This report highlights Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) that ensures that all forms of organisational messages and communications are linked together. Andrews & Shimp (2017), supported the idea by saying IMC integrates all promotional tools so that organisation can work in harmony. IMC comprises direct marketing, advertising, public relations, sales promotions and personal selling. This study aims to make an IMC plan for a startup organisation named Royal Food through the integration of multiple means of communication with target markets in order to create a consistent and comprehensive message. I am the IMC manager of the organisation and in the first part of the report, target audience and communication objectives of the organisation will be stated. In the later part, IMC marketing plan will be given to the organisation. In the last section, evaluation of marketing plan will be analysed.
Royal Food is a startup organisation that has opened its first store in Melbourne and Brisbane. Royal Food first started its business in Melbourne at the end of 2016. Royal Food is burger chain mainly; however, they are trying to make it a restaurant chain in Australia and also in New Zealand. The founder of the organisation is Nathan Colby and he has a dream to make Royal Food is Australia’s best burger chain. Royal Food believes in taking the raw materials from Aussie farmers to make fresh and premium burgers for the consumers. Royal Food offers various types of burgers, sandwiches and beverages like milkshakes and soft drinks. Famous classics dishes of Royal Food are chicken express, the big rich, el diablo and magic mushroom. Moreover, the organisation has made its own website with the domain name. Soon, it starts to deliver the food items from online booking.
The marketing objectives of the organisation are:
There are four types of market segments that can be targeted by an organisation. In the geographic segment, the organisation can target the customers in location and wise. In demographic segmentation, the organisation can target the customers by age, gender, occupation, socio-economic group wise (Percy, 2014). In addition, the behavioural segmentation, the organisation can target customers by loyalty status, readiness to purchase, the rate of usage and benefits sought. Lastly, an organisation can target the customers by psychographic choices, personality, lifestyles, attitudes and classes. In case of Royal Food, as it is a startup organisation, it targets mainly demographic and behavioural segments. Through the integrated marketing communication, Royal Food wants to target these both segments in order to increase the sale.
Royal Food chooses kids, aged between 5 to 10 years who lie to eat burgers and fast foods. Royal food provides happy meal and it is a healthier choice for the kids.
Royal Food also targets families of upper-middle-class sections for weekend outings for meals.
Royal Food is going to target students of colleges and universities as they spend their time in cafe and restaurants.
Royal Food is going to target the working adults who can come to outlets for meeting and work purposes. This type of target customers is ready to purchase the food if discounts are given and they are loyal to the organisation.
Cafe-goers are the target for the Royal Food, as it relaxes place for business work and it has advantages of air-conditioned, free wifi system and cosy ambience in the outlets that would attract the customers.
The aim of the communication is to set the overall communication of an organisation.
|
Specific |
To persuade people about Royal Food and to create brand awareness of Royal Food as it is a startup |
|
Measurable |
It would be measured through CRM analytics (like Facebook likes, Twitter followers) |
|
Attainable |
It would be achieved through creating a PR team and they will make social network pages and creative content |
|
Realistic |
This objective is realistic as stakeholders engagement would be higher and it can impact on increase of sales |
|
Time-bound |
This can be achieved within 12 months |
Table: SMART Objective
|
Specific |
To inform about products and discounts |
|
Measurable |
It would be measured through analysing website traffic and number of order of deliveries |
|
Achievable |
This can be achieved through integrated advertising using the various medium. In the first stage, a website has to be made. |
|
Realistic |
This is realistic as market share and profitability would be increased |
|
Time-bound |
This can be achieved within 12 months |
Table: SMART Objective
|
Specific |
To reinforce buyer behaviour and to develop preference about advertised products |
|
Measurable |
This can be measured through activity metrics of the consumers’ visit of outlets and website |
|
Achievable |
This can be achieved only through advertisements using various mediums and contents should be engaging (emails, social media, hoardings, direct selling) |
|
Realistic |
This is realistic as it can increase marketing qualified leads and quantity of selling numbers |
|
Time-bound |
It can be achieved within 12 months |
Table: SMART Objective
Alternative styles of creative advertising are generic, pre-emptive, unique selling proposition, brand image, resonance and emotional (Belch et al. 2014). Royal Food is going to take Unique Selling Proposition (USP) style of advertising. Unique selling proposition of Royal Food is it has lo of burger varieties at affordable prices. Moreover, the organisation aims at free delivery of food items within 30 minutes at the door step.
Unique selling proposition has three key factors within this. First one is uniqueness, Royal Food is giving the customers a chance to have their food within 30 minutes and food items will be fresh. The second factor is specific as Royal Food gives the customers’ varieties of burgers at affordable prices. The third factor is USP message needs to be short as Royal Food keeps the message ‘Royal Food gives you burger varieties at affordable prices and within 30 minutes after your call’.
Royal Food is going to be socially responsible as the organisation is concerned about society, people and environment. The food items are fresh and packet they re using are made of jute and they are biodegradable. The organisation has licensed from food department of Australia. As stated by Patty et al. (2017), socially responsible marketing is about taking moral actions through which employees, stakeholders, shareholders and consumers can take responsibility of marketers. Royal Food will do the marketing in a philanthropic way as USP tells to deliver the items fresh. Royal Food shares the standard of truth in the communication process that means the organisation will not do any ambush marketing. USP tells about truth or fact that the organisation is going to provide and it is not about sensationalism. Moreover, communication ethics should make clear about the endorsement and the whole process of advertisement must be transparent (Armstrong et al. 2015). Australians government regulation and standards must be adhered by Royal Food.
IMC is about coordinating promotional efforts to use communication strategies and best IMC blends various marketing elements.
Royal Food in Australia is going to show the funny story about youngsters to engage the target customers, which is related to the relationship. This is going to open up the emotion and fun sides of fast food outlets. This TV advertisement is going to be short as Royal Food is startup organisation and it cannot afford big budget. Royal Food wants to affect attitudes towards the brand through TV advertisements. As stated by Luxton, Reid & Mavondo (2015), TV advertisement helps to reach mass audiences as television is mainly leisure time activity of common people. Royal Food is going to make 12s TV commercial to reach the large section of Australians people.
Royal Food showcases the billboards and hoardings in roadside and people will see the advertisements and get to know about the organisation. The billboards advertisements will have a touch of creativity as Royal Food is giving the order to make ads to an external agency. Target audiences of the billboards ads are young generations who need quick meal and celebration. As opined by O’guinn et al. (2014), outdoor advertisement helps to reach large customers and it is an integral part of a high-quality advertisement. The outdoor advertisement is costly, however, it helps to throw brand message properly and effective way.
Print media advertising will be helpful for Royal Food as newspaper and magazines can help an organisation to reach wider audiences. Local newspapers will be helpful to reach local people, mainly Melbourne and Brisbane; the organisation can take the strategy of newspaper advertising strategy. Advertising space should be small as it takes a large amount of money to provide advertisement on newspaper, however, the content should be engrossing. As stated by Thorson & Moore (2013), print media give the benefit to advertising in scheduled and potential exposure and it has repeated views advantages.
¼ page ad and floating ad
Magazine:
Food item feature, Editorial, ½ page advertisement with colour
Royal Food organisation is going to open two social media network accounts through PR team. Social media advertisements provide the assistance to reach a maximum number of customers in a cost-effective way. Social media is the best way to reach the customers as it provides benefits to use content marketing, images and video sharing options.
|
|
|
YouTube |
|
|
|
16,000,000 |
2,800,000 |
14,800,000 |
5,000,000 |
3,100,000 |
Table: Social Media Statistics Australia
(Source: Socialmedianews.com.au, 2017)
In Australia, almost 24.4 million Australians use Facebook at least one time in a day (Kitchen & Burgmann, 2015). Social media advertisements will give the benefits to reach those customers. On social media pages, Royal Food can give the link of website and people can visit the websites to watch the food items and price charts. The discounts and membership card systems offers can be displayed through social media. Facebook and Twitter social networks are the first aims of Royal Food that would increase their market share and website traffic. Targeting the young generation can be fulfilled by the strategy of social media advertisement. Moreover, demographic segments are depended on their decision as what they see on social media pages. Social media can give the benefits of increasing the visibility.
The main responsibility of IMC is to include all forms of communication with the target market and also to the external publics, such as shareholders, community, governments and sponsors. Royal Food is going to release any newsworthy element on newspaper, digital media and print media that can enhance the brand awareness. Royal Food tries to do wellbeing for the children and family. PR strategy of the organisation is to increase brand image and reach more target audiences. The behavioural segment can be influenced by this strategy as public relations is important to increase sales.
|
Duration |
Daily Timesheet |
Total spots |
|
30 weeks |
Mon-Fri (Evening allot) |
750 |
|
25 weeks |
Saturday (night allot) |
650 |
|
8 weeks |
During sports hours |
200 |
|
12 weeks |
Sunday (morning allot) |
300 |
Table: time schedule of TV advertisement
Out-of-home advertisement
|
Medium |
Duration |
|
Billboard |
Jan-Mar 2018 |
|
Hoarding at roadside |
Jan-Mar 2016 |
|
Buses ads |
Apr-June 2018 |
|
Street ads |
Apr-June 2018 |
Table: Time schedule of out-of-home advertisement
Social media advertisement
|
Medium |
Duration |
|
Facebook Advertisements |
July to Sept (3 months) |
|
Facebook posts with discounts |
During festive occasions |
|
Twitter posts and advertisements |
July to Sept (3 months) |
|
Google ad world |
Oct-Dec (3months) |
Table: Time schedule of social media advertisement
Print media advertisement
|
Types |
Days |
Newspaper and magazine names |
|
Floating Ads |
Sundays |
The Australian, The Daily Telegraph |
|
¼ ads |
Saturdays and Sundays |
The Australian, The Daily Telegraph |
|
½ ads |
Sundays |
The Monthly, Vogue |
|
Editorial |
Saturdays and Sundays |
New Idea, That’s Life |
Table: Time schedule of print media advertisement
Budget of IMC plan
|
Medium |
Budget |
|
TV advertisements |
AUD 12,000 |
|
Social media advertisements |
AUD 4,000 |
|
Print media |
AUD 20,000 |
|
Out-of-home advertisements |
AUD 30,000 |
|
Total |
AUD 66,000 |
Table: Budget of IMC plan
The objectives of Royal Food are to increase brand awareness, informing others about food items and convince the buyers to purchase from Royal Food. The two main elements of IMC are increased interest and increase sales of the organisation. Online presence of Royal Food can help them to increase the sales. This plan is for next one year and the performance of communication plan will be evaluated through online foothold, profitability and increase of sales. Royal Food can gather customers into a focus group to display them the rough idea, commercial advertisements, leaflets and social media posts as a pre-test. This focus group would tell them whether these attract them or not. Sales promotion strategy is kept out of IMC plan and asks the focus group to speak out what kind of discounts and offers they want to have. Focus group can tell about whether this IMC plan motivates them or not. After that, intercept surveys will be conducted by using close-ended questions. The questions will be prepared based on the frequency of visits to outlets, food preferences, mode of payment, types of communication of advertisements, taste experience and recommending to others. In the last stage, the organisation can use social media metrics in order to measure the customers’ preferences. The collected data about communication techniques in Royal Food would be judged based on social media performance and ROI (Return on Investment).
Conclusion
A true marketing communication plan helps an organisation to meet the objectives as creative campaign and marketing strategies can assist them to reach. Public relations paid advertising and social media marketing are helpful to reach a large number of target customers. The IMC plan of Royal Food is for next year, within this timeframe, the organisation hopefully reaches the objectives. The brand image of the company will get higher as visibility will increase and the creative strategy of USP is matched with values and mission of the Royal Food.
Reference List
Andrews, J. C., & Shimp, T. A. (2017). Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated marketing communications. Nelson Education.
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction. Sydney: Pearson Education.
Belch, G. E., Belch, M. A., Kerr, G. F., & Powell, I. (2014). Advertising: An integrated marketing communication perspective. New Jersey: McGraw-Hill Education.
Cowling, D. (2017). Social Media Statistics Australia – January 2017. Socialmedianews.com.au. Retrieved 24 September 2017, from https://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-january-2017/
Kitchen, P. J., & Burgmann, I. (2015). Integrated marketing communication: Making it work at a strategic level. Journal of Business Strategy, 36(4), 34-39.
Luxton, S., Reid, M., & Mavondo, F. (2015). Integrated marketing communication capability and brand performance. Journal of Advertising, 44(1), 37-46.
O’guinn, T., Allen, C., Semenik, R., & Scheinbaum, A. C. (2014). Advertising and integrated brand promotion. London: Nelson Education.
Patti, C. H., Hartley, S. W., van Dessel, M. M., & Baack, D. W. (2017). Improving integrated marketing communications practices: a comparison of objectives and results. Journal of Marketing communications, 23(4), 351-370.
Percy, L. (2014). Strategic integrated marketing communications. Abingdon: Routledge.
Porcu, L., Porcu, L., Del Barrio-García, S., Del Barrio-García, S., Kitchen, P. J., & Kitchen, P. J. (2017). Measuring integrated marketing communication by taking a broad organisational approach: The firm-wide IMC scale. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), 692-718.
Thorson, E., & Moore, J. (Eds.). (2013). Integrated communication: Synergy of persuasive voices. New York: Psychology Press.
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