Chapter 13

*Marketing and PR have a lot in common

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) – different from mass marketing

1. Focuses on individual consumers
2. Use databases to target individual consumers, contain information about individual consumers’ wants, needs, and preferences
3. Send a well-focused message to each consumer through advertising, public relations, direct mail
4. Use consumer-preferred media to send marketing messages
5. Use interactive media, seek information from consumers, interactive web sites are ideal

Marketing public relations- exists to promote organizations’ products

Marketing mix- product research and design, packaging, pricing, product demonstrations, product name selection, etc.

• Four P’s of marketing
  1. Product
  2. Price
  3. Place
  4. Promotion

Tactics in marketing public relations-

• Product-or service- oriented news releases and media kits
• VNRs featuring newsworthy products or services
• News conferences to announce new products or services
• SMTs
• Displays at trade shows
• Special events designed to attract media attention to a particular product
• Spokesperson appearances in the media (including internet chat rooms)
• Communication efforts that target employees, investors, government regulators, and other publics besides consumers that can influence the success of marketing campaigns

IMC has changed the Four P’s into the Four C’s

1. Consumer wants and needs
2. Consumer’s cost
3. Convenience to buy
4. Communication

IMC audit- similar to an ethics or communication audit, consists of 5 steps

1. Analysis of the communications network used to develop marketing communications programs
2. Identification and prioritization of key stakeholder groups
3. Evaluation of the organization’s customer databases
4. Content analysis of all messages used within the past year
5. Assessment of knowledge of, and attitudes toward, IMC on the part of marketing managers, top management, and key agency managers

Creating an IMC campaign-

1. Create shared performance measures and develop systems to evaluate communications activities
2. Use database development and issues management to understand your stakeholders
3. Identify all contact points for he company and its products
   1. Contacts­- advertising and promotion people, any information-bearing experience
4. Create business and communication plans for each local market
5. Create compatible themes, tones, and quality across all communications media
6. Hire only team players
7. Link IMC with management processes

Direct marketing- direct communication to a consumer or business recipient that is designed to generate a response in the form of an order, a request for information, and/or a visit to a store or other place of business for purchase of a specific product or service

Spamming- sending the same promotional message to a long list of receivers, whether they’re interested or not

Problems

• Jealousy or conflict among team members
• Different ways of measuring success
• Differences in ideas about consumers’ rights to privacy
• Too much focus on consumers can pull a company away from its core values