Improving Integrated Marketing Communications Practices, Essay Example

Individual 2

H & M Company requires its marketing team to establish reliable strategies as it engages in a new venture to enhance its success. The team should also develop an effective market entry strategy into the already competitive market. It should therefore capitalize on the projected budget to achieve the desired goals. Consequently, there is need for the team to develop a customer journey map that will create awareness of the new venture among the existing customers and attract more client. For a successful customer journey map to be created, several important steps must be followed. First, the organization needs to determine the objectives that need to be followed. The organization should decide on the important aspects, such as the goals they are working towards and preparing for the challenges that may be experienced in the process (Micheaux & Bosio, 2019). Secondly, customer personas should be created. Customer personas will help the organization understand their customers, what they like, and how the product will help improve their experiences (Micheaux & Bosio, 2019). This will be achieved by undertaking qualitative research on the customers and determining what they like about the brand and what they feel should be improved to enjoy their interaction with the organization even more. Next, the organization should identify all the different touchpoints (Micheaux & Bosio, 2019). Given that touchpoints are the areas where interactions between the organization and its customers interact, the organization should look for effective ways to convince its customers to buy its products, resulting in positive outcomes for the parties involved.

The type of map to be used will also be determined. The type of journey map selected will be determined by the objectives that the organization is working to achieve. The current state and the expected outcomes in the future will also determine how effective the organization will be in its endeavors (Micheaux & Bosio, 2019). The next step is to implement the plans made into action. The organization should create a checklist on the expected outcomes to decide whether they have been successful in achieving their goals. Finally, the organization should take the customer’s journey to analyze the steps to be taken and the outcomes achieved (Micheaux & Bosio, 2019). This will help in determining the unmet steps so that effective action can be undertaken in the process. It will be possible to fine-tune the areas of weakness and achieve exceptional outcomes in the process.

Color Codes:

• Step 1: before: red, during: yellow, after: green
• Step 2: before: red, during: yellow, after: green
• Step 3: before: red, during: yellow, after: green
• Step 4: before: red, during: yellow, after: green
• Step 5: before: red, during: yellow, after: green
• Step 6: before: red, during: yellow, after: green

One of the problems that may be experienced is the inability to answer all of the queries that the customers may have. There are some instances when the customers’ queries are too complex for the organization to understand, resulting in the inability to meet their needs due to the inability to meet their specific needs (Hokororo, 2018). There may also be another issue whereby the organization may not fully understand what their customers want or expect. Not understanding customers’ needs could result in a mismatch between the expectations of the customers and the products at hand. This will result in the inability of the organization to grow and develop since the satisfaction of customers’ needs helps increase the demand for the products sold by the organization (Hokororo, 2018). The customers may become frustrated and angry in the process, leading to a situation whereby the organization will experience further challenges to meet their expectations and needs.

There may also be challenges experienced in terms of getting customers whose expectations are too high. Customers may have exceedingly high expectations of the products that they receive from an organization, meaning that despite the attempts made by the organization, the customers will feel underwhelmed and unimpressed (Hokororo, 2018). Therefore, the organization should look for ways of ensuring that it sets realistic expectations for its customers so that they cannot feel shortchanged when the actual results are produced. The organization may also experience challenges in terms of being forced to serve many customers at once. The organization’s efforts in improving customer experiences could result in an increased demand for their products (Hokororo, 2018). This could result in increased demand for their products, hence overwhelming them, especially if fewer employees than the customers need to be served. Therefore, the organization will need to employ more customers and invest in technology that will help them serve their customers better.

Part 2

Evaluation of the Problem Areas and Opportunities for Innovation

First, slow response time is one of the main challenges experienced by customers seeking an organization’s services. Customers are bound to be frustrated when they have to wait for too long to respond from the organization. This being the case, customers tend to avoid organizations that keep them waiting for too long, yet their issues may have required more instant responses (Sarofah, 2017). The organization could apply innovative measures by adding live chat options on their websites to handle this issue. Customers can chat with online customer service representatives instead of spending too much time on call. Using live chats can help the few representatives address more customers’ inquiries simultaneously, hence improving customer experiences (Sarofah, 2017). The organization could also invest in AI chatbots that can automatically respond to the customers, leading to improved customer experiences due to the availability of feedback at all times of the day.

Another challenge experienced is the possibility of the customer care support staff being frustrated and possibly being rude to the customers in the process. Customer care representatives could be overworked and may become frustrated when dealing with rude and angry customers, hence leading to the possibility of mishandling customers and losing their business (Sarofah, 2017). To avoid this possibility, the organization should train the customer care staff to learn how to remain calm and respectful even when under tough conditions. The organization can also develop scripts that their customer care representatives can follow when dealing with customers to avoid the likelihood of being unable to provide the required responses to their customers in the process (Sarofah, 2017). The lack of real-time engagement between the customers and the organization is also another challenge that could be experienced. The organization should look for effective measures of handling their customers through voice and video calls to handle their customers’ needs in real-time.

Recommendations for the Marketing Communications Plan

First, all of the endeavors undertaken by the marketing communications plan should be informed by the target audience that the organization is reaching out to. When an organization has a target audience in mind, it will be easier for them to look for strategies that will be more effective in attracting and retaining customers, thereby making the marketing campaigns undertaken more successful (Patti et al., 2017). The target audience determines important aspects of the marketing campaign, such as the communication channels to be used, when and how they should be used, and how to apply them for the best results to be achieved.

Secondly, the marketing communication plan should revolve around the unique selling proposition. The unique selling proposition is an aspect of the product that helps differentiate it from those already in the market (Patti et al., 2017). Instead of competing for the existing market, the product should create a unique niche that will attract customers due to the satisfaction that had not been met before. Customers are bound to be more loyal to the organization despite the possibility of the industry in question being highly competitive (Patti et al., 2017). This being the case, the marketing communications plan should point out the benefits acquired by the customers when they buy from them apart from the basic needs that the product in question will meet.

Finally, the selected marketing communications plan should be after rigorous research on the subject matter. Research allows an organization to fully understand its target audience, the expected behaviors, and reactions if some aspects of the marketing plan were changed (Patti et al., 2017). The research will also help the organization predict future tastes and preferences and align their marketing communication plans with such outcomes so that they can always get positive outcomes despite some challenges being experienced in the process.

References

Hokororo, D. (2018). Assessment of Impact Of Customer Complaints Handling Process On Customer Satisfaction: A Case Study Of Tanesco-Dsm and Coast Zone (Doctoral dissertation). http://repository.costech.or.tz/handle/11192/2128

Micheaux, A., & Bosio, B. (2019). Customer journey mapping as a new way to teach data-driven marketing as a service. Journal of Marketing Education, 41(2), 127-140. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0273475318812551

Patti, C. H., Hartley, S. W., van Dessel, M. M., & Baack, D. W. (2017). Improving integrated marketing communications practices: A comparison of objectives and results. Journal of marketing communications, 23(4), 351-370. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13527266.2015.1027251

Sarofah, R. (2017). The Opportunities and Challenges of Makassar Government Towards Improving Services for Public Complaints Based on E-Government. Jurnal Ilmiah Wahana Bhakti Praja, 7(1), 13-25. http://webmail.ipdn.ac.id/JIWBP/article/view/72