Q1. What is IMC and Reasons for the Growing Importance of IMC?

Ans: Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is the strategy that takes your
marketing department from disparate functions to one interconnected approach.
Reasons for the Growing Importance of IMC

Several shifts in the advertising and media industry have caused IMC to develop
into a primary strategy for marketers:

• From media advertising to multiple forms of communication.

• From mass media to more specialized (niche) media, which are centered
around specific target audiences.
• From a manufacturer-dominated market to a retailer-dominated, consumer-
controlled market.
• From general-focus advertising and marketing to data-based marketing.
• From low agency accountability to greater agency accountability,
particularly in advertising.
• From traditional compensation to performance-based compensation
(increased sales or benefits to the company).
• From limited Internet access to 24/7 Internet availability and access to goods
and services.

Q2. Elements of the Promotional Mix

Ans:
1. Advertising:
Advertising is defined as any paid form of non-personal presentation and
promotion of ideas, goods, and services by an identified sponsor. It is a way of
mass communication. It is the most popular and widely practiced tool of market
promotion. Major part of promotional budget is consumed for advertising alone.
Various advertising media – television, radio, newspapers, magazines, outdoor
means and so forth – are used for advertising the product.
2. Sales Promotion:
Sales promotion covers those marketing activities other than advertising, publicity,
and personal selling that stimulate consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness.
Sales promotion mainly involves short-term and non-routine incentives, offered to
dealers as well consumers. The popular methods used for sales promotion are
demonstration, trade show, exhibition, exchange offer, seasonal discount, free
service, gifts, contests, etc.

3. Personal Selling:
Personal selling includes face-to-face personal communication and presentation
with prospects (potential and actual customers) for the purpose of selling the
products. It involves personal conversation and presentation of products with
customers. It is considered as a highly effective and costly tool of market
promotion.

4. Publicity:
It is the traditional form of public relations. Publicity is not paid for by the
organisation. Publicity comes from reporters, columnists, and journalists. It can be
considered as a part of public relations. Publicity involves giving public speeches,
giving interviews, conducting seminars, charitable donations, inauguration by film
actor, cricketer, politician or popular personalities, stage show, etc., that attract
mass media to publish the news about them.

5. Public Relations:
The public relations is comprehensive term that includes maintaining constructive
relations not only with customers, suppliers, and middlemen, but also with a large
set of interested publics. Note that public relations include publicity, i.e., publicity
is the part of public relations.
Q. Paid, Owned, and Earned Media
Ans:

What is Earned Media?

Earned media is publicity or exposure gained from methods other than paid
advertising.

If owned media sites are the destination then earned media is the vehicle that helps
people get there. What good is a website or social media site if no one is seeing or
interacting with it? That’s where earned media comes in. Earned media is
essentially online word of mouth, usually seen in the form of ‘viral’ tendencies,
mentions, shares, reposts, reviews, recommendations, or content picked up by 3rd
party sites. One of the most effective driving forces of earned media is usually a
combination of strong organic rankings on the Search Engines, and content
distributed by the brand. First page rankings and good content are typically the
biggest drivers.

What is Owned Media?

Owned media is any web property that you can control and is unique to your
brand.

One of the most common examples of owned media is a website, although blog
sites and social media channels are other examples of owned media properties too.
Channels like social media and blogs are extensions of your website, and all three
are extensions of your brand as a whole. The more owned media you have, the
more chances you have to extend your brand presence in the digital sphere. (Check
out our post on SEO for blogs to earn better rankings!)

What is Paid Media?

Simply put, paid media is marketing you pay for. Holistically, it is used to promote
content in order to drive earned media, as well as direct traffic to owned media
properties.

Paying to promote content can help get the ball rolling and create more exposure.
Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn offer paid media
advertising that could potentially help boost your content as well as your website.
Another way to gain more exposure for your content is to pay influencers to rep
your products or services, impacting the reach and recognition your pieces receive.
Using retargeting, Pay Per Click (PPC) and display ads is an effective and more
direct way to drive searchers to your owned media sites like your website, to help
increase traffic and/or conversions.
Q. The Target Marketing Process, Bases for Segmentation (Customer
Characteristics)

Ans:

Step 1: Define your target market

The first step you need to take is to define your target market. Having a clear
profile of your target customers will help you weed out the ‘maybes’ and ‘nevers’,
and ensure that your marketing activities are targeted and cost-effective.

Take some time to note down the following about your target audience:

Demographics – who are they? What is their age, gender, profession and income
etc.
Psychographics – How do they think? What are their interests, values, attitudes,
likes and dislikes etc?
Behavioral – What do they do? How do they consume media? Is it online or
offline? What sites or publications?
It’s worth taking an extra step and thinking about what your bullseye target market
looks like. To do this, write a short statement which describes your perfect
customer.

Step 2: Reach your target market

You now need to give consideration to how you are going to reach your target
audience. Having spent time on profiling your target market, you should find this
step of the process much easier. To maximize your marketing investment, you
need to fish where the fish are!
Some simple examples – if your target audience are 25-35 year-old busy
professionals, think about social media and online platforms, as these are mediums
that this demographic actively engage with. Alternatively, if your products or
services are aimed at 55-65 year-olds who are largely retired, you may want to opt
for print publications that you know this demographic like to read.

Whether you decide on online or offline advertising, remember to ask advertising

managers for a breakdown of the demographic profile of their readers. This
information will help you to make decisions about allocating your marketing funds
effectively.

Note also that no matter who your target audience are, you need to ensure that your
content not only reaches them, but also engages with them (‘how to write engaging
content’ is a topic for another day!).

Step 3: Identify what type of customers they are

With each marketing outreach you undertake, remember to also think about the
type of customers you are trying to connect with. Are they existing, new, lapsed or
repertoire customers (repertoire customers are those who are not loyal to one
brand, but who may be influenced by things like promotional offers)? This will
impact on the messaging and tone that you adopt for your communications.
Step 4: Tailor your marketing to your customers
When you really understand who you’re talking to, you can ensure that all your
communications are on-message and sent using the right channels and media.
Using the intelligence you have gained in the right way ensures that your
marketing budget has the most impact, and is much more likely to lead to high
value sales, and loyal, repeat customers.

The bases of segmentation could be classified into the following four categories:
1. Geographic segmentation (i.e., region, city size, density of population, and
climate)

2. Demographic segmentation (i.e., age, gender, marital status, income, education,

and income)

3. Psychographic segmentation (i.e., motivation, personality, perception, attitude,

and lifestyle)

4. Behavioural segmentation (i.e., benefit, usage rate, loyalty, and awareness state)

Selecting a Target Market

1. Defining Generic and Product Markets A market is a group of potential
customers who have similar needs and are willing to purchase goods or
services to satisfy those needs. Good marketers focus on the customer and
develop marketing mixes for very specific target markets. On the other hand,
poor marketers focus on their products when defining markets, leading to
missed opportunities and questionable customer satisfaction. The point here
is that a market is external to an organization; it doesn’t make sense to
segment potential markets based on the features contained in your products
or services. When narrowing down the mass market, it is helpful to think of
two basic types of markets: generic markets and product markets.
2. Understand Common Market Segment Dimensions There are common
market segment dimensions for consumer and B2B markets. Following are
two lists containing sample dimensions that can be used to slice and dice
your consumer or B2B product markets. Be very careful when selecting your
dimensions, as these parameters will form the basis for defining your target
markets.
Q. Positioning Strategy
Ans:

There are 7 approaches to positioning strategy:

i. Using product characteristics or customer benefits:
In this case, segmentation is done keeping in mind the product characteristics or
customer benefits.

Sometimes, a new product is positioned with respect to a product characteristic that

competitors have ignored. BenQ was positioned as a provider of morphing-enabled
mobile pictures, a feature absolutely new in the market. Sometimes a product
attempts to position itself along two or more product characteristics
simultaneously. For example, Mahindra & Mahindra Scorpio was positioned as
both reliable and trendy MUV.

a. Physical characteristics:
These are the most objective criteria and can be measured on some physical scale
such as temperature, colour intensity, distance, strength of fragrance etc.

b. Pseudo-physical characteristics:
These reflect physical properties that are not easily measured. The examples are
spiciness, type of fragrance, shininess, creaminess etc.
c. Benefits:
These refer to advantages that promote the well being of the consumer. Examples
are thirst quenching, hunger satisfying, not harming the skin etc.

ii. The price-quality approach:

This approach justifies various price-quality categories of the products.
Manufacturers deliberately attempt to offer more in terms of service, features or
performance in case of certain products known as Premium products and in return,
they charge higher price, partly to cover higher costs and partly to help
communicate the fact they are of higher quality. On the other hand, there are some
products known as mass products, where the main matter о concern is price
keeping a minimum quality standard commitment.

For example, if you consider a company like Maruti Suzuki in Indian automobile
market, you will see that they have Maruti 800 and Maruti Omni in A segment (2-
2.2 lakhs), Maruti Zen and Wagon R in lower В segment (2.2-3.5 lakhs), Maruti
Alto Vxi in upper В segment (3.5-5 lakhs), Maruti Suzuki Baleno in С segment (5-
7 lakhs), Maruti Grand Vitara XL-7 in high-end SUV segment and Maruti Baleno
Altura in Estate segment.

iii. The use or applications approach:

Another way to position is to consider the use or application. One good example is
Itch Guard skin ointment (cream base) from Paras Pharmaceuticals, which has
been positioned as an Over. The Counter (OTC) medicine (i.e. the medicine that
does not require prescription) to “relieve sweat itch due to INTERTRIGO”.
iv. The product-user approach:
This deals with positioning a product keeping in mind a specific user or a class of
users. Cosmetics brands like Revlon, L’Oreal or Lakme position themselves
targeting fashion-conscious women.

v. The product-class approach:

Some products need to make critical positioning decisions that involve product-
class associations. For example, Nescafe Bru positioned itself as instant coffee.

vi. The cultural symbol approach:

Many companies use deeply entrenched cultural symbols to differentiate their
brands form their competitors. The use of a character named Gattu by Asian Paints
helps them to position itself as a brand that is always ready to help, quick in
decision-making and very much young and contemporary.

vii. The competitor approach:

The positioning can be made with an explicit or implicit frame of reference of one
or more competitors. There are 2 reasons behind this:

a. The competitor may have a firm, well-defined image developed over many years
and this image can be used as a bridge to help to communicate another image
referenced to it. It is like when you give your address, you mention some well
known landmarks like bank, office, school etc.

b. Sometimes it is not only important how good the consumers think about you, but
also it is important that they believe you are better that a given competitor.

The very good example can be found in newspapers’ and magazines’ market,
where the newspaper like Dainik Jagran or magazine like Business World compare
themselves with competitors like Punjab Kesari or Business Today respectively in
terms of circulation and readership.