Marketing Communications

To maximise the return on your marketing investment and to ensure that your marketing communications are properly targeted you should first develop a marketing strategy and a marketing plan. This will give you the framework and direction to put together an integrated marketing communications plan. What is a Marketing Communications Plan and what does it involve? Well a marketing communications plan is normally an annual plan that but if you have a lot of marketing communications activity it can be also useful to produce a rolling marketing communications plan and update it every three months. Our marketing consultant will be happy to develop a marketing communications plan for you or review your existing marketing communications plan. Our marketing consultant has developed marketing communication plans for lots of organisations and knows how to maximise the return on your marketing investment. A marketing communications plan shows all of your marketing communications activity and should include advertising, direct marketing, promotions, on-line and PR. By producing an integrated marketing communications plan you are looking to integrate your marketing activities across a number of marketing channels. You are also looking to choose the channels that are best suited to reaching your target audience and provide you with the best return on investment. Our marketing consultant can help you achieve your marketing communication goals.

Many companies make the mistake of undertaking ad-hoc and piecemeal marketing communication activities. These marketing activities are often re-active rather than pro-active and a knee jerk reaction to falling sales or declining markets. One single piece of marketing communication e.g. an advertisement or flyer in isolation will often have little or no effect. It is the recency and frequency of a message that resonates with people. Quite simply the more often you see and hear a marketing communication the more likely you are to remember it. Ad-hoc marketing activities that are late or ill timed generally have little or no effect and can be very costly.  You need to take a more strategic and holistic approach to your marketing communications plan to ensure that each and every activity is carefully targeted and can be measured.  

An integrated marketing communication plan takes a more strategic look at planning your marketing communications activity. The objective is to communicate your message across as many carefully targeted communication channels as possible. So for one audience a combination of on-line, promotions and PR may be appropriate. For another it could be SMS, on-line and radio. There is no one correct formula for integrated marketing communications; a host of variables need to be taken into account to ensure the best possible result. Integrated marketing communications is about applying strategic thinking to tactical marketing activity and it uses the marketing strategy and marketing plan to underpin its direction and thinking.

If your marketing communications are more ad-hoc than planned and your activities are more piecemeal than integrated then you should think about how much money you could save and how much more successful you could be if you got some experienced marketing help. Our marketing consultant can help you put together an integrated plan to fit your market, your budget and your objectives. If you don’t have a marketing strategy or marketing plan in place our marketing consultant can still help you with your marketing communications activity and we usually find our marketing consultant manges to save you money whilst making your marketing communications activity more effective.