Marketing Communication Plan for BMW - Case Study Example

MARKETING COMMUNICATION PLAN ………………………….. College ……………………………… ……………….. Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 ContextAnalysis 3 1.1. External Contexts 3 1.2. Business Contexts 4 1.3. Competitor Environments 5 2. Communication Objectives 6 3. Marketing Communication Strategy 7 4. Integrated Promotional Mix 8 4. 1. Print and Broadcast media advertising 8 4. 2. Social Media Marketing 9 4.3. Event Marketing 9 4.4. Sales Promotion 10 4.5. Public Relation 10 5. Scheduling and Implementation of the IMC 10 5.1. Planning the IMC 10 5. 2. Determining the Budget for the IMC 11 5.3. Developing the IMC 12 5.4. Integrating various methods of promotion 12 5.5. Proposed Time line of the IMC project 12 6. Evaluation, Control and Feedback 13 References 14 1. Context Analysis BMW, established in 1917, has emerged to become one of the top ten car manufacturers in the world. With extensive focus on engineering excellence, BMW- has become world’s one of the most reputed brands forever and its strategic approach to marketing has drawn superior financial performance in recent years (Innovation Leaders, 2014). The Munich based Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) company has been focusing on a worldwide strategy that can best be described as mass customization, as it has been tailoring products, prices and distribution for customers’ personal selection in the premium brand market (Pride and Ferrell, 2006) and this has been affecting the external, internal and competitor business contexts. 1.1. External Contexts 1.1.1. Increasing Fuel Price: Fuel price continues to increase and it always tends to impact the business opportunities of car manufacturers. However, it opens up new marketing opportunities for BMW hybrid and hydrogen cars since consumers tend to increasingly shift towards cheaper fuel types. Annual Report (2013) states that the hybrid technology, along with its focus on increasing electrification, helps the company take a leading role in lowering of carbon emissions and fuel consumption. An effective marketing communication will certainly help BMW to attract millions of customers worldwide to its cars. 1.1.2. Positive attitude to Green Vehicles There is growing interest towards ‘green’ products that cause no harm or relatively less harm to human health and his nature. People are becoming more concerned about green products (Soni, 2013). As consumers are more aware about negative impacts of air pollution caused by vehicles, they show interest towards green vehicles. It seems to be an opportunity for BMW cars for its hybrid and hydrogen cars. 1.1.3. Trends in Automobile Markets In 2013, the number of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles sold globally has been increased by 5.1 percent to reach to 76.5 million units, mainly driven by increased demands in USA and China (Annual Report, 2013). In UK, the car market has remained in good shape, being boosted by a surprisingly strong economic recovery. The UK car market grew by 10.8 percent to reach 2.3 million units of cars and light vehicles. This showed greater opportunity for BMW mainly for its highly differentiated cars. In order to exploit this emerging market opportunities, the marketing team of BMW will need to communicate regarding its product variants and unique value propositions it offers to its targeted audiences. 1.2. Business Contexts 1.2.1. Brand Reputation It is undeniably accepted that BMW is a strong brand as its appeal has created a sense of uniqueness among marketing channel members (Parment, 2014). BMW is valued as world’s 11th most valuable brands, with a market cap of £ 83.37 billion (Forbes, 2014). Out of various factors internal to business that affect the strengths of the company, brand awareness and brand image that have been established by BMW for the past several years remain to be an important segment that it has to heavily focus on through its marketing communication campaign. 1.2.2. High Quality Products Quality is extensively focused at BMW. The tradition of quality in BMW permeates all work processes of its worldwide production networks. Based on its foundation- ‘Made by BMW group’, a corporate philosophy is fostered at its organisational level so that its people are well aware about the quality it promises to the customers (BMW group, 2014). Since quality is an important marketing factor that affects customers buying behaviour, the marketing communication of BMW will need to focus on quality aspects of its products and services. 1.3. Competitor Environments 1.3.1. Fierce Competition among market players BMW faces intense competition from other global market players such as Audi, Daimler Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and Acura. Competition is one of the main threats BMW faces in its external business contexts. Since competition is rigorous among these market players, BMW should communicate regarding price, product quality and economic value benefits to its customers (Besanko, Dranove and Shanley, 2009) 1.3.2. Corporate Social Responsibility The annual report (2013) of BMW showed that the company has always showed stronger commitments to ecological and social criteria along the entire value added chain and to the preservation of resources. Following table shows how BMW could save energy and water resources throughout its production processes between 2009 and 2013. 2. Communication Objectives In order to effectively communicate to the prospective customers, BWM proposes to implement integrated marketing communication by carefully coordinating among various promotional messages including traditional advertising, sales promotion, event marketing, social media marketing and sponsorship marketing (Percy, 2012). Main objectives of this communication strategy are outlined below: 1. Increase sales of cars by 9 percent worldwide 2. Stimulate brand awareness to become one of the top ten high-valued global brands 3. To establish stronger relationship with customers by providing useful information to them 4. To generate a minimum of 5,000 enquiries per month through social networking The first, third and the fourth objectives are action-based objectives, whereas the second objective is knowledge-based (Dahlen, Lange and Smith, 2010). BMW’s total sales in 2013 has proven an increase of 6.4 percent from the previous year figure. The sales volume between 2009 and 2013 are outlined below: by adopting the IMC, the marketing team at BMW expects to increase total sales by 10 percent to reach 2,140,530 in units worldwide. BMW is now ranked as 11th most valued brands worldwide, and it proposes to stimulate its brand to become one of the top ten brands in the world. Its social media marketing is aimed to generate wider responses from around the world and the company expects to generate at least 5,000 enquiries from customers, and thus to build stronger relationship with customers. 3. Marketing Communication Strategy Smith, Smith and Berry (1999) asserted that lack of a strategic approach to marketing communication is merely a waste of budget. Most marketers communicate about their products, services, value propositions, unique features or benefits of consuming the products etc to its prospective buyers. The main reason why they communicate is to inform them or to persuade them to buy their products or services (Smith and Taylor, 2004). In today’s fiercely competitive marketing contexts, almost all the market players take strategic approach to their marketing process, and they take it as a competitive strategy as well. For BMW, it is extremely important to take a strategic approach to marketing communication. It proposes to adopt integrated marketing communication because IMC is an effective technique that will help BMW integrate between various marketing communication tools such as sales promotion, traditional advertising, event marketing and social media marketing, so that it can maintain consistency in all the messages it communicates to the public. The chosen marketing strategy for BMW is IMC, because, it will certainly enable it to accelerate its returns by aligning communication objectives with its business goals (Schultz and Schultz, 2004). As integrated marketing communication is a program that helps a firm achieve higher marketing synergy through communication, it will, as a result, lead to increasing the competitive advantage. With the strategy of integrated marketing communication, BMW proposes to plan, design and develop coordinated and systematic brand communication with various stakeholders such as customers, employees and associates in order to ensure short term financial benefits and long-term brand values (Belch and Belch, 2007). IMC involves carefully coordinating between promotional messages so that it helps the company maintain consistency in delivering the messages of its goals, mission, vision and philosophy statements and brand communication messages to customers. 4. Integrated Promotional Mix As mentioned earlier, the key to the strategy of IMC is consistency and uniformity of messages across all elements of marketing promotions (Ferrell and Hartline, 2010). Apart from maintaining this ‘consistency’ in communication, IMC will help BMW create clearer and sharper selling messages to targeted customers (Smith, Smith and Berry, 1999), and this will, in turn, help the company achieve its objectives of increased sales, brand awareness, generating increased numbers of enquiries and building stronger relationship with customers. For this purpose, BMW will implement the IMC program. 4. 1. Print and Broadcast media advertising It is not wise to fully avoid traditional newspaper and magazine advertising, because, these advertising are found to be very helpful in providing more useful information to customers. For those audience who would like to know about hybrid technology of BMW cars or about environmental benefits of using its cars, print advertising will be of greater importance (OGuinn, Allen and Semenik, 2008), and hence, these advertising are considered as critical components of BMW’s IMC strategy. In recent years, various studies conducted to research about people’s time spending on watching television have pointed that people spend more than 85% of their time to watch television (Duncan, 2005). Television, despite the fact that is very costly as compared to many other modes of advertising, cannot be avoided for this sake. 4. 2. Social Media Marketing Quoted from a marketing study, Lipschultz (2014) stated that 55 percent of social network users were found to repeatedly visit brand’s websites. With the wider use of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, most businesses took it as an opportunity to spread information about their business and products to people worldwide and to create an appeal of positive interest in their mind. Social media is an interactive two-way consumer and brand communication, and this has emerged as a marketing promotion tool (Lipschultz, 2014). BMW proposes to invest on social media marketing by appointing technical experts, designing and developing images and videos that can give useful information to the public to impact their buying behaviour. For BMW, social media marketing will play significant role in promoting its business to achieve its targets of building relationship and generating customer-enquiries. The technical experts and content-creator experts will strategically generate eagerness among customers to generate their enquiries. As Anjum (2011) observed, social media marketing will be an important integral part of the IMC program of BMW. 4.3. Event Marketing Started from the event marketing effort in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, BMW has been focusing heavily on event marketing by sponsoring various events. A high-tech engagement based advertising portfolio has helped BMW establish stronger brand image and reputation among its customers (Event Marketer, 2010). By investing on various events worldwide, BMW proposes to demonstrate some of its most attractive driving experiences with a view to increase sales by 9 % within one year. 4.4. Sales Promotion To drive rapid sales, BMW will continue to offer discounted deals and offers at various seasons and festivals across different countries. The sales promotion programs of BMW will consist of all those marketing activities that are likely to add values or incentives to the company and agents who find new customers to the company. 4.5. Public Relation BMW will necessarily involve in public relation activities so as to distribute information systematically to control and manage the brand awareness and images of the company (Belch and Belch, 2007). This will help position the brand among customers’ mind. For this purpose, BMW will require to evaluate attitudes, customer enquiries and feedback to the policy and procedures of the company in relation to developing marketing programs. BMW will depend on various social groups to achieve its organisational goals (Koekemoer and Bird 2004), and this can be aligned with the goals of social media marketing. 5. Scheduling and Implementation of the IMC 5.1. Planning the IMC Initially, BMW will plan about how the IMC strategy can be executed. In the planning stage, the marketing team of BMW will predict the potential benefits and estimate the costs and profits and thus to project the organisational as well as marketing outcomes. There are four basic targets for adopting the IMC strategy- sales, brand awareness, relationship and customer enquiries. The marketing team at BMW needs to take these objectives at the centre so as to ensure that all the marketing communication programs that are planned will be more likely to lead the firm to achieve these targets. 5. 2. Determining the Budget for the IMC IMC will be quite costly for BMW. The IMC program is planned for its global operation, and the budget is estimated to be nearly £ 27 million. The IMC budget is following. Promotion Tools Estimated Costs Print and broadcast media advertising £ 13 million Social media marketing £ 3 million Event marketing £ 6 million Sales promotion £ 3 million Public Relation £ 2 million 5.3. Developing the IMC There are basically five mixes to the integrated marketing communication program planned by BMW for its marketing communication strategy. These five modes of advertising and promotion are print as well as broadcast media advertising, social media marketing, and Public relation, event marketing and sales promotion. 5.4. Integrating various methods of promotion At this stage, the marketing team of BMW will strategically design and develop communication messages by maintaining unified wordings in all the messages being communicated to the customers. One key requirement for this integration is ensuring that messages conveyed through various methods or advertising and promotion are similar in wordings, images and videos, and that they do not create any differentiated meanings to customers. 5.5. Proposed Time line of the IMC project Tasks Duration IMC program planning First two weeks Budget Determination 2 weeks Developing IMC From first month till the end of the year Print media and broadcast advertising Throughout the year, when it is necessary Event marketing On specific events- throughout the year Public relation Throughout the year Social media marketing Throughout the year Sales promotion On special occasions of festivals in different countries Evaluation and control After each promotion program has been completed 6. Evaluation, Control and Feedback With the IMC campaign, BMW planned to achieve increased sales, improved brand awareness, customer relationship and customer enquiries. At the stage of evaluating and control, the marketing management will need to see whether the IMC program was functioning as planned and it was helping the company achieve the desired objectives. If any deviations are found, the marketing team will be required to take necessary actions to overcome such issues. With the adoption of the integrated marketing communication, one main advantage that BMW will experience in marketing communication will be a systematic coordination and integration between various marketing communication tools. Traditionally, companies went to execute different modes of advertising and promotions with no considerations on how messages conveyed through these different modes impacts customers’ perspectives about the brand, product, features and services. The IMC program implemented by BMW is thought for a paradigm shift in this aspect. One significant outcome of the IMC strategy is gaining higher level of marketing synergy. At BMW, this will be achieved through increased revenues, improved brand awareness, stronger customer relations and increased numbers of customer enquiries. The marketing team will be required to evaluate how the social media marketing has benefited the company, and they should evaluate whether the company received 5,000 enquiries from customers worldwide. References Annual report, 2013, Annual report-2013, BMW Group Anjum, A.H, 2011, Social Media Marketing: The Next Marketing Frontier, GRIN Verlag Belch, G. E and Belch, M. A, 2007, Advertising and Promotion, An integrated marketing Perspective, McGraw Hill Irwin Besanko, D, Dranove, D and Shanley, M., 2009, Economics of Strategy, Fifth edition, John Wiley & Sons BMW group, 2014, Intelligent Processes, Quality Management, Retrieved from http://www.bmwgroup.com/e/0_0_www_bmwgroup_com/produktion/fahrzeugfertigung/intelligente_prozesse/qualitaetsmanagement.html Dahlen, M, Lange, F and Smith, T., 2010, Marketing Communications: A Brand Narrative Approach, John Wiley & Sons Event Marketer, 2010, BMW’s Experiential Marketing Mix, Event Marketer, Retrieved from http://www.eventmarketer.com/article/bmws-experiential-marketing-mix/ Ferrell, O. C and Hartline, M, 2010, Marketing Strategy, Fifth edition, Cengage Learning Forbes, 2014, BMW Group, Forbes.com, Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/companies/bmw-group/ Innovation Leaders, 2014, Profile- BMW, Innovation Leaders, Retrieved from http://innovationleaders.org/bmw_company_profile.html Koekemoer, L & Bird, S 2004, Marketing Communications, Juta and Company Ltd Lipschultz, J. H., 2014, Social Media Communication: Concepts, Practices, Data, Law and Ethics, Routledge OGuinn, T, Allen, C and Semenik, R., 2008, Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion, Fifth edition, Cengage Learning Parment, A, 2014, Auto Brand: Building Successful Car Brands for the Future, Kogan Page Publishers Percy, L, 2012, Strategic Integrated Marketing Communications, Routledge, Pride, W and Ferrell, O.C, 2006, Foundations of Marketing, Second edition, Cengage Learning Schultz, D.E and Schultz, H.F, 2004, IMC, the next generation: five steps for delivering value and measuring returns using marketing communication, illustrated edition, McGraw Hill Professional Smith, P, Smith, P. R and Berry, C., 1999, Strategic Marketing Communications: New Ways to Build and Integrate Communications, Kogan Page Publishers Smith, P. R and Taylor, J., 2004, Marketing Communications: An Integrated Approach, Kogan Page Publishers Soni, H.B, 2013, Proceedings of International Conference on Emerging Trends in Mechanical Engineering (ICETME-2013), Universal-Publishers Read More