Pure-Body's Marketing Communication Strategy - Essay Example

5. Marketing Communication Strategy Pure-Body recognises that communication is very important marketing tool. It is an essential way in which a business venture, organisation, or a corporate communicates with its customers. Marketing communication entails a marketer to develop conscious decisions in order to determine the recipient of a given product and service. In addition, it helps to define a set of existing and potential customers in order to satisfy them. Pure-Body will use the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) to reach its customers. This is because IMC is an indispensable tool that will link the marketing tools of Pure-Body business venture to attain its targets and objectives. This is in recognition that IMC creates a competitive advantage in the market while receiving huge economic boost to increase profits and sales (Pelsmacker & Kitchen, 2004:113). Moreover, Integrated Market Communication makes a strong tie between business ventures and customers for long-term success of companies. Integrated Marketing Communication plan embraces for stages such as horizontal integration, internal/external integration, and financial integration. Horizontal integration is a communication that promotes co-operation with manufacturing and operational departments for the companies to fulfil its objectives (Varey, 2002:127). In this case, the management of Pure-Body business will use corporate-level to identify industries in which their company should compete in to maximise its long-term profitability. Pure-Body aims to embrace horizontal integration to consolidating the activities of the various departments for its wholesale success. Through horizontal integration, Pure- body business will reduce the cost structure, increases service differentiation, and replication of business model. In addition, it will reduce rivalry within the industry, and increases bargaining power over supplies and purchasers. Pure-Body business aspires to enjoy the benefits of horizontal integration. These include lowering a business cost structure because it increases economies of scale. The operational departments provide important business advice to the manufacturing department to reduce cost structure (Stephenson & Thurman, 2007:239). For instance, the operational departments can advise the manufacturing department to dispose a faulty machine that is inefficient. This enables the manufacturing department to acquire a new machine that is efficient. Therefore, the manufacturing department cuts down the cost of the structure. Horizontal integration helps to reduce the duplication of resources between two companies. The manufacturing department together with other departments achieve this endeavour by eliminating the need for two separate sales forces or corporate head offices. Horizontal integration augments product differentiation, which increases profitability. This is because horizontal communication provides the manufacturing department with innovative ideas to manufacture consumer products or give essential services. Horizontal integration encourages companies to merger. This increases differentiation thereby it allowing a company to combine the products lines or services of merged companies for customer satisfaction (Smith & Taylor, 2004:12). The Integrated market communication at Pure-Body will endeavour to conduct several marketing research techniques to ascertain the level of curiosity of satisfaction and among potential customers. Pure-Body will employ online surveys, blogs, and social media such as twitter and facebook for the users to enter into discussions. The company intends to use mass media to popularise itself after it achieves financial stability. Mostly the company will concentrate on online advertising, social networks, and communication through newspapers, and surveys. Online Advertising Pure-Body business recognises the benefits of employing online advertisement to create awareness of their services. Online advertisement has become a major tool of advertisement in this era of unprecedented technological advancement (Schmid, 2011:8). Most people surf the internet on a daily basis. Computers, smart phones, and tablets are common things in this generation (Fox, 2009:99). In the light of this, Pure-Body business will create an active blog where it will post advices and information of the products that are health for people’s consumption. This will target the both male and females. Pure-Body feels that online advertisement will reach the targeted audience. This is because internet has become a principal medium of communication replacing traditional promoting of services and products, and informative Medias (Janoschka, 2004:43). It is apparent that traditional methods of advertisement such as television, magazines, and radios are becoming obsolete. Some of the advantages of online advertisement that will benefit Pure-Body comprise of wider coverage. Pure-Body knows that through online advertisement it will reach a huge audience, which will ultimately help the business in getting better results and reception. Moreover, the advertisement will reach both the targeted audience and other potential consumers. The affordability of online advertisement has attracted Pure-Body business. The low costs of advertisement will help Pure-Body business reach a wide range of audience and many regions. Pure-Body will design a website that is ease to access and with clickable links to a specific landing page. This will enable users to get more information on the business products and services. Pure-Body business will convey more details about their advertisement that are pertinent to their services and products. Apart from creating its site, Pure-Body business will utilise the sites such as MarketingSite.com, which embrace posting contacts, networking, and promotion of sales, marketing, and advertisement. Pure-Body business will target the all the sites through banner advertisement. This will ensure that there is appearance of the Pure-Body advertisement in each web page. The logic behind this strategy is to capture the attention of a wide range of internet users (Fox, 2009:100). This strategy aims to elicit curiosity in the audience to seek further information on the services of Pure-Body. Pure-Body will embrace discussions through the blogs where it will interact with its targets audience. Pure-Body site will create a link to receive consumers’ feedbacks through Frequent Asked Questions (FAQs). Through this link, Pure-Body will address the concerns of the consumers. This will maintain confidence of consumers of Pure-Body business. There is likelihood for satisfied consumers to influence other potential customers. Social Networks Pure-Body business is technologically well versed in the social networks such as twitter and Facebook. The business aims to capitalise on a large number of active users of facebook and twitter that surpass 300,000,000 to date to reach a wide market (Evans & McKee, 2010:5). Pure-Body business intends to open twitter and facebook accounts to interact with a wide range of customers. It aims to achieve this through creating interactive forums where the consumers can access information about exercise and health tips from Pure-Body. Through facebook and twitter, Pure-Body will know who has clicked on the advertisement with feedbacks such as sex, age, and region. In addition, the social networks will indicate the number of clicks that people make. This will help Pure-Body to devise better ways of presenting their advertisement to reach a large number of consumers. Pure-Body recognises the fact that social media has become requisite in marketing. Social media marketing has been on the rise for the past years. People across all ages use every minute to chat, send messages, and access important information from different fields (Chung-wai Shih, 2009:80). Pure-Body business will engage with the online communities to create enough awareness of its sports services. Through creation of fan and group pages in facebook, will help the Pure-Body to monitor, contribute, and moderate discussions about its services. The group is a better forum to bring like-minded people who later become potential to become clients. In addition, the group will educate individuals who may have desire to access sport services. Creating a Facebook Page is easy because it requires zero monitoring or moderators (Chung-wai Shih, 2009:83). Pure-Body business will use the fan page in facebook to disseminate monthly newsletters, a virtual magazines, special offers, polls, question and answer sections, and blog streams. This will create enough awareness of the sports services, which Pure-Body business offers. Twitter presents an opportunity for Pure-Body to market itself. This is because of its flexibility and easy to use. Pure-Body business intends to utilise important tools such as CoTweet, Twellow, and SocialOomph to attract a large pool of customers. CoTweet is very crucial to promotions of businesses because it allows multiple users to tweet on the same account (Boone & Kurtz, 2011:239). In addition, CoTweet enables businesses to manage many accounts at the same time. Moreover, this twitter feature has ability to monitor trends of the mention of products or services. Pure-Body will capitalise on this feature to communicate with their potential clients. Twellow is an excellent way to increase targeted followers by looking up fellow tweeters by geographical location, occupation, interests, and hobbies. This feature is easy to use and completely free (Boone & Kurtz, 2011:239). This will be essential for the Pure-Body business to communicate with its potential customers throughout. Social Oomph that formerly referred to as Tweetlater is a tool that has both a free and paid version. In addition, this feature has key tracking, reusable tweet drafts, and automated direct messages for new consumers. Moreover, the feature has automated following for people to follow the account holders. Pure-Body business will use this application to attract clients. The business will place advertisements using this feature and prospective clients can re-tweet to get an instant feedback. Newspapers Pure-Body recognises the fact that newspapers are very essential to advertise the business. In the light of this, the business endeavours to invest a lot on advertisement of newspaper. Although it is expensive to promote business in newspapers, Pure-Body knows that creation of a strong base of customers is backbone of its business activities (Egan, 2007:103). Pure-Body health strategy on newspaper advertising will have its basis on the discount of most preferred sports. For instance, if many clients prefer Yoga Pure-Body will include discounts on the charges of this kind of sport in order to win more clients for its business. Pure-Body recognises the importance of placement when running advertisement in the newspapers. In the light of this, it intends to run smaller advertisements repeatedly to attract the attention of many clients. Pure-Body plans to carry a survey in order to find out the trends of people to read daily newspapers. This knowledge will help the business to know the most suitable days to place its advertisement in the newspaper. Moreover, Pure-body aims to write direct responses to the advertisement in order to grab the attention of the readers, desires, and interests thereby provoking an immediate action. The advertisement will focus on enticing the readers to get up to go to Pure-Body for exciting sports such as Gym-workout, Kick boxing, yoga, and many entertaining sports. The business will employ both local and national newspapers to reach a vast number of audiences. Online Surveys Pure-Body intends to carry out online surveys through survey forms. These forms seek to solicit and receive customer feedbacks online throughout the day. Through online surveys, Pure-Body will determine customer level of satisfaction, criteria, and preferences of existing and potential clients. In addition, the assessments will give a chance for the clients to give a feedback on the services, which require improvements. This will satisfy fully the needs of the customers of Pure-Body. For efficiency in this exercise, Pure-Body looks forward to establish a link its website that will capture the customers’ feedback. The link will have survey question whereby consumers will have to answer in order to understand the reception of Pure-Body services by the clients. Pure-Body business will reward the customers for their feedbacks. This will be a way to thank the clients for completing the survey questionnaires. Upon completion of the survey question, clients will have the opportunity to print out a validation code to redeem a pre-printed coupon. Some of the rewards will include sport kits and sports ware. This will be useful for brand building because rewarded client will act as marketers for the Pure-Body business (Tuten, 2008:6). This will help the business to create a strong brand of its sporting and entertainment activities. Online surveys will complement other marketing of Pure-Body Business such as social networks, online, and newspaper advertisement. 6. Schedule and Implementation Pure-Body business endeavours to send marketing communication before the launch of its services. All the departments within the business will meet regularly to tune into an integrated strategy. In prelaunch and after launching its services, Pure-Body intends to send direct mails to potential clients. The business will place advertisement once it launches its services. The newspaper advertisements will start in a wedge pattern then follow into awareness pattern after five months to maintain awareness of Pure-Body business service that has a long access cycle and a long decision time. 7. Estimated Budget for Advertisement The table below represents estimates of the budgetary allocation of Pure-Body Business on advertising. Method of Advertisement Amount (Dollars) Online advertising $2500 Newspaper Advertisement $1500 Social Networks $1500 Online Surveys $2000 Total Amount $7500 8. Proposed Measurement and Review Evaluation Pure-Body business will utilise awareness and perception-based metrics to understand its customers’ knowledge and association with its services. In addition, the business will use analytics methods to monitor the online behaviour of customers relating to Pure-Body services. Through awareness-based metrics, Pure-Body Business will be able to measure the extent to which its customers and prospects remembers its services. The business will solicit the feedback of its target audience through focus groups, surveys, questionnaires, and interviews. Bibliography Boone, L., & Kurtz, D., 2011. Contemporary Marketing. New York: Cengage Learning. Chung-wai Shih, C., 2009. The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff. London: Prentice Hall. Egan, J., 2007. Marketing Communications. Cengage Andover: Learning EMEA. Evans, D., & McKee, J., 2010. 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