Strategic Integrated Marketing Assessment Answer

Part 1: Integration and Challenges of IMC (Integrated Marketing Communication) 

IMC Strategy and its Importance in Marketing

Integrated marketing communication (IMC) indicates the concept of designing marketing communications campaigns that encompass entire components of promotion (direct sales, public relations, and others), making it possible to share a logical message to entire sets of recipients (Rėklaitis & Pilelienė, 2019).

 In marketing, IMC plays an important role in bringing together numerous marketing platforms and communications into an integrated and consistent strategy, developing an influential harmony which improves brand visibility, nurtures consistency, and hence stimulates business success (Laurie and Mortimer 2019). The IMC strategy for marketing communication plans is being employed by massive as well as smaller businesses and has become famous amongst companies marketing consumer goods and services (Kushwaha et al. 2020). By comprehending an audience's communication environment, companies pursue to establish and demonstrate messages for their recognized stakeholder teams before assessing and acting on the responses (Rėklaitis and Pilelienė 2019). A real-world example of IMC's importance can be seen in the GoPro: Be a Hero campaign which was proven to capture the most prominent moments of an athlete and motivate by it. This was found in the campaign which was known for continuous communication and repetition and it has built long-lasting relations with people (Burton & Schlieman, 2021).

Integration (AIDA model)

The AIDA model is an acronym for awareness, interest, desire, and action. These elements are discussed below:

Awareness: It is aimed at creating business awareness and attaining attention from prospective clients. The ways of integration here can be that brands can use pay-per-click advertising to appear at the extreme top of the search results. Moreover, paid social advertising might also surge brand awareness. With a set of significant targeting choices on channels such as Instagram, Facebook, and others, the brand will be capable of communicating the message to a definite audience (Jiang et al. 2023). 

Interest: After attaining attention, the brand is required to sustain that interest in its offerings by making arousal. In this stage, the brand should focus on generating value-added content to grab the interest of the consumers. The brand must use newspapers that have online components also since they can enable the brand to associate with the audience on social platforms and in print. Also, the brand must consider negotiating added worth for website banner advertisements or committed social media posts on their channels (Lee and Trim 2022).

Desire: After arousing interest, the brand wants to persuade the client as to why they must buy its offering. It can be done by delineating the advantages of the good to address the target clients' sentiments. Here, the brand discusses the advantages of the offerings. It can be done by exchanging the UGC (user-generated content). Moreover, the use of testimonials and case studies might be effective to create desire. Also, to refine the influence of the billboard traditional ad channel, marketing professionals can integrate geotargeting which is a method determining the locality of a website visitor and offering customized content to the visitor based on their location (Chaikovska and Shkeda 2021).

Action: In this, the brand desires the client to convert. It can be attained by developing a coherent buying procedure like a virtual shopping cart with nil distractions. In this stage, there should be the use of different marketing communication channels such as direct marketing practices, telemarketing, email marketing, product presentations, and more to persuade consumers to buy. Besides, there must be the use of interactive marketing practices such as social media technology; Search engine optimization marketing viral marketing; games advertising; and more to convert clients (Indrawan et al. 2023). 

Challenges of Implementing IMC in a Digital Environment

There is no doubt that integration in the current times is extremely intricate to handle the process, particularly because of the growing role of unseen communication to shape the response to messages and also due to the influence of virtual social communities on the path the target people choose and get messages. Moreover, the variations in the current clients’ behavior mean the need of refining the IMC concept in a manner that it might be able to fulfill the challenges it confronts. Therefore, another challenge of implementing IMC is the necessity to adapt the used communication tools to the ones preferred by the beneficiary (Coffie et al. 2022). It originates from the belief that the conventional types of communication are losing their appeal and their efficacy while the number of virtual message beneficiaries (users of tablets, and other devices) is rising. The sustainable development of digital marketing confronts with the vibrant setting and its alterations that happen in the business terms as well as conditions and in the usage of electronic media. With the clients proactively leading to the communication procedure, the amount of communication and accessible content has greatly surged, making the social network less transparent for companies (Malesev and Cherry 2021). The loss of control and content generation is deemed vital for an inclusive content marketing approach. It is considered another challenge of IMC implementation (Terho et al. 2022). 

Personal Perspective

The QR codes are deemed the quickest and effective means to convey a message. With this, marketing professionals can personalize the digital content according to the necessities of clients without having to re-print a physical code. Other innovative QR code marketing notion entail links to videos and to virtual reality and augmented reality experiences (López-Meneses et al., 2020). 

Recommendations for Overcoming Challenges

To effectively defend themselves in the unregulated social media environment, companies need to be capable of offering clients reliable content that is helpful and fulfills the need for quality standards. 

The IMC strategy should certify that companies constantly enlarge their content abilities. It needs suitable technical capabilities, attractive information presentation, and easy access to the data. For example, Gucci used influencers to make create that aligns with their target consumers, increasing the reach of their communication. Also, it partners with the promising celebrities and others which attracts to their target people (Haenleinet al., 2020). 

To overcome IMC challenges, this strategy requires being relationship-focused, emphasizing more communication practices to the perseverance and management of long-term relations with entire internal and external stakeholders (Nematilloyevna et al. 2021). 

Part 2: Evaluation and Recommendations

Introduction to Company

The H&M brand is a global retail clothing organization based in Sweden. It is known for its fast-fashion clothes for women, children, men, and teenagers. Besides, it creates value for individuals and society generally by providing its client offering and by establishing an emphasis on sustainable and fruitful development. This brand usually is engaged in the sales of accessories, clothes, home textiles, footwear, and cosmetics. The H&M brand has currently more than five thousand outlets globally and employs around twelve thousand workforces (López et al. 2022). 

(a) Marketing Communications Strategy and Key Marketing Communications Mix 

According to Krizanova et al. (2019), the marketing communication strategy indicates the one utilized by a brand or an individual to approach their target market via numerous sorts of communication. It is usually an approach a company utilizes to send the right marketing conversation to the right client via the right medium at the right time, to attain a higher sales volume. The marketing communication mix includes advertising, sales promotion, public relations; events; direct & interactive marketing, personal selling, word-of-mouth marketing, and more (Amin and Priansah 2019). The key marketing communication mix of the H&M brand is discussed below:

• Advertising: It indicates the paid technique via which individuals are approached and the costs are low for each exposure though the entire production space is extremely costly. The H&M brand utilizes numerous advertising platforms like print ads,tv commercials, and virtual ads to reach a wider audience (Giertz-Mårtenson 2020). The brand has constantly utilized mobile advertising for business development and to incentivize clients to come into its offline stores. It is stated that the brand runs 15 seconds spots which reflect users' numerous looks from the company's newer conscious clothing line (Pop et al. 2023). 
• Sales Promotion: These are short-run motivations whose motive is to attain clients' attention and produce sales promptly. The H&M brand uses sales promotion in the form of offering money-off coupons, interest credit, multipacks, and so on. The H&M Club brand provides extraordinary discounts and benefits to individuals and its Credit Card Program offers cardholders benefits like early access to sales events, free-of-cost shipping, and double points earn prospects (Michel and Willing 2020). 
• Events and experiences: These develop a chance for the client to interact with the good or service. The major goal of this technique is to increase awareness, surge sales and develop the image. The H&M brand plans in-store events to attract people and inspire client engagement. The brand uses in-app sponsorship to promote its fashion collections. For example, the My-Town game app sponsor has facilitated the players to unlock the reward points and earn them by check-in from real-time locations and outlets (Jocevski 2020) (H&M Group 2023). 

• Public Relations: It aims to develop effective relations with the public via third parties like journalists. Since H&M is a fast fashion business it might be blamed for being bad for the planet. Therefore, this brand constantly posts its initiatives to develop a more sustainable fashion business. One of the published projects by this brand aims to convert plastic bottle waste from the Indonesian Islands to recycled polyester (Loureiro et al. 2019). Also, in view of public relations, the group has partnered with various third parties to expand its business and promote its offerings. For instance, it has partnered with Klarna to integrate its virtual and physical outlets to offer clients a consistent, customized, and engaging shopping experience (Klarna 2018). The project of H&M has been to collect, sort, reuse, and recycle of the textile goods, resources, and fibers which have proved a suitable instance for public relations (Bolinius et al., 2022).

• Direct Marketing: It facilitates more customized one-to-one communication because of its attributes of being non-public, hence is directed to a client, not the masses. H&M uses email marketing for the direct marketing approach by sending out constant newsletters featuring endorsements, newer fashion, and style inspirations (Bonilla et al. 2019). 
• Digital marketing: The H&M brand preserves a robust virtual presence via numerous digital platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Website, Facebook, and more. Besides, the brand uses SEO (search engine optimization) ideal activities to optimize its website for search engines. The brand integrates its offline outlets into its digitalized offerings through services such as click & collect (Katole and Prabhakar 2022).

(b) SOSTAC Model and Recommend IMC Plan 

It is noteworthy that SOSTAC indicates a marketing tool that assists to plan marketing campaigns and follows six vital components of marketing namely situation, objectives, strategy, tactics, action, and control.

Situation Analysis

It entails the entire assessment of customer insights, growing prospects in the current market, competition, and so more. 

SWOT Analysis

This analysis assesses the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The SWOT analysis of the H&M brand is as follows:

Customer Persona 

The buyer persona of the H&M brand's clients is developed to give direction on more effective group targeting. It is found that the persona of the brand's clients includes young people aged between 15-25 years; working women aged between 18-25 years. It includes women who are fashion-aware individuals and are active on social channels (Prabowo et al. 2021). 

Competitor Analysis

The H&M functions in the area of reputed fast-fashion wherein other contestants entail Zara and Gina Tricot, and more (Ly and Vigren 2020). Benchmarking indicates a procedure which compares a company against numerous rivals using an array of metrics. 

The Zara brand is the leading brand on social media with about 130 million followers (Martinicorena-Goñi and Aramendia-Muneta 2023). Gina Tricot has social media followers of about 600k (Ceci 2021). The H&M group has around 100 million followers on social platforms (Mäkelä 2020). The LPP group and its businesses come in second place over Gina Tricot in respect of the social media audience and engagement with around 300 K followers (Ceci 2021). The brand which comes last is Varner Group with 100k followers. It is suggested on exploiting the social media profile metrics of H&M and its rivals, Instagram offers the best captions utilized by the profiles (Nichols 2020). 

Market Trends

These are the elements of the macro environment which are as follows about the H&M brand.

Objectives

The objectives must entail the vision, corporate goals, and KPIs by following the SMART standards (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). The marketing communication objectives for the H&M brand are as follows:

• To increase the website traffic and pull prospective clients by the end of 2023.
• To surge brand awareness by 20 percent amongst the target audience of the brand within six months.
• To develop engaging content about the activities needed to be delivered in the marketing communication campaign
• To measure the marketing communication performance routinely to certify the progress
• To attract virtual clients for H&M home offerings in online stores (official website and myntra) and surge its virtual visibility within six months.

Strategy

It indicates the audience involvement, and reach that entails techniques of targeting and segmentation, and more.

Segmentation

It is suggested that H&M should develop various accounts for diverse areas of its brand which reach diverse audiences on every social media platform. Also, there can be the use of every channel’s proprietary grouping option as a technique for targeting its messaging (Wang et al. 2022). The brand should use advanced AI (artificial intelligence) to convert real-time images posted on Instagram into meaningful insights in order to segment its customers. 

Targeting

With respect to the targeting strategy, the H&M brand should target loyalty program members. It is suggested to target highly-valued clients with identical products instead of looking to mass-target the whole database. Besides, there must be the use of niche marketing to target those clients (Alshurideh et al. 2020). In order to target them, H&M’s influencer approaches must go from depending mainly on superstars to progressively converting to micro-influencers. The target segment for the IMC campaign will be young women who are well aware of fashion and luxury brands and stuff. They will be aged between 18-25 years of age.

Positioning

The positioning of H&M in the mindset of virtual customers entails exchanging valuable content with the audience. It is recommended that the brand must direct the content posted toward the target people to position its fashion brand virtually and in the market (Bernritter et al. 2021), The strategy can be to develop their own blogs and network with third-party influencers who can endorse the products of H&M. Nevertheless, the articles should be unbiased and direct prospective clients away from the brand. To increase website traffic, the brand should follow the EAT formula which is an acronym for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Also, to make the website of H&M more appealing, the brand should implement some things such as podcast features; case studies; unique infographics; and so on (Wang et al. 2023).

Tactics

It enables marketers to perceive how resources might be assigned to surge the performance of strategic methods. The tactics which will be used by H&M include the following:

Owned Media 

This is the media that controls the brand resources. In this strategy, the H&M company is suggested to direct its client base on Facebook social media to its main site by adding a CTA (call-to-action) after the video content (Choi and McKeever 2022).

Paid Media

It specifically requires a significant budget for advertising which means businesses pay for their promotional endeavors. In this strategy, the company can opt for PPC campaigns which can enable it to place advertisements on search engines. The brand can use keywords like ‘Best fashion stores’, ‘Happy hour deal’, ‘ Quality fast-fashion nearby’, and more that can assist to guide the search engine regarding the page having information about the search. Also, it can be done by distributing pamphlets and flyers as part of an offline marketing communication strategy (Denga and Rakshit 2023).

Earned Media

It is usually user-generated or shared by users. Examples include press releases, social media mentions, and so on. The H&M company is suggested to use a social media mentions approach by setting up a social listening stream. Social listening strategy can help the H&M brand to trace its social media platforms for mentions linked with the company (Rodríguez et al. 2020). Another strategy can be encouraging retweets using infographics. It is said that the infographic tweets have 8% of the engagement rate with 250 retweets (Vieira et al. 2019). 

Action

It defines whether the assignment of activities concerns internal workers and what procedures are in place (Irwanto et al. 2021). Moreover, the action plan for the tactics to be followed by H&M is as follows:

Control

It indicates the methods of performance monitoring. The H&M is suggested to use Hootsuite to certify the efficacy of social media campaigns and activities. This control strategy is a channel for social media management that encompasses numerous areas of a social media management’s role like social media monitoring, analytics, client service, and more (Ktisti et al. 2022). To analyze SEO performance, it is suggested to consider the metrics such as keyword rank; organic traffic, page per session, click-through rate, and more (Poturak et al. 2022).

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