Mkt103-Importance Of The Integrated Marketing Assessment Answer

Your first task for this company is to write a 1000-word report 

How a firm should approach drafting a well-integrated marketing communications plan using both top-down and bottom-up approaches;
In addition, you need to take into account the various challenges firms face in dealing with what are known as ‘feedback loops’ when deciding how to develop, plan and then execute their marketing communications plans;

To finally give true rigour to your report, you need to also take into account and provide an argument for why getting customers engaged with your firm and brand is essential for superior firm performance. 

 

Introduction

In this scenario, where a marketing research company has given me a short-term internship, I would follow various approaches to examine the commercial client base using the current academic research. A bottom-up and top-up marketing approach will be applied. Notably, a bottom-up marketing approach has no single definition. Instead, it has a few unique features that differentiate it from the top-down strategy which is regarded as traditional (Batra and Keller, 2016). As opposed to traditional marketing, where executives are actively involved in the development of a marketing plan and strategy to sell the firm’s services and products, bottom-up approach is often engineered by the company’s employees. In brief, employees identify a particular customer need and develop a marketing strategy that revolves around the idea.

lign: justify;">Creating a Well-Integrated Marketing Communications Plan

In the modern business world, marketers presented with many choices on where and how to advertise services and products. Besides traditional approaches, which include direct marketing and print advertising, there is email marketing, social media sites, and web-based advertising (Jobber & Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Many businesses are well aware that what works in, for instance, traditional print marketing, may not work on social media sites or Web, and vise-versa is also true. While there exists no sure way to develop a fruitful integrated marketing campaign, businesses can consider various crucial approaches. First, it is important to have a deep understanding of the target audience. This means that the business should identify the target audience while also considering both psychographic (attitudes and behaviors) and demographic factors (Hewett, Rand, Rust, and van Heerde, 2016). As such, the firm will be in a better position to create the essential messages and pinpoint the best and applicable communication channel. Besides this, the marketing team should identify the motivation of the target customers, which media prefer for communication, and so on. All these questions should be answered prior to creating the integrated marketing strategy. Another approach is to pick channels wisely.

Notably, not all people like Facebook. Likewise, not all people like reading magazines. The business needs to identify the channels used by customers, the strengths and weaknesses of the channel, and how the channels will assist in achieving the company’s objectives. Good marketers should portray ruthlessness in selecting and rejecting Medias to adopt. In fact, it is wiser to focus on one channel that has been proven to be effective that struggling to use all channels. Additionally, businesses need to consider adopting a consistent look and everything should appear as if it originated from the same company. A clear and consistent content should also be created. The content should be developed in a way that it can easily be repurposed or incorporated to fit in various channels or media (Wilson, Zeithaml, Bitner & Gremler, 2016). Each element of the marketing campaign should be integrated so as to drive the message to the ultimate target. The marketing agencies or teams should also be monitored to ensure that they are working in sync. Lastly, the campaigns and coupons should be tracked. In other words, proper attribution and analytics methods should be applied to understand the company’s conversions and results. 

Challenges when Dealing with Feedback Loops

A good understanding of customer needs is important for market and innovation success. It has been noted that many businesses do not have a systematic approach to using and finding needs. According to SiriusDecisions research, many organizations are aware of the vitality of customer needs (Hartley & Claycomb, 2013). However, two-thirds of these firms lack a consistent procedure of pinpointing the needs and deciding prioritizing issues. To start with, many companies are not aware of where to source for customer needs. Many businesses consider prospects or existing customers as a starting point for unraveling customer needs, sales feedback, and customer interactions to gather known needs (De Mooij, 2013). While essential, this approach hinders the company from looking into potential needs of new and current target customers. In addition to this, businesses are not knowledgeable about how they can get products, sales, and marketing to come to terms on a collective definition of customer needs. Often, need is referred to as the “thirst” for a solution or product. This definition, which is seemingly faulty, creates a myopic and presumptive viewpoint that is concentrated on offering and thus hinders the comprehension of the full extent of needs evident in every business. This impact is mostly seen in messaging that touts the benefits of the product or service rather than the business value.

Customer Engagement for better Business Performance

Customer engagement entails encouraging customers to share their experiences and interact with the business and brand. When implemented well, a vibrant customer engagement approach promotes brand loyalty and growth. Notably, businesses that concentrate on customer experience consider value creation more important than revenue extraction (Kumar, 2018). They offer something meaningful to their customers; an excellent customer experience, real-time and interactive customer support, and exceptional content. It should be noted that customer experience is priority number one. The experience businesses offer to their customers is essential as it allows business owners and marketers to increase advocacy, loyalty, and increase satisfaction. Additionally, it is important for companies to humanize their brands as customers value the feeling of being attended to and recognized. In brief, customers form the foundation of every business. This means that the success of a firm is determined by engagement of customers (Armstrong, Kotler, Harker & Brennan, 2015). The prime aim of a marketing strategy should be to note and satisfy the needs of customers. Engaging customers in every stage of marketing ensures that the company offers products and services that satisfy customers, and ultimately, the business will achieve its long-term goals.

Conclusion

To summarize, the modern business world presents marketers with multiple choices on where and how to advertise services and products. In addition to traditional approaches, which include direct marketing and print advertising, there is email marketing, social media sites, and web-based advertising. Additionally, as seen in this report, a good understanding of customer needs is important for market and innovation success. Research has pointed out that many businesses do not have a well-defined approach to using and finding needs and hence a proper mechanism needs to be adopted to solve this problem. Lastly, Customer engagement, when implemented wisely, promotes brand loyalty and hence a significant growth of the business is seen 

References

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.

Batra, R. and Keller, K.L. (2016). Integrating Marketing Communications: New Findings, New Lessons, and New Ideas. Journal of Marketing, 80 (November), 6, pp. 122-145; 

De Mooij, M. (2013). Global marketing and advertising: Understanding cultural paradoxes. Sage Publications.

Hartley, R. F., & Claycomb, C. (2013). Marketing mistakes and successes. Wiley.

Hewett, K., Rand, W., Rust, R.T. and van Heerde, H.J. (2016). Brand Buzz in the Echoverse. Journal of Marketing, 80 (May), 3, pp. 1-24; 

Jobber, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012). Principles and practice of marketing (No. 7th). McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Kumar, V. (2018). A Theory of Customer Valuation: Concepts, Metrics, Strategy, and Implementation. Journal of Marketing, 82, (January), 1, pp. 1-19.