Guidelines

Your marketing plan should demonstrate a promotional approach that embraces integrated marketing communications (IMC). This includes a clearly stated MESSAGE that is consistently communicated to your stakeholders. Your promotional effort should:

1. Demonstrate an appropriate mix of advertising, public relations, sales promotion, direct marketing, and personal selling. You should include the internet and social media, too, as appropriate to your promotional effort.
2. Describe your primary objective for your promotional approach. Outline this in terms of measurable tasks that you want to accomplish. What is your advertising goal by which you will measure success for your advertising expenditures? This is a complete description of your proposed promotion plan.
3. Describe each of your promotional activities that you envision as essential to ensure an integrated approach to promoting your product or your service. Describe your execution (i.e., your rollout plan) in accordance with the following format for any and all expenditures (The dollar figures will go into the IMC Promotion Budget):
   1. Weekly 1/4-page ads in the Sunday Ledger at $5,100 for each edition. Ads run each Sunday for two months, followed by publication during alternate weeks for Week 52. Total Cost: $147,900
   2. 30-second radio spots on WBAL-AM, with two ads during morning drive time and one during evening drive time; ads to run five days each week for first month and alternate every other week for five months; ads to run once each morning every other day during months 6 through 12. Total Cost: $117,451

Consider what constitutes the most appropriate promotional mix of advertising, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing and personal selling that provides the most “bang for the buck.” Who is your target audience, and what do you see as the cost per customer to reach them and to have them contact your organization (i.e., purchase) for your product or service? If you plan to use personal selling or direct marketing and have previously discussed these in your Channels of Distribution section, reference that here and be sure you have fully covered the communication aspects of these tools.

You must show a clear understanding of what you want your IMC promotional strategy to do for you in terms of measurable outcomes. Ensure that your IMC approach makes sense, given that you could easily spend millions of dollars (in theory) to promote your product or service. Your IMC strategy will provide an executable promotional plan that indicates the what, where, when, and how much.

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Budget
Tally up your projected IMC budget for your FIRST year. Include your costs for any and all advertising, public relations, sales promotion, direct marketing programs, and personal selling. Remember to include benefits (35%) for sales personnel. This should be part of your plan. To gain a clear and accurate understanding, your research will be important. You are expected to contact an appropriate radio station, newspaper, or other media outlet to determine the actual cost to advertise in that media. This is not a “guesstimate,” but an actual budget that is based on your projected promotional plan and an income stream that will support it. Include in your promotion budget your projected dollar costs for promotion for your first year of business. This should be based on your having made a diligent effort to understand approximate expenses for advertising/media and other promotional venues. Your evaluation for this section is based, in part, on demonstrated diligence that allows you to communicate to your instructor your thorough understanding of the realities of promotion. Consider your costs for the following possible promotional costs:

• Television
• Radio
• Magazines
• Newspaper
• Internet
• Outdoor Advertising
• Yellow Pages
• Miscellaneous Other Advertising
• Social Media
• Advertising Agency Services
• Public Relations Services (publicity, etc.)
• Sales Promotion (what you have created, e.g., magnets, coffee mugs; trade show participation)
• Direct Marketing Program (direct mail, “permission marketing," etc.)
• Personal Selling (salary and 35% benefits, plus expenses)

Submission, APA, 5 pages