Integrated marketing communication brings together variety of communication tools to impact on behaviour of customers. Integrated marketing communications is part of promotions. The central theme behind integrated marketing communications is persuasion. Persuasion makes people to believe in something or desire to do something. The effective marketing communication is goal oriented and allied with organisation’s marketing strategy (Fill &Turnbull, 2016). It also aims to deliver specific messages to the targeted group. It makes marketing more effective as it more relies on multiple communication tools. Fircroft places people in the specialist technical industries for contract and permanent basis. The company is specialist in offering placements in oil and gas industries. It fills job vacancies in sectors like oil and gas, infrastructure and construction, automotive, petrochemical and chemical, nuclear and renewables and mining and mineral industries.
Advertisement supports to the business marketing plan so that objectives can be united. By organising all the communication objectives, Fircroft can engage in integrated marketing communications. The issue faced by company is that it not successful to advertise it’s services in every country. The advertising is a paid source to reach target markets and getting done all the required activities (Belch, et. al. 2014).
Awareness and education
Whenever Fircroft introduces new talent and skill then it is required to inform and educate prospective customers. Creating awareness is the first step in lifecycle of company when it enters in the market. The advertising communication objective is used to support public relations communications objectives to create awareness. The advertisement at this stage is informal and influences target market for company’s products. It might include broadcast commercials and a print ad which portrays the image of company and tag lines (Ewing & Ramaseshan, 2015). The target market for Fircroft is all the companies which hire staff to fill vacancies. The company creates awareness through advertisement in such a way that the customers think of them first at the time of hiring staff. It is deliberated as a low level communication objective. The Models of response process is useful for the awareness of products and services. Models of the response process explain the advertising response process of consumers. It includes the journey of consumers from awareness to purchasing of products. It includes the stages of awareness like, cognitive, affective and behavioural (Arens, 2004).
Appeal
The advertisement appeals stimulate a person to buy products and services of a company by speaking need and interest of customers. The goal of advertisement is to convince customers. There can be various types of appeals which can be used in advertising such as humour, fear and emotional appeals. When customers find something humorous, it causes them to watch. Fear appeals increases interest of customers in ads by creating suspense. The emotional appeals have approach to convince customers by creating their feelings related to product (Zabkar, Mumel & Vanita, 2015). Fircroft can make use of appeal in advertisement to persuade customers. Elaboration likelihood model is useful for a customer as it makes a customer to pay attention, logical and conscious thinking for decision making. It leads to change in attitude of customers.
Branding
Branding involves naming service, creating brand equity so that the brand has positive perception for customers. It creates brand loyalty and creating brand loyalty enables repetition of buyers even if the company raises price in future. The advertising communication objective generates positive feeling about the brand. For instance, the objective should be communicated to the companies that hiring professional engineers can result in better productivity (Ang, 2014).
The integrated marketing communication campaign defines Fircroft’s target customers, objectives, goals, cultural and technical issues. It analyses competitors of the company and conducts investigation to evaluate effectiveness of company’s marketing strategies. At the time of planning integrated marketing communication strategy, the company should have conversation with customers regarding time taken for delivery of service (Šeri?, Gil-Saura & Ruiz-Molina, 2014). The product life cycle of company is not on the initial stage. It is on the growth stage. The company is already developed and want to expand service further in more nations. Fircroft want to generate more awareness as the company has different name in other nations. The company need to make sure about clarity, direction and consistency of messages. These factors are going to support company on the behalf of customers to avoid any confusion about the benefit of company’s service. The integrated marketing communication campaign diagram has been defined in the appendix 1.
Digital marketing
The digital marketing tool should be united with advertising messages when the target market depends on the internet for the service. These are the online promotions. It adds links to the website of company and Facebook pages in ads. Attracting customers to visit website of company finds way to interact with them. The social media sites such as Facebook and twitter builds relationship with customers (Percy, 2014). It is the ideal way of sharing information about availability of professional engineers. It also encourages customers to ring in and sharing tips to the services offered by the company. Fircroft can even advertise on Google, Facebook or yahoo for geographical coverage.
Direct marketing
Direct marketing can enable Fircroft to communicate straight with the end users. The tools used for direct marketing are emails, brochures, text messages, promotional letters, brochures, direct response to television and radio (Armstrong, et. al. 2015). It enables messages to reach end users directly. The company can utilize direct marketing to reach target customers. It is going to help company to increases it’s sales. Fircroft is already developed. The product lifecycle of company is on the growth stage. Direct marketing can be helpful for company to increase sales.
Public relations
A third party is permitted for marketing products and services of Fircroft. That person mentions services of company in their article. Public relation activities are helpful in promoting brand through press releases, blogs, news, search engines, online news sites, events and public appearance. The public relationship officer is responsible to present a company in the best light. The company can make use of sponsorship by sponsoring in an event to create brand awareness. Sponsorship is used by commercials (Darley, 2016).
Personal selling
It is one of the effective tools of integrated marketing communication. It includes sale appointment and meetings and making presentation to reach customers. It will take place when Fircroft sells service to customers. It helps in strengthening relationship between the company and end users (Madhavaram, Badrinarayanan & Bicen, 2016). The following steps are included in personal selling, prospecting, making first contact, sales call, objection handling and closing sale. Prospecting helps company to find the prospective contacts. The first contact can be established with the potential contacts through calls, email and messages (Luxton, Reid & Mavondo, 2015). An appointment is essential to convert perspective customers in real. In sales call Fircroft shares the uniqueness of their service to customers. Before expecting customers to invest in brand, it is essential that the company itself be convinced with the service of company. The company handles customer’s query in the part of objection handling. Time should be given to customers before closing the sale.
Sales promotion
Fircroft can promote brand by discount coupons, membership, incentives, profitable schemes, loyalty points and attractive packages. These techniques can be helpful for company in the growth stage. The company can also promote through newspaper inserts, displays, banners, samples, coupons or demos (Csikosova, Antošová & ?ulková, 2014). It is used to speed up short term sales by creating brand awareness.
The key messages are core communications which a company want to set in in the mind of consumers. The creative strategy determines the message of advertising and how message will be executed or how an advertisement campaign needs the advertising objectives of the business. It defines the strategic choice required to develop marketing message. The important part of creative strategy is to decide the campaign theme which becomes the major selling idea of advertisement campaign (Blakeman, 2018). The idea behind creative strategy is to strategic and creative. The creative strategy defines what a company defines about it’s products and services. It also explains how a company want customers to think about brand. The key messages are part of communication. The process of developing key communication message:
Why company needs key message: Messages are the words a company want to deliver customers. The message helps to focus on communication. It focuses on the effective frequency that is the advertisement has to be seen multiple times before a consumer notices and responds by showing interest to buy. The advertisement should be keep repeating because the company says it tenth time may be the first customer has heard it. Repetition is the key part of framing. If the need arises the company has to say hundred times (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). The company have to stick with the idea or the message trying to communicate customers.
Creating key message: When the key messages are created it is made sure that they are clear, concise and consistent. The key message should be clear, relevant, and free of jargon and without any technical language. It should be in brief and key message should be delivered in 7-8 seconds. The message should be reliable and repeated. The message should be unique and grab attention. The key message should have a purpose behind it. The key message of fircroft is “Connecting people to power the world”. It is the first impression so it should leave a positive impact. The language should be easy to understand so that it can be accessible to largest crowd.
Development of creative strategy: It is the formal procedure for creating productivity and innovating output.
Appeal: The message should have appeal that is an idea to motivate audiences to repeat. The idea is all about to creatively and influentially communicate message to the target audience. It is message strategy.
Clarify primary objective: Firstly the company tries to solve the primary problem. It should be kept simple as it cannot be solved in one or two sentences. As in case of Fircroft, the objective is to increase sales along with building brand awareness and services. The objective should not only be limited to increase sales. The company should have a vision to increase sales by 40%.
Define target audience: Fircroft target companies that require fresh talent. The company guide the customers through the hiring process. It involves the stages a consumer goes to hire service and designing promotion strategy to capture attention of consumers. Once a company decides method of promotion, it can decide the further approach (Keller, 2016).
Call to action: It is the important part of creative strategy. It decides action of customers by putting impact of visual ads. It asks audience to remember something. The company is not improving it’s bottom line if it does not ask audience to do something. It decides the next step of what target audience is going to take. It enables customers to hire professionals from company.
Break down offer: By this point the company has stated what it wants to do. It has defined what it expects from the target audience and what it wants them to do. This point defines what a company should do to respond their products and services (Parente & Strausbaugh-Hutchinson, 2014). It helps to break down offer of company into features. These features help to improve life of consumers. Example of features with benefits:
List media channels: Fircroft can use marketing media like digital marketing, public relations, personal selling and direct marketing as a part of campaign. The customers make use of more than one agency to get expertise in various areas. It is beneficial for the company to know other agencies as well so that association can be done with other contributing partners.
Provide budget: The important part of information is marketing budget for the campaign. More money is invested on campaigns because senior management likes creative kind of advertisement. It is important to share amount of budget on the front end because every phase of campaign is forced by the amount of money available (Valos, et. al. 2016). It is waste of time and money not discussing budget with the front end.
Attach relevant reference material: Fircroft can include a set of relevant reference material to avoid scenarios such as the idea used in different promotion and similar concept used by competitors. From data and research features can be inserted in the documents of company. The company is required to inform agencies about the research available. The company’s website also helps in advertising as it shows the vacancies desired by company (Baines, Fill & Page, 2013).
The marketing communication tools such as digital marketing and public relations are suggested to support advertising efforts.
Digital marketing: The digital marketing refers to the marketing through various digital channels. It is the modern communication tool of marketing. It is effective for Fircroft to use digital and widespread marketing with just one click. It has massive approach like the social sites such as Google, Facebook displays ads. These are paid ads and are paid for every repetition. Digital marketing also includes online job sites such as LinkedIn. Fircroft can put job vacancies on LinkedIn and desired companies can contact. The digital marketing is a good and innovating approach for company to reach customers. The youth is already active digitally so it is an efficient communication tool to achieve goals of company. The company can also make use of digital marketing by advertising on it’s website. E mail is also the quickest and direct method to reach customers with critical information. The customers are updated to their emails. The email campaigns can help company to succeed but it should be trustworthy, relevant and informative. Mobile applications can also be used by Fircroft in which can help in providing professionals according to the sections divided based on the skills and experience. Digital marketing is more successful and innovating than the current effort of company as currently it does not rely on digital media. It contacts itself to companies for vacancies which is actually very time consuming and next to possible (Clow, 2004).
Figure 1: The contribution of digital communication as an IMC plan
(Explanation is given below in the appendix 2)
Public relations: Fircroft can use public relation tools and activities to promote products and services of company effectively. It can promote positive attitude and behaviour of customers towards company. This tool is cost effective and gives a greater degree of control than other targeting campaigns. It can help company to build reputation. It helps to promote idea and convinces customers to purchase products of company. It can actually help in building beneficial relationship between company and public (Seitel, 2017). It is way farer than the current efforts of company as it can help company to give shape the way wanted. The company do not use public relations and is not able to expand it’s service in every nation. The current strategy is not helping company to face challenge of advertising and promotion in every country to enhance sales. The public relation person can actually help company in promoting it’s service. It can help to protect and build reputation through media and self-produced communications. The public relation persons can promote service of company by mentioning opinion of the service in their experience, trade magazines, and articles or by issuing a press release. It is rare source of communication that Fircroft can use to enhance it’s services (Jones, 2016).
Integrated marketing communication is the most powerful form of marketing and includes digital marketing, direct marketing, public relations and sales promotions. The current campaign of company includes broadcast and print to communicate with target market (Kitchen & Burgmann, 2015). The integrated marketing communication has advantages over current campaign in these terms:
Develops trust: Trust is everything now days in marketing. Most of the customers recommend company they trust to others. The trust can be gained by consistency and reliability (Blythe, 2006). By providing customers what they want at desired time can help to build trust. By providing service through public relations can actually help in building trust personally as the public relation person provides the reliable and consistent information.
Brand recognition: The integrated marketing tools drive brand recognition by sales promotion. It gives recognition and promotes brand by discount coupons, distributing sample packages, incentives, attractive packages, demos and coupons. Sales promotion scheme speeds up the sales of company by creating brand awareness (Turner, 2017).
Cost saving: Integrated marketing communication is a lean approach where the company can save cost of staffing by putting vacancies on social media. It is more effective and cost of campaign can be reduced as the transactional costs are very less.
Focus: The integrated marketing campaign is more focused internally and externally. It focuses better by direct marketing such as email, text messages, brochures, promotional letters, direct response to television and radio (Trenholm, 2017).
Increased revenue: The companies using integrated marketing communication tools enjoy competitive advantage. It may result in doubling sales every year as the customers respond better and familiarly with digital marketing and personal selling (Vernuccio & Ceccotti, 2015). Hence it increases the revenue of company.
Fircroft places people in the specialist technical industries by providing mid to senior level engineers on contract or permanent basis. The speciality Of Fircroft is oil and gas and the company have vast experience in placing professionals with largest companies of the world. The company has over 10,000 contractors around the globe. Fircroft has offices in the specific locations worldwide. It also fills permanent job vacancies. It also has contractor recruitment worldwide. It serves important clients throughout UK by providing service in power and energy industries. The company is capable to satisfy global power and energy project supplies. The company matches the client needs by providing fresh talent. The company also offers integrated and market leading information and communication technology service to the industries. It provides differentiated services and client focused solutions. Fircroft has strong connections with the high-status OEMs and is constantly growing in the automotive sector. It understands the requirements of prominent automotive manufacturers and supplies to Bentley Motors from last 9 years. The major automotive clients are Jaguar Land Rover and Bentley motors. The company’s office of Australia and Canada serves to the world’s largest mining and mineral projects. The increasing number of offices in world is supporting mining and mineral industries. Fircroft has good understanding of infrastructure and construction sector and contributes effectively towards it. The company supports professionals by building skills and fulfilling their potential with the work culture which suits them. It has award winning approach towards workforce solutions.
Conclusion
From the above report it can be concluded that integrated marketing campaign is much effective than the current campaign of Fircroft. The integrated marketing communication campaign can help company to face it’s challenge of advertisement and promotion in every country. By following the current strategy of company the challenge cannot enhance sales of company. The company can lead it’s functions successfully by adopting marketing communication tools such as digital marketing, direct selling, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion. The company can positively achieve goals by development of key communication strategy and creative strategy. From the above communication tools, digital marketing and personal selling can be used effectively for the advertisement and promotions.
References
Ang, L., 2014. Principles of integrated marketing communications. Cambridge University Press.
Arens, W.F., 2004. Contemporary advertising. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.
Ashley, C. and Tuten, T., 2015. Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), pp.15-27.
Baines, P., Fill, C. and Page, K., 2013. Essentials of marketing. Oxford University Press.
Belch, G.E., Belch, M.A., Kerr, G.F. and Powell, I., 2014. Advertising: An integrated marketing communication perspective. McGraw-Hill Education.
Blakeman, R., 2018. Integrated marketing communication: creative strategy from idea to implementation. Rowman & Littlefield.
Blythe, J., 2006. Principles & practice of marketing. Cengage Learning EMEA.
Clow, K.E., 2004. Integrated advertising, promotion, and marketing communications. Pearson Education India.
Csikosova, A., Antošová, M. and ?ulková, K., 2014. Strategy in direct and interactive marketing and integrated marketing communications. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 116, pp.1615-1619.
Darley, W.K., 2016. Brand Building via Integrated Marketing Communications. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Brand Management, pp.201-217.
Ewing, M.T. and Ramaseshan, B., 2015. Integrated marketing communications: Conflicts of interest, politics and performance. In Proceedings of the 1998 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 265-272). Springer, Cham.
Fill, C. and Turnbull, S.L., 2016. Marketing communications: brands, experiences and participation. Pearson.
Jones, B.A., 2016. A Comparative Analysis of Curriculum Content Among Undergraduate Integrated Marketing Communications Programs (Doctoral dissertation, University of Mississippi).
Keller, K.L., 2016. Unlocking the power of integrated marketing communications: How integrated is your IMC program?. Journal of Advertising, 45(3), pp.286-301.
Kitchen, P.J. and Burgmann, I., 2015. Integrated marketing communication: Making it work at a strategic level. Journal of Business Strategy, 36(4), pp.34-39.
Luxton, S., Reid, M. and Mavondo, F., 2015. Integrated marketing communication capability and brand performance. Journal of Advertising, 44(1), pp.37-46.
Madhavaram, S., Badrinarayanan, V. and Bicen, P., 2016. Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC): Conceptual and Theoretical Lacunae, Foundational Premises, and Framework. In Celebrating America’s Pastimes: Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Marketing? (pp. 335-336). Springer, Cham.
Parente, D. and Strausbaugh-Hutchinson, K., 2014. Advertising campaign strategy: A guide to marketing communication plans. Cengage Learning.
Percy, L., 2014. Strategic integrated marketing communications. Routledge.
Seitel, F.P., 2017. Practice of Public Relations. Pearson Education.
Šeri?, M., Gil-Saura, I. and Ruiz-Molina, M.E., 2014. How can integrated marketing communications and advanced technology influence the creation of customer-based brand equity? Evidence from the hospitality industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 39, pp.144-156.
Trenholm, S., 2017. Thinking through communication: An introduction to the study of human communication. Routledge.
Turner, P., 2017. Implementing integrated marketing communications (IMC) through major event ambassadors. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), pp.605-626.
Valos, M.J., Haji Habibi, F., Casidy, R., Driesener, C.B. and Maplestone, V.L., 2016. Exploring the integration of social media within integrated marketing communication frameworks: Perspectives of services marketers. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 34(1), pp.19-40.
Vernuccio, M. and Ceccotti, F., 2015. Strategic and organisational challenges in the integrated marketing communication paradigm shift: A holistic vision. European Management Journal, 33(6), pp.438-449.
Zabkar, V., Mumel, D. and Vanita, N., 2015. Is Management Involvement in Integrated Marketing Communications Reasonable?. In Advances in Advertising Research (Vol. V)(pp. 283-294). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download