The paper would let the reader understand the aspects of Integrated Marketing Communication, where the pros and cons would be elaborated in detail.
Moreover, the specific elements would be chosen and applied over the service, i. e. IT outsourcing services, along with the provision of a suitable rationale. And finally, the ways of communicating the message and measuring the effectiveness of marketing methods would be analyzed.Communications Channels Integrated Marketing Communication is an idea that revolves around the unifying of several marketing communication methods, instead of allowing them to work independently (Lake, 2010). As its name implies, IMC ensures the presence of linkage among different communication methods, precisely ‘promotional tools’ that include sales promotion, advertising, personal selling, personal relations, and direct marketing (MMC, 2009).
Let’s discuss each of them in detail by bring to light their advantages and disadvantages.Pros and cons: advertising. Advertising – It is a very significant element of marketing that involves the promotion of products or services through publishing or broadcasting the advertisements. The advertisements can be placed in magazines, newspapers, websites, or broadcasted through television and radio (Kotler & Armstrong, 2008). Businesses often find advertising as a better option since it proves for them to be effective, more communicative, reaches wide audience, less time spent, cost-effectiveness.
Cons might be the lack of two-way communication because customers might have certain questions in their minds regarding the product. Another disadvantage is that it creates clutter on television due to information overload, which may result in forgetting of information. Pros and cons: direct marketing. Direct Marketing is defined as reaching the target audience or potential customers directly by advertising the product or service through emails, social networking sites, telephone calls, flyers, brochures, and catalogs (Pollick, 2010).Its pros include cost-effectiveness since it is a cheap way of advertising. It does not take much time to be spent on it, and reaches the intended audience directly that might not be the case in advertising.
As far the cons are concerned, people take it as lightly and usually ignore it, since these emails often go into the Junk email folder. Moreover, potential customers often feel a lack of two-way communication when sent emails or brochures, so its effectiveness declines. Pros and cons: sales promotion.Arranging the promotional campaigns and programs at certain public places such as, amusement parks where the promotion of the products and services is done by free trials, distributing free samples, and awarding gifts on winning a certain contest. Sales promotion has a major advantage that is it creates a buzz among the target audience who become aware of the products or services, its features, and new deals and packages. Moreover, it encourages word-of-mouth that normally has more effectiveness than that of advertisement.
Whereas, its cons are high costs of setups, transportation costs, costs incurred for distributing gifts and free samples.Pros and cons: public relations. Public Relations involve the taking services of Media buying houses or PR agencies that maintain the brand image of a company by circulating press releases, annual reports, and newsletters. Advantages of Public relations include the promotion of brands or company at a higher level, corporate level, more reliability, and grabbing more attention of companies and as well as individual customers.
Cons include high fees that are charged by the PR or Media buying agencies, and any mistake done on their behalf can lead to damage the brand or company name. Pros and cons: personal selling.Personal Selling involves the visiting of sales representatives to the target audience – either companies or households – and offering them to buy their products or services highlighting their benefits, features, qualities, and deals. Personal selling creates a direct contact with the customers in terms of door-to-door selling, or by meeting organization’s personnel in case of B2B marketing. Moreover, it results on-the-spot purchases, promotion of products, and word-of-mouth.
Cons might include wastage of money or effort because the sales representatives lack selling and communication skills.Also, people often perceive this door-to-door selling as a fraud, so they hesitate to buy this way. Define each and discuss the pros and cons of personal selling. . Overview of the Product/Service The service that is being discussed in this paper is an IT Outsourcing service that aims to provide its IT related services and solutions to the firms that require such IT solutions, techniques, and infrastructure development and maintenance but do not have enough resources or expertise to have them on their own.This service would be provided by the in-house teams and as well as the vetted freelancers who will act as a back-up team for in-house ones.
By utilizing the advantage of time difference across different countries, technicians can develop solutions for clients throughout. Rationale for Choosing Channels When it comes to the selection and application of the above mentioned marketing tools over IT outsourcing services of the company, the effective of these would be Personal Relations, Advertisement, Direct Marketing, and Personal selling in businesses.Personal Relations would enable the IT outsourcing company to promote its image and services at an upper level that directly contacts the businesses. Direct marketing would be cheaper to do, which would still grab the attention of target market to some extent; whereas, advertisement would definitely position the company’s image in a better way that would be perceived by the audience as reliable, effective, and of good quality.
And most importantly, when the sales representatives of the company visit other organizations who need to implement the latest technological IT database or solution packages, chances would be high that they would purchase the IT services and build long-term relationship with the company. As far as the service of this company is concerned, changes should be made with the passage of time since the new technology keeps on developing for the provision of more comfort and ease to the customers and meet their demands in more appropriate manner.Therefore, updating of the softwares and hardwares, along with the after-sales services would have to be made if customer loyalty is needed to be maintained. The Messages The message for the target market is that the company would always seek to provide them with the best possible services, keeping quality at its best, making punctuality as its main theme, and keeping customers satisfied by fulfilling their needs in a timely and efficient manner.
The rationale behind the message is that the company values its customers at all costs, since the customers are seen as the major driver of the company.If they are satisfied, they would purchase the services and hence the company would be able to increase its sales and obtain lucrative results. Moreover, the company wants to implement its packages and solutions in a number of companies, and that can only be possible if the services are reliable and of good quality. Communication with the target market would be done by using four of the five marketing tools; whereas, internet would be used in IMC approach by using social networking websites such as, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.Furthermore, emails would be sent along with the publishing of advertisements on company’s own and other websites.
Strategy to Measure the Effectiveness of the Campaign Measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns would include two major strategies – sales forecast analysis and market surveys. Before launching a particular marketing campaign, the company would determine the impact of the campaigns over the sales depending on the market condition, market research, and customer demands.Based on such analysis, forecast would be made for the future sales and targets would be set accordingly. As soon as the results come, they could be matched with the targets that were set before. Another strategy would be to conduct market surveys through questionnaires, focus groups, and informal interviews in order to ask the customers about the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, by what channel or marketing tool they are affected, and what motivates them to purchase the company’s IT services.
Based on such findings, marketing campaigns can be conducted accordingly in order to minimize costs that go in vain. Conclusion Therefore, the IT outsourcing company can expand its customers by effectively marketing its services to them, providing them with quality, reliability, and after-sale services, so that their needs are fulfilled and they stay satisfied.
