Guidelines in writing the IMC Plan

by: Nikka Abigail M. Natividad, MMA (cand.)

Your IMC Plan should be divided into three (3) sections;

1. Situation Analysis
2. Marketing & Advertising Plan
3. Strategic Plan

Part 1: Situation Analysis

The situation analysis includes four (4) content segments:
1. Overview
2. Product/Service Review
3. Competitive Review & Competitive Advantage
4. Consumer Research

1. Overview
Describe the industry in which your business/product competes, its size, growth, current trends
and developments, and any key factors necessary for an understanding of the setting. Also
provide a very brief history of the company, its product or service lines, sales history, target
markets, current marketing mix and any other factors that make the company what it is today.
It should include pictures of the product/service together with pictures of the place of business
through ocular visit of the company, properly described and labeled.

2. Product and/or Service Review

Describe the product or service that is the focus of your campaign. Include the product’s sales
history, market share, swot analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), key
benefits to the consumer, brand image brand positioning (strategy), factors important for
understanding of the product’s or service’s performance which should be placed among its
category of competitors. It should include different advertising materials that are available and
currently being used by the company like flyers,
brochures, posters and other printed materials for advertising their products/services as
part of the documents need for submission.

3. Competitive Review and Competitive Advantage

Who is the competition or the actual competitors? Describe each competitor and their
advantages to the company being studied. What images each competitor convey in their
advertising and promotional materials and on their web site (if applicable) vs the image your
product/service conveys? What do each competitor promote as their distinctive competencies?
Is there a difference between consumers’ perception of the competition and the way the
competition is promoted (their positioning strategy)? From your group’s perspective and the
objective information, what have your group evaluated. What are the actual competitive
advantages of your product/service and that of the competition?

4. Consumer Research
• Market Segmentation of the consumer: Identify the various market segments. Consider the
various methods of segmenting a market including demographics, psychographics, product
benefits, usage patterns, buying behavior and decision-making of consumer to buy
products/services.
• Potential Target Audiences and User Profile of the design materials: Who are the potential
target audiences for this “product” or “service” and consider potential users, actual users,
initiators, influencers, decision-makers, purchasers? Develop a user profile that highlights the
demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics of potential users using tabular
data.
• Consumer Decision Process: Describe how the consumer decision process works in the view
of the consumer, you can represent this through diagram. How the consumer made their
decision? Explain what factors would motivate the consumer to purchase. What external
factors might influence consumers’ decision making process for the purchase of product or
service such as culture, subculture, social class and reference group? What are the
demographic, psychographic and behavioristic factors that influence the buying decision? What
types of information needs do the potential target audiences have? What information sources
do they presently use? In short, what are the key factors that influence buyer behavior for this
product or service?

Part 2: Marketing & Advertising Plan

The Marketing & Advertising Plan includes five (5) content segments:
1. Marketing Objectives
2. Target Audience
3. Positioning Strategy
4. Communication Objectives
5. Communication Mix

1. Marketing Objectives
Specify marketing objectives for the campaign. Consider sales or market share objectives, and
pricing, distribution, and promotional objectives.

2. Target Audience
Identify primary and secondary target audiences and justify with information presented in the
situational analysis. Describe the demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral
characteristics of your target audiences as much as possible. Your target audiences may be a
subgroup from the user profile and/or a totally different group.

3. Positioning Strategy
How will you position the product to the target audience(s)?
a) Develop a positioning statement that highlights your product’s differential
competitive advantage (and distinguishes your product from the competition).
b) Develop a perceptual map depicting how your product is perceived relative to the
competition on attributes considered most important by your target audience (s). Support with
information presented in your situational analysis.

4. Communication Objectives
Develop a realistic set of communication objectives consistent with the marketing objectives.
State communication objectives in terms of the response hierarchy you identified earlier and
relative to your target audience(s). Your objectives should be specific and measurable. Describe
how your objectives have evolved from the marketing and promotional situational analysis you
conducted for your product or service. Do your objectives satisfy the criteria specified by the
DAGMAR (Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results) model?

5. Communications Mix
State the communication task ahead. Describe your integrated marketing communications plan
and how it will address the objectives you set. Recommend a plan that will allow you to
efficiently and effectively achieve your marketing and communications objectives (recognizing
that your client’s resources are not unlimited).

Discuss some of the options you are considering for the three major communications variables
of source, message, and channel or medium. Who will be the source or communicator for your
advertising campaign and what is the rationale for this choice? What type of message are you
considering using for your campaign? Analyze the various channels that might be used to
communicate with your target audience and the likely effectiveness of each with respect to
moving your target audience through the stages of the response hierarchy and to purchasing
your product.

What communications vehicles does your group recommend to reach the target audience(s)?
What vehicles will be most effective in reaching your target audience(s) and communicating the
client’s message? Consider advertising, publicity (press releases), interactive media, direct
marketing, sales promotion, personal selling, print collaterals. Your recommendations must
include enhancements to what the client is presently doing and/or totally new communications
efforts. Justify your choice of communications vehicles for each target audience(s). Be sure to
explain why the vehicles selected will be most effective and efficient in reaching the target
audience(s). Describe which target audiences are being reached with each communications
vehicle and the geographic reach of your recommended vehicles.

Describe how your communications mix will meet your communications and marketing
objectives. What is the message you will convey in each communication vehicle?

Part 3: Strategic Plan

The Strategic Plan includes four (4) content segments:
1. Campaign Impact & Duration
2. Creative Strategy (Creative Brief & Process)
3. Integration Strategies
4. Promotional Budget

1. Campaign impact and duration

• Is the overall marketing strategy to penetrate the market rapidly?
• Or, will you try to build awareness and market share over a longer period of time?
• How long will the campaign last and what is the timing of each element?

2. Creative strategy
Develop an overall theme, appeal and message concept. This is where you list down your ad
materials from midterms.

3. Integration strategies
This new IMC model is based on the rationale that web and new media it seems have been
elevated the role in marketing communications. Web and new media are biased neither to
advertising (paid for) nor publicity (free). All forms of marketing communications are present on
the web and the dyad (and battle) between television advertising and web advertising is no
longer relevant. The convergence of all media into “web-like” forms suggests that the web is
actually media neutral resulting in kind of level playing field that further heightens the need for
an orchestrated, integrated dance.

Some key things to look for include:

• Ensure that brand personality is embedded in all media.
• Tangible links between mix elements. There should be no isolated promotional
items – avoid random ill redirected or ill-timed collateral.
• All media should be linked, each one dependent on another.
• Think new touchpoints, or moments in the day when your target audience
experiences or accesses their preferred media. This is partly the reason for persona/avatar
development as mentioned previously. If you can determine the how (on a daily basis) the
typical audience member interacts with various media by creating an avatar and then
confirming via research – then you have a good chance of determining touchpoints.
• Think existing touchpoints – where existing clients/customers already interact with you brand,
marketing communications and customer facing units such as service personnel. These existing
interactions can and should be incorporated into new planning a new IMC campaign.
• Don’t talk at them – make your messages experiential.
• Keep a consistent ‘look and feel’ across all design elements.
• Leverage of cross-promotional tie-ins.
• Consider the authentic customer relationship management.

4. Promotional budget
• Allocate budget for each promotional mix element.