IMC and Customer Satisfaction - Assignment Example

? IMC and Satisfaction First IMC and Satisfaction The company’s advertising strategy looks at how the company can encourage and get customers to want and demand their goods and services. The strategy looks at many aspects of getting products to the customers by looking at all the aspects of customer demand such as the types of people that would demand the goods and service and where they are, the most optimal pricing ranges as well as the various advertising media that Aare available for use in advertising the company’s goods and products. The advertising strategy needs to be aligned to the marketing goals by identifying the nest ways to reach the expected market and thus making sure that the advertising messages are pitched to the right segments of the population. It also needs to be aligned to the marketing goals by ensuing that whatever advertising media are used are the ones that give the most bang for the buck and are able to attract the numbers and range of customers that they intend and need to reach. Thirdly the advertising strategy must align to the marketing goals by ensuring that the advertising spends results in the expected revenue and marketing goals and thus ensuring that the resources spent on advertising are not wasted or spent in markets where little revenue is expected. There are different ways to measure the effectiveness of advertising but these vary from type of advertising that is being looked at and also in their accuracy. There isn’t a really scientific way of accurately measuring advertising per se but there are many ways of looking at the impacts of advertising and from that being able to get a measure of the effectiveness of a particular advertising strategy or campaign. The most important aspects of advertising that are measured include recall, recognition and revenue. Recall essentially measures how well a particular target of an advertising campaign or strategy can recall the messages that were advertised about a particular brand of good or service. Recognition is more to do with how well the targeted consumers are able to relate a particular advertising spot in whatever media it may be with either the product that is being advertised or the good and service that that advertisement is targeting (Olson, n.d). These two measures can both be done through conducting surveys of other scientific procedures such as focus group discussions. The third measurement of how effective an advertising campaign has been is the nature and types of income revenue that have resulted from that particular campaign. The change – increase or decrease – in the sales revenues prior to and after the advertising campaign will be a good indicator of the effectiveness of a particular advertising strategy or campaign. Promotion is essentially a two-way communication that deals directly with the consumer to enhance the marketing strategy and appeal to the consumers. There are nowadays a lot of promotional strategies which can be employed in addition to advertising to draw customers to a particular product or service. In addition to the promotional strategies there are also various ways in which these promotion strategies can be implemented, with the latest and the one that is now catching on being promotion through social media and other online contact. Some of the promotional strategies that can be employed include the use of contests with winners receiving various prizes. Such contests, especially those that encourage the purchase of a product or the use of a particular service are also quite effective in ensuring repeat customers and can encourage previously skeptical potential customers to try out a service or a good and if followed up with a clear and targeted advertising, can result in increasing the market pull of a product. Another promotional strategy that can be used is the offer of discounts and special prices to targeted members of the market in order to encourage them to either shift from a competing product or make the first attempt or try out a product for the first time. This strategy, as long as it is followed up by appropriate customer retention activities can be quite effective in improving sales and raising revenues. Yet another promotional strategy that can be employed is loyalty incentives. These, usually given in the form of a loyalty card that assures the consumer of more rewards such as gifts or discounted prices ensure that the company is able to retain customers once they have been first attracted to the product (Olson, n.d). There are various ways in which customer satisfaction can be measured, depending on the type of good or service that is being evaluated. However, there are four basic measurements that need to be taken in consideration while looking at customer satisfaction. The first of these measures is the overall satisfaction measure. This usually looks at how a customer perceives the good or service they receive in relation to their expectation. This measurement looks at the quality of the good or service as well as how well the service meets his expectation. This first measure can be done using self-evaluation questionnaires and response sheets. The second measure of customer satisfaction is that of loyalty measurement. This measure effective looks at how well the service or good satisfied the customer also whether they would want to use it again and thirdly if they would recommend it to someone else. A third customer satisfaction measure is that of attribute satisfaction measures. In this kind of measurement the various types of services or parts of a good are looked at in detail with the customer expected to rate the aspects in a standardized way. The fourth customer satisfaction measure is the intentions to repurchase measurement which basically looks at how willing a customer is to purchase the same good or service again (Smith, 2012). Gaps in customer satisfaction would be addressed based on the types of responses that the customers give on the customer satisfaction responses. The most important way of addressing unmet customer expectations is by analyzing the kinds of customer complaints that are received and having all these categorized and grouped in ways that they can be addressed. A possible classification of these expectations is by looking at those that can be directly addressed such as those that relate directly to the quality of a product of service and these are usually the most urgent ones. These would need to be addressed as the highest priority as not paying attention to these would result in an erosion of the customers’ confidence in the product. The second lot would be those that customers perceive as good to haves that may be added on possibly at a later stage to improve on the nature and type of customer satisfaction that is sought. The third type of customer satisfaction gap is that which the company or the manufacturer does not have a direct effect on such as the size and location of the parking space for example. These are the sort of customer gripes that would probably be bets met by an explanation of why this is so and suggestions as to how and when these may be addressed, possibly in the future (Smith, 2012). References Olson, D. (n.d.). Principles of Measuring Advertising Effectiveness. Retrieved August 24, 2013, from http://www.pageout.net/user/www/j/d/jd1050/Principles%20of%20Measuring%20Advertising%20Effectiveness.pdf Smith, S. (2012, December 3). How to Measure Customer Satisfaction: Do You Overlook these 4 Key Customer Satisfaction Measurements? Retrieved August 24, 2013, from http://www.qualtrics.com/blog/customer-satisfaction-measurement/ Read More