Background of Women’s Era Magazine

Discuss about the IMC Plan for Women’s Era Lifestyle Magazine.

There are a numerous ways to develop marketing and communication strategies. Adding value to the product in any business is dealt by the impact the message communicated has on the market or the customer behaviour. Being a planning manager of the magazine company, who has to develop and build brand for a lifestyle magazine Women’s Era am responsible to give an efficient direction to my magazine company in order to influence the behaviour and attitude of the customer targeted. It is the process of finding new opportunities in order to fulfil the communication objectives in an ethical manner to create a position strong enough in the market. There are lots of campaigns of other brands in the market which needs to be managed to win over other brands who have created a good brand image already. For Women’s era, the main emphasis is upon managing the audience and targeting them in such a way that it maintains a good customer relationship especially with women audience who spend more on lifestyle and wellbeing. In order to send the created message and communicate about the magazine to the targeted market, various interruptions and disturbances in getting the message received must be kept in mind. This process involves various steps like maintaining public relations, carrying out promotional activities through direct communication or campaigns and advertisements (Blakeman, 2014). Therefore, it is the process of creating a balanced mix of various communication methods and channels to uphold a good market position.

The objective of the magazine company is a magazine which helps individual or the audience to get innovative experience for wellness in day to day activities. It helps one to build its own life and address various lifestyle issues and challenges. For an instance, families struggling with issues of parenthood might have encountered that it is really hard to face realistic situations for e.g. spending good time in family, keeping a balance between family, kids and work etc. This magazine lays a system which supports situations which are uncontrollable. Energizing and positivity in health and wellbeing is the common objective, this magazine company serves. It motivates the readers to channelize the stress related tasks to be productive in nature. This magazine will be an abundance of advice of providing confidence especially to the female audience who are blessed and are fortunate enough to be responsible for shaping a family’s future.

Identification of the audience to be targeted and analysing the segment

Women’s era magazine would employ 15 positions which would be the sales department, production department comprising of the typesetter and art director, an editorial department consisting of editors based on seniority and administration department. The administrative department will consist of personnel keeping a track of book keeping, secretarial activities, publishing activities, programming and processing the data. The main objective is indulging in marketing activities to an extent that it targets the prospects optimally (Shin, 2013). The segment catered is the key element of knowing the steps to be taken in order to fulfil the needs of the readers. It would target female adult market, who realise the importance of maintaining the work life balance. This magazine would address to the needs and varying interests of females about shaping life in fun, ageing aspects, beauty and fitness and parenthood etc (Lusch, &Vargo, 2014).

To identify the requirement of our product, there are a number of activities to be carried which gives a definition to be understood by the consumer of the product. It is this stage which finally develops the product. There are not only activities like managing the manufacturing tasks and deciding upon the management of supply chain. In addition, the overall product is only developed when the requirements of the customers are anticipated and innovative changes are made in the product accordingly (Ang, 2014).

The reputation of magazine company would be decided upon the aspirations and needs, the company has catered. It is primarily the main focus area to screen the readers and identify the segment. Women’s era magazine will cater to the women readers who have the zeal to live and find ways develop the living spirit. There are other factors along with that for e.g gender, level of income, behavioural attitude and geographical location which the company needs to analyse for finding the readers who are likely to purchase the product (Martin, 2016). Geographically, the lifestyle of a person depends upon the weather of the location which further influences accessories used for fashion and living.

Targeting the Australian market, where the weather is not very extreme both in summers and winters will help the magazine to include information on categories like travel, fashion and accessorizing, benefits of exercising, parenthood, characteristics of people according to personality etc. Analysing the behavioural patterns of women will help the magazine company to know the responsiveness of audience towards knowing about their travel, leisure, fitness, maternity, parenthood needs (Egan, 2014). The magazine can promote various products used as a symbol of love and affection depending upon the reader’s behaviour for e.g. Jewellery, flowers, chocolates and fitness equipments. This further helps in cost analysis avoiding unnecessary wastage in designing the campaigns to market the product. If the market targeted is appropriate then customers can easily relate to their requirement and purchase it quickly.

Company’s advertising and communication objectives

The communication of a message, may it be creating awareness of the brand and positioning the magazine in the market or influencing the attitude of the customer with the help of promotional activities, the biggest challenge for a company is its competitors. There are magazines which create a threatening competition like fashion magazines enticing the readers about the latest trends and upcoming fashion tips which lead the audience to switch the magazine. Apart from that, there are low cost magazines which advice about the lifestyles of people with busy schedules covering aspects like ready to eat food, hotels and resorts for holidays to relax from work, list of restraunts for fast food, products for cooking with recipes and nightlife venues and clubs for outing etc. Therefore, keeping in mind about the competitors, market has to be targeted and price is to be set so that survival in the market is ensured (Persuit, 2013). This further leads the company to plan promotional activities like selling magazines personally, public relations, advertising, media, and TV channels etc. Using marketing techniques like providing discounts, vouchers and coupons on the subscription of the magazine are also an option to make the brand popular.

After the complete review of the competitors, the magazine company would be planning upon objectives of marketing and communication which include:

1. Imparting awareness among the women audience: It is important that amongst various female magazines which have categorically maintained a good level of awareness in the minds of women, Women’s era magazine enters the market with catching slogans, punch lines and advertisements. This will repetitively be in the reader’s top of the mind. Creating awareness and existence is an important objective (Schultz, Patti, & Kitchen, 2013).
2. Creating an intent in the audience to purchase the magazine:

To be available and persevere in the competition, motivation plays a vital role. If the target readers are shown the benefits they will reap from reading the content and purchasing the magazine, then the hidden need of the customer will be met. Letting the household females know about the modern techniques of living their lifestyle and understanding their family requirements to help them overcome domestic challenges is the objective of our magazine (Thorson, & Moore, 2013).

1. Creation of ethical perception about the product:

When there are thousands of rivals and competing brands in the market, it is very common for the audience to receive a negative feedback and review (Percy, 2014). Our main aim is to create that kind of perception which exhibits positive reviews and avoids misconceptions. Our main aim to deliver a message through various promotional activities is to create an authentic image on the consumers.

1. Create loyalty for the brand:

Activities used in promotion like giving samples, free subscriptions for trial, coupons and vouchers for trial are carried out to give an experience to the customer about the product and create repetitive purchases. It gives an insight to the magazine company about the preference of the user and their spending habit. Accordingly, innovations are used and loyalty is created for the brand in future (Kitchen, & Uzunoglu, 2014).

There are a number of possibilities when the question is to promote the product in the market. Once the market to be targeted has been decided and the objectives have been planned, then communication and promotion becomes profitable. The main step now is selecting the medium and focus on the message to be delivered in the market. As an IMC manager of the Women’s era magazine, the best way to indulge the audience and communicate our message is advertising through online sources. There are listings online on search engines like Yahoo and Google. As soon as the seeker searches for the magazine using key words, the results are made available. In online sources social networking advertising is the best way Women’s era magazine can be advertised (Tagg, Stevenson, & Vescovi, 2013). This method cost efficient and draws maximum attention of the audience. In fact reviews and feedbacks can be too taken while advertising through online sources. There are sections like FAQ’s and Ratings which helps the company to adapt to audience preferences.

Communication Objective: The main advantage of selecting the above communication way of advertising is it will give the magazine company an opportunity to interact with the audience frequently. There should be no gap. Taking feedbacks through comments and tweets on Facebook, Twitter will allow avoiding any misconceptions, negative publicity. It will also help in tapping the mass market as the advertisement will be seen by lots of people. This will increase the product awareness. The major issue with respect to ethical compliance while advertising through social media is accuracy of the material to promote the product must be very high (Goodyer, 2015). The audience is large and they tend to hamper the image of the product by misinterpreting the information and listening to the competitor’s word of mouth (Kelley, & Jugenheimer, 2015). The features advertised about the Women’s era magazine need to reflect the exact information to its users in order to avoid the risk of miscommunication. The company may come across situations when the customer relationship is damaged as wrong information is communicated while promotion.

Amongst the infinite media vehicles available to campaign about the product, Women’s era magazine will choose to reach the people with the help of digital media which includes the social networking sites as well. It is the best and cost efficient vehicle to build viewer’s emotions and increase awareness. This includes all the networking networks like linkedin, facebook and interactive sites which gives the product an online presence and reduces the gap between audience and the company through two way communication (Zarrella, 2009). This taps the readers behavioural pattern by engaging him through various interactive tools like tweeting, ratings, commenting, pressing likes and tagging etc. The subscribers feel that they are a continuously in contact with the company and develop a relationship and a personal connection.

As we are targeting the mass market as our audience, we would require a budget of AUS$ 5000 for the promotion of the magazine through social media. This would include activities like finding the target audience through surveys, research and other marketing activities. We would require AUS$1500 for creating a profile on the social networking site would include profile picture, cover photo, videos and icons to be uploaded to enhance the content. We would further need ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­AUS$1600 to run our ad on Twitter or Instagram to establish our brand by exposing it to get high number of clicks and tweets. Additionally, we need to manage the schedule of time so that our new updates and news posts are posted before time. Going further, if we want to keep a track of the number of visitors who see us through social media, then we need to spend ­AUS$500 per month to build in analytics for our site. To gather information about the needs and difficulties of our target audience tools like Follower wonk need to be managed to locate our followers, to know their timings when do they tweet and to find who are our followers. This would need an amount of AUS$1000. In order to receive the feedback we would include sections like Ratings, Reviews and FAQ’s and need ­­­­AUS$400 for evaluating the effectiveness of our plan under the heading miscellaneous expenses.

It is required that Women’s era magazine monitors and evaluates whether the designed plan for integrated marketing communication is in accordance with the main aim. Since, our mission is to communicate various aspects of improving and developing the lifestyle of women who are into entrepreneurship, household work and relationships etc. It is hence, important to assess the consequence our plan will create when executed. The company would need to conduct surveys and research to observe the following points which are whether the message has been communicated, the targeted women buyers have been addressed according to their requirement (MacArthur, 2015). Additionally, the plan is in accordance with company’s budget, the response gathered matches the set standards, there is an increase or decrease in number of subscriptions. Finally, the last step is taking corrective actions for improving the shortcomings in the feedbacks and reviews. This process of developing standard targets against which the actual number of tweets, reviews and likes received will be compared will further lead to increase the number of subscribers.

Conclusion

The communication plan is effective when it persuades the subscriber to buy and read the magazine. This needs that the advertising is not misjudged by the targeted segment of people and a strong customer relationship is developed. There are various indicators to identify the above result. Women’s era magazine would make this plan by introducing effective elements such as keeping the track of awareness related to our brand, attitudes and behaviour of the women audience, likes and tweets received through social media etc. Additionally, keeping in mind the comments and reviews would help the company to cope up with the competitiveness and improve customer engagement. It is important to create a balanced mix of various communication methods and channels to uphold a good market position. It is differentiation in the brands which makes our product identify the challenges the company needs to cope up in order to build the brand (Parente, & Strausbaugh-Hutchinson, 2014). It involves the people who are targeted to be addressed, fulfilling the aim of the communication of the message, deciding the content to be communicated, determining the mediums through which the message is to be communicated, finances, and finally assessing the consequences and results after the execution of all these activities.

References

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