Therefore, opinion leader is a very well-used advertising technique. (Smith, Zook, 2011, p126)
3.5 Marketing communications framework
Source: Adapted from Fill (2002)
The marketing communication planning framework offers a sequential format for the development of marketing communications plans. (Anon, 2008, p.6) As every businessman know that plans are developed in parallel and involve the various individuals and stakeholders to varying degrees. Hence, our agency will cautious to run every single step by using this framework guide in order to reach the promotional objective because our agency knows that the overriding purpose of IMC is to manage all marketing activities that impact sales, profits, and brand equity.
4.0 Discussion of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)
Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is aims to ensure consistency of message and the complementary use of media. (Anon, 2011) Our agency will concern more on branding due to everyone is pay attention on it. Next, our agency will associate with the use of technology which able to measure and evaluate of IMC activities by blending internal and external messages.
Through this way, it able to clarity, consistency and reinforcement of the RSH sports retailer’s main purpose. Besides that, our agency have planned a better advertising campaign compare with others agency that we are able to achieve greater impact with less budget. Other than that, our agency will attempts to apply the IMC approach by incorporating feedback so that their products and communications can be adjusted to meet consumers’ needs which also employ both push and pull approaches.
The arrival day of Olympics that everyone is expecting is going to take place in London between 27July 2012 to 12 August 2012. Royal Sporting House (RSH) (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd would like to take this advantage of the spin-off interest in sports in order to gain more market shares. As a marketing executive of XYZ Agency Ltd, our agency had created a marketing communication plan for the promotion of the RSH sports retailer for the period of May to December 2012.
The theme for this campaign is ‘Be the Person You Want to be’. This slogan is contain of motivate the mind of target audiences which is able to capture their attention and stay in their memory for a given period. Besides that, it has the power of attempt to compel the audiences to make an action, which in this case is always to purchase the solution to avail of the positive aspects.
5.0 Target market
Royal Sporting House (RSH) (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd is clear and full understands of their target market that who are their target audiences and who are willing to buy their products. In Malaysia, badminton is a part of sport exercises for Malaysian who is like to play in a team. As everyone knows that Malaysia’s badminton has gained great reputation in the world as Lee Chong Wei is a representative of the country who is also a world badminton champion. (Anon, n.d.) Hence, RSH wanted to take this opportunity to promote the badminton equipments as main promotion products during the period of Olympic 2012.
Due to the limited time to promote the products, resources, and budget, our agency had segmented the age range between 15 to 65 years old to be the main target audiences. Our agency will more focus on Bandar Utama which is located in Petaling Jaya because there is the area has a lot of badminton courts. This can ensure that RSH able to allocate resources efficiency on this segment.
6.0 SMART objectives
The promotional objectives are all about sales-related which consists of three streams of objectives: marketing goals, corporate goals and communications goals. Due to accomplish these goals, our agency had planned to use SMART objectives by involve the marketing communication mix. Our agency will use an effective sequencing of promotion method by using steps to accomplish RSH’s objectives.
First, our agency will use public relations to establish credibility and interest of the target audiences by finding potential sponsorships. (Ventura, 2004) Through this way, it can achieve corporate objective that able to increase the image and reputation of RSH sport retailer by increase 28%. Advertising is part of communications goals which is the next step for RSH sport retailer to create awareness during the products launch in the period of Olympic. Our agency will use different types of advertising to impact on the target audiences with lower budget. Our agency targeted to increase the number of audiences by 25% during the period.
Subsequently, for the marketing goals, our agency will use personal selling and direct marketing to sell the benefits and push the badminton equipments through face to face communications and the use of communication tools to build trust and lasting customer relationships. During this period, our agency will use also these two tools to gain more businesses with specific audiences by increase 10%.
In sale promotions, our agency will use the concept of pay less get more and package to attract more audiences to purchase more products. Besides that, our agency has aims to increase the profitability by 20% return on capital and gain 25% of market share in the period of May to August 2012.
7.0 Detail of marketing communication strategy
Recent years, RSH sports retailer has not up to date on their marketing therefore it would like to gain more market shares from May to December 2012 to sell its products. Our agency has succinctly defines the target and the ‘pain point’ of the RSH sports retailer. Our agency will do to prove the differentiated benefits to the audiences by position it in the right way that able force to consider what RSH sports retailer needs to do to be successful.
Hence, our agency will use 3Ps marketing communication strategy to reach target audiences and end-user B2B customers. First, our agency will more focus on public relations which are more on giving valuable information to the public because it is often much easier to educate an individual so that the audiences recognize their own wants or needs.
In order for the campaign to be successful, our agency will maintain a high level of credibility by reaching out to the public and partnering with Yonex Company as a sponsorship. Besides that, our agency will monitor carefully every single aspect to find out which are drawing attention towards RSH sports retailer and which are not. Our agency will determine if the attention is negative and then take action immediately to enhance the image which is portray to the public.
Next, our agency choose to use network, newspaper and Smartphone application advertising in order to pull the target audiences into retail outlets to enquire about badminton equipments and incentive them to do the purchases. Our agency will create an own campaign website and placed on other website which is facebook that the target audiences is most likely to visit.
Our agency also will use Smartphone application to post our ongoing news with the name of London Olympics 2012 Countdown news. Through this way, it is able to provide the campaign’s information effectively with the purpose of inform and remind the target audiences. Besides that, our agency will also choose the Star newspaper to post this campaign to attract more audiences.
Furthermore, our agency will use sale promotion to attract audiences’ attention and offer strong incentive to purchase during this short-lived period. In sale promotion, our agency will organize road show at certain shopping mall where the target audiences are mostly to hang out. In order to support this campaign, our agency will also cooperate with Yonex Company to make 20000 pieces of T-shirts as a gift whoever purchases with the amount of RM300 or above during the Olympics period. Besides that, our agency will also have lucky draw in every week from May to July 2012 which able to win flight ticket to London for two persons.
At the same time, our agency will use personal selling to get the trade to carry and push the product to specific target audiences. Our agency will send 50 experienced of salesperson who are well trained professionals in order to build and maintain long –term customer relationships. Our agency will use sales force management to analysis and control of sale force activities. In addition, our agency uses communications to turn low-involvement into high-involvement decisions by encouraging the target audiences to consider their perception of the products.
On the other hand, our agency will use direct marketing to interact directly with the target audiences, by telephone and direct mail. Our agency will design built-to-order systems that able to meet audiences’ individual needs. They can order directly through the system and RSH sport retailer will delivers the products to their place on time.
Direct marketing has grown rapidly in B2B marketing, partly in response to the ever-increasing costs of marketing through the sale force. Hence, our agency will use direct mail which is also one of the lower cost-per-contact media to send the information and it is able to push the products directly to the audiences.
In the profile strategy, our agency will profile the RSH sports retailer as a whole to various target stakeholders and audiences who will not purchase the products directly. This will typically include investors, trade unions, professional associations, shareholders, government agencies and regulatory bodies. Hence, our agency will post the annual report of RSH Sports Retailer to the website to who is interested to know about RSH sports retailer.
Our agency will use press releases and announcements to interact with more stakeholders because our agency know and understand that audiences demand transparency and accountability, and instant online access to news, developments, research and networks. Through this way, our agency is able to achieve the promotional goals by increase sales-volume and market share.
8.0 How the marketing communication elements will work together
In order to form an effective Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) strategy, our agency will associate the five marketing communication elements together to achieve the best result in this campaign. First of all, our agency will use online and radio advertising to add real value to the lives of prospective audiences, while reaching out to audiences and pointing them toward the 4 remaining promotional elements.
Next, our agency will use public relations campaign which is website to constantly point audiences to places that they can access further promotional tools from RSH sports retailer. After build solid relationships with audiences effectively, our agency will through personal selling and direct marketing to focus on target audiences and B2B customers which is face-to-face communication by using varied promotional tools at RSH sports retailer’s disposal to make the audiences’ dreams come true.
Lastly, our agency will combine and use all the above-mentioned promotional elements to offer lucky draw to win two flight ticket to London, free T-shirt when purchase with the amount of RM 300 and above and will have special promotions after the month of the Olympics.
9.0 Gantt chart
From the below chart, our agency had stated out all the marketing communication activities which will occur in May to December 2012 and our agency had estimated the budget for this campaign. Our agency ensures RSH sports retailer will achieve the greatest efficiency with every dollar which had allocate to promotional activities. In the month of May to June, our agency will focus on all the marketing communication activities cautious in order to increase the awareness of all the audiences about this campaign.
Our agency will only use the direct mail once a week because it is able to send to the huge number of target audiences in one time or a day. In the months of Olympics which is July and August 2012, our agency will push the personal selling and direct marketing to be main communication activities because it is allow for the receiver to focus attention on our salesperson with a reduce likelihood of distraction and it is a good timing to push the products to the target audiences.
After that, from September to December 2012, our agency will use sales promotion and personal selling to incentive audiences to purchase the products with a cheaper price which the products are selling during the month of the Olympic. The purpose to sell all these products with cheaper prices is not only to cover the budget but also able to clear stock.
10.0 References
Aviva, n.d. Understand Your Target Audiences: The Elaboration Likelihood Model. Aviva plc. Available at: < > [Accessed 22 March 2012]
Anon, 2008. Marketing Communications. Edinburgh Business School. [pdf] Available at: < > [Accessed I April 2012]
Anon, 2011. Integrated Marketing Management (IMC). Free Articles, 2005-2012. ArticleBase. Available at: < > [Accessed 2 April 2012]
Anon, n.d.. Badminton Association of Malaysia. Available at: < > [Accessed 2 April 2012]
Fill C., Hughes G., 2007. The changing marketing communications mix – a media and message framework. Marketing Review Volume 7, Issue 1, Spring 2007. [Accessed 20 March 2012]
Fill C., 2006. Simply Marketing Communications. England. Pearson Education Limited 2006. [Accessed 20 March 2012]
East R., 2003. The Effect of Advertisement and Display. Kluwer Academic Publishers. [Accessed 21 March 2012]
Smith P.R., Zook Z., 2011. Marketing Communications. Integrating Offline and Online with Social Media. 5th ed. [Accessed 23 March 2012]
Theodorson, 1969. Simply Marketing Communications. England. Pearson Education Limited 2006. [Accessed 20 March 2012]
Ventura A., 2004. Establish Your Credibility For Better Public Relations. Smith’s Family
Enterprises Inc, 1996-2007. Available at: < > [Accessed 3 April 2012]
Warnaby G., Bennison D., Medway D., n.d. Introduction of marketing communications. [Accessed 21 March 2012]
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