The Importance of Integrated Marketing Communication

Discuss about the Loreal Group for Organic Shampoo and Conditioner.
 

Unifying and combining the methods and process of communication that are utilized by the business corporation for interacting and communicating with the consumers and motivating them to purchase the products and services  can be termed as the mechanism of integrated marketing communication. The process can also be termed as the methodology for planning, executing, monitoring the brand messages that will develop and enhance customer relationship and bonds.   Integrated marketing communication is a contemporary mechanism through which a business organization can effectively communicate the important details and data regarding the products and services and thus will present the same for enhancing the repeat intention of the existing consumers and attracting new customers. IMC plan proves beneficial for the business corporation on number of aspects such as it aids the business entity in advancing the communication skills of the business corporation to a professional level that will bring an enhancement in the market share and customer base.  IMC is a co-ordination of and integration of values, tools and avenues with the organization into a seamless system for maximizing the impact on the consumer.  The below presented is the IMC plan that is developed for L’Oreal. The business entity is expecting and is attempting to enhance the service and products quality by making effective use of means and mechanisms for communicating.  The below presented report is a detailed integrated marketing communication plan for L’Oreal (L’Oreal Group, 2018).

As per the given scenario it has been clearly stated that developing segments of consumers as a target audience is an empirical task for any of the business organization and the same case is with L’Oreal. It is very much significant for the business corporation to create recognition for the course of action of the consumers that are required to be selected as a target audience. The promoters and the advertisers should make understanding the necessities and the demands of the consumers for showcasing the goals and objectives. The normal plotting store up must have relative needs, interests and needs about Organic Shampoo and Conditioner. For all intents and purposes indistinguishable shampoos and brands should lure the overall public including the objective publicizes. Same trademarks and advancements pull in the prospect of the proposed interest assembling and impel to purchase. To pick a goal advertise, it is basic for the relationship to ponder the extra components:

• Understanding the way of life of the shoppers
• Age gathering of the people  

Developing an IMC Plan for L’Oreal

L’Oreal is one of the largest and leading cosmetic group producing in top beauty products. L’Oreal Company has a wide reach all over the world, the company spend a lot of money on for promoting their products and for their advertisement as well. And in order to achieve their current position the company has to implement a successful Integrated Marketing Communication strategy, IMC is a very simple yet complicated concept it refers to the ways or strategies for accomplishing the current or desired objective of a company or their marketing campaign by promoting and advertising their products or services through some specially designed promotional tools (Holmes, et. al., 2017). There are lots of ways the company can advertise their product , let it be social media like, Facebook, youtube, twitter and instagram etcetera or another way is by publishing it in newspaper or advertising on television, these all methods can be used  by L’Oreal for the promotion of their products. For accomplishing their desired objectives, L’Oreal has to focus on the target audience more and more and understand what their requirements are and for doing so the company has to interact with the customers from time to time through each and every platform possible to get their feedback on the products which will help the company to know if there is any need for improvement anywhere or if there is any issue with something the company will get updated (Shamout, 2016). There is  another tool of advertisement that the company can use to promote their products and that is banner advertisement which includes printing the products on the banners and displaying the banners in such areas which are either popular or frequently visited by a large number of people or we can say busy areas. Through all these promotional methods and advertisements the target audience or the customers will be able to connect with the company and also leading to a stronger relationship between the L’Oreal group and the consumers. IMC benefits the L’Oreal group in so many different ways for example, the company can establish a direct contact with the consumers and get to know the reviews about their product directly from the consumers, by using social platforms L’Oreal can directly convey it’s objectives directly to the target audience (Draelos, 2015).

IMC also helps the company to lay such plans and strategies which can help the company to make more and more profit by growth in sales and also overcoming the competition and an provide a competitive advantage to the L’Oreal group. Integrated Marketing Communication strategy allows the company to make a proper strategies by keeping the competitive advantage in mind, addressing the required group of audience, targeting the desired market, spreading the brand story through different ways and media platforms or channels, focusing on the objective etcetera and all these things will make the company stronger, with the help of a proper IMC and implementing it successfully, the L’Oreal group can accomplish a greater success by connecting to more and more audiences and making profit by increasing the sales through promotional events (Igarashi & L’Oreal, 2015). 

Promotional Tools for IMC Strategy

Media strategy is one of the major key  element during the promotional events , it refers to different ways through which an organization can reach to the audience that has been targeted for gaining their attention toward the company. To make sure that a large number of audience is influenced by the L’Oreal group and their cosmetic products and services they need to reach the desired audience and to make this true different media strategy can be used which are:
1) Social media platforms- nowadays social media has a great influence over people and more and more persons are joining it so it would be easier for the L’Oreal group to connect to them over this platform like, facebook, twitter, youtube etcetera (Stacks & Salwen, 2014).
2) Newspapers and televisions-  most of the persons have television installed and read newspapers so it is one of the greatest way of promoting the product and the company can rely on it as it reaches to a large number of audience.  Also advertisement over television are easy to grasp and leaves a good impression over the viewers.
media strategy is not as simple as it sounds one has to keep so many things in mind while doing so and plan according to the market and the desied objectives. While implementing a media strategy the company should decide a proper budget and then act accordingly because deciding the budget will help the company from overspending and come up with a proper and creative solution. The another point to keep in mind is setting some important and measurable objectives. The L’Oreal group needs to me more specific and analytical while setting up the goals and objectives because it will help in increasing overall profit and sales (Porcu, Del Barrio-García & Kitchen, 2017). Also while creating the objectives, the company should make them measurable which means the objectives should clearly defines the requirement of the organisation and should be more specific too while explaining. By setting a time limit in order to achieve the goal it will become easier for the company to achieve the goal before or  during the deadline. Another aspect to keep in mind while making the media strategy the group should set a target and recognize the market that needs to be targeted, because the more knowledge company has regarding their target audience the more easily they can reach them and also the company can get information about the kind of consumers they are dealing with by proper identification of the target market and analyzing that how and where consumers can be reached easily (Alhedhaif, Lele & Kaifi, 2016).
this  is how a proper media strategy can be prepared and implemented for the proper promotion.
most of the times the media strategy does not work so in that case the company should focus on where they failed or what they lacked and improve it, the L’Oreal brand should focus on their goals on objectives and display their brand over media with the story they want to convey to their viewers or audience (Walton, et. al., 2017).

Media Strategy for Reaching Target Audience

Creative strategy refers to different innovative ideas that a company can come up with to introduce their brands and their industry to the public. Creative strategy involves different strategies  and intentions towards the development of the company it also assures that the way company is approaching towards it’s goal is implemented well and helps attaining the business growth. Through this type of strategy a company lays out the blue print of steps that will be taken for achieving the goal and the objectives planned, L’Oreal group of cosmetics should focus on the employees or staff members who focucuses on advertisements and promotion propaganda, and these are, writers, art directors, content manager etcetera. Strategies developed under creative strategy decides the popularity of the product and how that product influences people (Cornelissen & Cornelissen, 2017). The important things that the L’Oreal group should  keep in mind while developing a creative strategies are:
1) story to convey to the consumers related to brand
2) target market and target group of audience
3) displaying every little benefit for the customer that the product is providing and how product fulfils all the requirement of the consumer (Ramli, 2015).
4) all the desired objectives that are needed to be accomplished during a limited time
5) managing the budget according to the consumers as well as the available resources
6) focusing on creative approach and finding such employees who can help in doing this.
7) quality of material, different market passages and last but not the least point to keep in mind is how, when and where will the final product be presented?
for creating creative contents for the advertisement and the display of products there are several strategies that L’Oreal group can use for instance (Yeshin, 2012).
· maintaining a direct contact with the customers and listening to what they have to say regarding the product and also analyzing each and every feedback because it will help the company to make the required changes or improvements in the product that are necessary and for the benefit of the customer also hearing the complaints or enquiry from the customers and to do so L’Oreal group should use the better way of connection like, phone, e-mail, text or chat etcetera and respond to all the queries as soon as possible (Linton, 2010).
· L’Oreal brand should always try to make some changes in the way of advertisement by modifying all the traditional brand advertisement and by using the new photography techniques for displaying their products and displaying them on all kind of media channels.
· For people to quickly grasp the company’s motto, the company should come up with a better tagline or head line because it will help gaining attention of the people easily. By coming up with a great tagline the L’Oreal company can attract a lot of audience but along with that the company should provide everything that has been promised.
· L’Oreal brand first analyze the needs and requirements of the customer in other words, what they actually want and then work on it and obtain product according to it (Armstrong, et. al., 2015).

Creative Strategy for Boosting Engagement

During advertising the product on the media, the company has to follow a strategy named media schedule which refers to planning that which media channels would be used during broadcasting the advertisement or promoting the product also called as marketing campaign, and then specifying the proper time of the broadcast and also the date when it will be displayed. For proper management of the timing and deciding the date for the product advertisement  the whole schedule should be prepared by the L’Oreal group regarding the advertisement or the brand display (Kim, Kim & Marshall, 2016).
Media scheduling is based on so many factors which are mentioned below:
1)  when the sale is taking place and for how long the sale will be ongoing or in other words whether the product will be sold continuously or for short time interval.
2) how is the quality of product and how it can be of any use to the consumer.
3) life of product is also a defining factor.
4) it also depends on the competitor’s products (Schultz, Chu & Zhao, 2016).
5) the most important factor is budget, decided for all these marketing campaigns and advertisements.
along all these factors , to keep the consumer updated the company should maintain a consistency and regularity in posting the content related to their products so that consumer can know, what exactly is happening and also to grow more and more audience on the social media and attract them towards the products that the company is producing does not matter whether the product is seasonal or regular, for advertising their products the L’Oreal company can prepare a proper schedule and keep posting about their products in a regular interval of time and due to this it will work as a reminder for the consumers it will also notify them about all the details and thus maintaining the whole cycle of purchasing that has been made (Belch, et. al., 2014). For L’Oreal group to get an advantage over competition, they have to make sure that their updates are scheduled in such a way that more and more customers can see and easily follow the advertisement.  The other important and mindful strategy for marketing campaigning and adjusting the schedule accordingly is  using maximum advertisement during  such a periods when sales are at a very high level and using the advertisement minimum during the rest of the time of the year, it will save the company from overspending on the advertisement of the product as well as marketing campaign (Orazi, et. al., 2017). A proper and specialized  Media scheduling for the L’Oreal group of cosmetic will ensure that the advertisement on any media channel only occur at the favourable selling time which is according to three basic media scheduling models or plans which are:
1) Continuity- this deals with the continous advertisement regardless of the season it might change slightly after a certain time interval (Jugenheimer, Sheehan & Kelley, 2015).
2) Pulsing- it refers to using more advertisement during peak time of sales and less while unfavourable time of season.
3) Fighting- it refers to when the advertisement is not done regularly and sometimes for a short time of interval, doing no advertisement at all (Ashley & Tuten, 2015).

Benefits of Effective IMC for L’Oreal

For any company to succeed and achieve the desired goals it is necessary for them to monitor their campaign by evaluating the campaign the company will be able to realize their current position and to see whether they are on the proper track to achieve their goal or not. For making the campaigns stronger and effective the L’Oreal group should evaluate and regularly monitor their ways of marketing campaigning and to see how it is impacting the people and analyze the situation then after that making any change which is necessary and for the betterment of the campaigning (Cole, DeNardin & Clow, 2017). While evaluating the company should consider few factors like,
1) how the resources and the funds that are raised for the whole project will be used
2) strengths and weaknesses of the project and the strategies as well as material too.
3) if the approach toward the campaign is innovative enough or requires further modification.
4) to measure all the efforts and steps taken towards the accomplishment of the goal and were they good enough for the achievement.
5) outcome of the process or the strategies used during the whole operation.
6) were the needs of the customers, fulfilled or not, or were the target audience was satisfied.
7) comparing the current outcome with the earlier one.
8) are the new vision and objectives of the campaign better than the previous one or competitor’s or not (Moriarty, et. al., 2014).
9) comparing the initial result with the current one, whether it is good or worse.
10) how long does it take to achieve the goal.
 evaluation always bring better changes and adds to the benefit of the company. Through evaluation the company will be able to know where they stand, how long till they achieve their goals and is there any need of improvement in their current strategies.
For evaluating and monitoring their marketing campaign the company should compare their old and current statistics, gather some information about the external sources and then comparing it with their internal sources, it can be achieved by organizing meetings from time to time and assigning proper roles to the deserving person. Deciding the objectives and goals in meetings, the company will be able to get a proper direction toward achieving their target (Altstiel & Grow, 2015). To measure the level of campaigning strategy different factors can be evaluated by L’Oreal brand  and these factors are:
· Measuring the exercise or action taken-  The L’Oreal group can monitor all the activities done to make the campaign effective are taken into account and being measured to see what has been done till now and what was the result of these activities.
· Final result or outcome- These factors includes the final strategies for achieving the main goal or aim of the company and what is their outcome. L’Oreal brand can use different measures and strategies that can result in betterment of campaigning.
· Impact of campaign- after the campaign is done and the required aim is achieved, this factor explains the things that happen after achieving the campaign and how it affected the people (Kitchen & Tourky, 2015).

Conclusion

In the limelight of the above executed analysis it has been inferred that integrated marketing communication is a unified and combined method of communicating with the consumers for generating awareness for the products and services. Integrated marketing communication is the process where the business entity will attempt to develop interaction with the consumers and the above presented is the IMC plan has been developed for meeting objectives and goals of organization. 

References

Alhedhaif, S., Lele, U. and Kaifi, B.A., 2016. Brand Loyalty and Factors Affecting Cosmetics Buying Behavior of Saudi Female Consumers. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 7(3), p.24.

Altstiel, T. and Grow, J., 2015. Advertising creative: Strategy, copy, and design. Sage Publications.

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.

Ashley, C. and Tuten, T., 2015. Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), pp.15-27.

Belch, G.E., Belch, M.A., Kerr, G.F. and Powell, I., 2014. Advertising: An integrated marketing communication perspective. McGraw-Hill Education.

Cole, H.S., DeNardin, T. and Clow, K.E., 2017. Small Service Businesses: Advertising Attitudes and The Use of Digital and Social Media Marketing. Services Marketing Quarterly, 38(4), pp.203-212.

Cornelissen, J. and Cornelissen, J.P., 2017. Corporate communication: A guide to theory and practice. Sage.

Draelos, Z.D. ed., 2015. Cosmetic dermatology: products and procedures. John Wiley & Sons.

Holmes, A.M., Charlton, A., Derby, B., Ewart, L., Scott, A. and Shu, W., 2017. Rising to the challenge: applying biofabrication approaches for better drug and chemical product development. Biofabrication, 9(3), p.033001.

Igarashi, L.Y., L’Oreal SA, 2015. Cosmetic blending machine for foundation, concealer, tinted moisturizer, primer, skin care products, nail polish, blush, hair dye, lipstick and other products. U.S. Patent 9,007,588.

Jugenheimer, D.W., Sheehan, K. and Kelley, L.D., 2015. Advertising media planning: a brand management approach. Routledge.

Kim, J., Kim, J.E. and Marshall, R., 2016. Are two arguments always better than one? Persuasion knowledge moderating the effect of integrated marketing communications. European Journal of Marketing, 50(7/8), pp.1399-1425.

Kitchen, P.J. and Tourky, M., 2015. Integrated Marketing Communications: A Contextual International Advertising Approach. In Integrated Communications in the Postmodern Era (pp. 19-48). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

L’Oreal Group. 2018. Media. [Online]. Accessed from: https://mediaroom.loreal.com/en/. [8^th June 2018].

Linton, I., 2007. Integrated marketing communications. In Practice of Advertising (pp. 68-82). Routledge.

Moriarty, S., Mitchell, N.D., Wells, W.D., Crawford, R., Brennan, L. and Spence-Stone, R., 2014. Advertising: Principles and practice. Pearson Australia.

Orazi, D.C., Spry, A., Theilacker, M.N. and Vredenburg, J., 2017. A multi-stakeholder IMC framework for networked brand identity. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), pp.551-571.

Porcu, L., Del Barrio-García, S. and Kitchen, P.J., 2017. Measuring integrated marketing communication by taking a broad organisational approach: The firm-wide IMC scale. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), pp.692-718.

Ramli, N.S., 2015. Immigrant entrepreneurs on the world’s successful global brands in the cosmetic industry. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 195, pp.113-122.

Schultz, D., Chu, G. and Zhao, B., 2016. IMC in an emerging economy: the Chinese perspective. International Journal of Advertising, 35(2), pp.200-215.

Shamout, M.D., 2016. The impact of promotional tools on consumer buying behavior in retail market. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 7(1), pp.75-85.

Stacks, D.W. and Salwen, M.B. eds., 2014. An integrated approach to communication theory and research. Routledge.

Walton, S., Alexandrakis, S., Gilby, N., Firman, N., Williams, G., Peskett, D., Elias, P. and Dezateux, C., 2017. An integrated and collaborative approach to developing and scripting questionnaires for longitudinal cohort studies and surveys: experience in Life Study. Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, 8(4), pp.401-416.

Yeshin, T., 2012. Integrated marketing communications. Routledge.