Integrated Marketing Communication Plan for Women’s Era Magazine

This report presents an Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) plan designed for Women's Era Magazine, a lifestyle publication. It begins with an executive summary outlining the report's objectives, which include managing promotional tools, coordinating with advertising agencies, and building a strong brand image. The report then delves into the magazine's background, identifies the target audience (women interested in lifestyle and well-being), and establishes specific advertising and communication objectives, such as increasing brand awareness and fostering customer loyalty. The report emphasizes the importance of online advertising, particularly through social media, for cost-effectiveness and audience engagement. It also addresses ethical considerations related to accurate information dissemination. The report includes a media plan, budget considerations, and an evaluation of the IMC plan's effectiveness, concluding with recommendations for implementation. It also covers the importance of creating an ethical perception and building brand loyalty through various promotional activities. The report aims to provide a strategic roadmap for Women's Era Magazine to achieve its marketing and communication goals.

Running Head: PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION
IMC Plan for Women’s Era Lifestyle Magazine

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 1
Executive summary
This report is prepared with a fundamental aim to manage various tools like promotion,
communication, coordination with advertising agencies, structures helping in sending
messages to audiences, creation of brand image and maintaining relationship with the
customer. Being a lifestyle magazine company, it is a requisite for Women’s era magazine to
decide upon the resources it would need to gather for developing the strategies to deliver
messages and communicate through various channels. In order to prioritise the resources
deciding the time factor, approximate budget and the segment of people is essential. The
latent needs and preferences of the audience need to be realized by the company and must be
responded too for achieving satisfaction. Our mission is to provide a plan upon which the
company can rely upon to achieve its advertising and communication objectives through
promotion of company’s knowledge.

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 2
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Background of Women’s Era Magazine................................................................................................3
Identification of the audience to be targeted and analysing the segment...............................................4
Company’s advertising and communication objectives.........................................................................5
Advertising method...............................................................................................................................6
Media plan Development.......................................................................................................................7
Budget of the IMC plan.........................................................................................................................8
Evaluation of Integrated marketing plan................................................................................................9
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................10
References...........................................................................................................................................11

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 3
Introduction
There are a numerous ways to develop marketing and communication strategies. Adding
value to the product in any business is dealt by the impact the message communicated has on
the market or the customer behaviour. Being a planning manager of the magazine company,
who has to develop and build brand for a lifestyle magazine Women’s Era am responsible to
give an efficient direction to my magazine company in order to influence the behaviour and
attitude of the customer targeted. It is the process of finding new opportunities in order to
fulfil the communication objectives in an ethical manner to create a position strong enough in
the market. There are lots of campaigns of other brands in the market which needs to be
managed to win over other brands who have created a good brand image already. For
Women’s era, the main emphasis is upon managing the audience and targeting them in such a
way that it maintains a good customer relationship especially with women audience who
spend more on lifestyle and wellbeing. In order to send the created message and
communicate about the magazine to the targeted market, various interruptions and
disturbances in getting the message received must be kept in mind. This process involves
various steps like maintaining public relations, carrying out promotional activities through
direct communication or campaigns and advertisements (Blakeman, 2014). Therefore, it is
the process of creating a balanced mix of various communication methods and channels to
uphold a good market position.
Background of Women’s Era Magazine
The objective of the magazine company is a magazine which helps individual or the audience
to get innovative experience for wellness in day to day activities. It helps one to build its own
life and address various lifestyle issues and challenges. For an instance, families struggling
with issues of parenthood might have encountered that it is really hard to face realistic
situations for e.g. spending good time in family, keeping a balance between family, kids and
work etc. This magazine lays a system which supports situations which are uncontrollable.
Energizing and positivity in health and wellbeing is the common objective, this magazine
company serves. It motivates the readers to channelize the stress related tasks to be

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 4
productive in nature. This magazine will be an abundance of advice of providing confidence
especially to the female audience who are blessed and are fortunate enough to be responsible
for shaping a family’s future.
Women’s era magazine would employ 15 positions which would be the sales
department, production department comprising of the typesetter and art director, an editorial
department consisting of editors based on seniority and administration department. The
administrative department will consist of personnel keeping a track of book keeping,
secretarial activities, publishing activities, programming and processing the data. The main
objective is indulging in marketing activities to an extent that it targets the prospects
optimally (Shin, 2013). The segment catered is the key element of knowing the steps to be
taken in order to fulfil the needs of the readers. It would target female adult market, who
realise the importance of maintaining the work life balance. This magazine would address to
the needs and varying interests of females about shaping life in fun, ageing aspects, beauty
and fitness and parenthood etc (Lusch, &Vargo, 2014).
Identification of the audience to be targeted and analysing the segment
To identify the requirement of our product, there are a number of activities to be carried
which gives a definition to be understood by the consumer of the product. It is this stage
which finally develops the product. There are not only activities like managing the
manufacturing tasks and deciding upon the management of supply chain. In addition, the
overall product is only developed when the requirements of the customers are anticipated and
innovative changes are made in the product accordingly (Ang, 2014).
The reputation of magazine company would be decided upon the aspirations and
needs, the company has catered. It is primarily the main focus area to screen the readers and
identify the segment. Women’s era magazine will cater to the women readers who have the
zeal to live and find ways develop the living spirit. There are other factors along with that for
e.g gender, level of income, behavioural attitude and geographical location which the
company needs to analyse for finding the readers who are likely to purchase the product
(Martin, 2016). Geographically, the lifestyle of a person depends upon the weather of the
location which further influences accessories used for fashion and living.

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 5
Targeting the Australian market, where the weather is not very extreme both in
summers and winters will help the magazine to include information on categories like travel,
fashion and accessorizing, benefits of exercising, parenthood, characteristics of people
according to personality etc. Analysing the behavioural patterns of women will help the
magazine company to know the responsiveness of audience towards knowing about their
travel, leisure, fitness, maternity, parenthood needs (Egan, 2014). The magazine can promote
various products used as a symbol of love and affection depending upon the reader’s
behaviour for e.g. Jewellery, flowers, chocolates and fitness equipments. This further helps in
cost analysis avoiding unnecessary wastage in designing the campaigns to market the
product. If the market targeted is appropriate then customers can easily relate to their
requirement and purchase it quickly.
Company’s advertising and communication objectives
The communication of a message, may it be creating awareness of the brand and positioning
the magazine in the market or influencing the attitude of the customer with the help of
promotional activities, the biggest challenge for a company is its competitors. There are
magazines which create a threatening competition like fashion magazines enticing the readers
about the latest trends and upcoming fashion tips which lead the audience to switch the
magazine. Apart from that, there are low cost magazines which advice about the lifestyles of
people with busy schedules covering aspects like ready to eat food, hotels and resorts for
holidays to relax from work, list of restraunts for fast food, products for cooking with recipes
and nightlife venues and clubs for outing etc. Therefore, keeping in mind about the
competitors, market has to be targeted and price is to be set so that survival in the market is
ensured (Persuit, 2013). This further leads the company to plan promotional activities like
selling magazines personally, public relations, advertising, media, and TV channels etc.
Using marketing techniques like providing discounts, vouchers and coupons on the
subscription of the magazine are also an option to make the brand popular.
After the complete review of the competitors, the magazine company would be planning
upon objectives of marketing and communication which include:
1. Imparting awareness among the women audience: It is important that amongst various
female magazines which have categorically maintained a good level of awareness in
the minds of women, Women’s era magazine enters the market with catching slogans,

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 6
punch lines and advertisements. This will repetitively be in the reader’s top of the
mind. Creating awareness and existence is an important objective (Schultz, Patti, &
Kitchen, 2013).
2. Creating an intent in the audience to purchase the magazine:
To be available and persevere in the competition, motivation plays a vital role. If the
target readers are shown the benefits they will reap from reading the content and
purchasing the magazine, then the hidden need of the customer will be met. Letting
the household females know about the modern techniques of living their lifestyle and
understanding their family requirements to help them overcome domestic challenges
is the objective of our magazine (Thorson, & Moore, 2013).
3. Creation of ethical perception about the product:
When there are thousands of rivals and competing brands in the market, it is very
common for the audience to receive a negative feedback and review (Percy, 2014).
Our main aim is to create that kind of perception which exhibits positive reviews and
avoids misconceptions. Our main aim to deliver a message through various
promotional activities is to create an authentic image on the consumers.
4. Create loyalty for the brand:
Activities used in promotion like giving samples, free subscriptions for trial, coupons
and vouchers for trial are carried out to give an experience to the customer about the
product and create repetitive purchases. It gives an insight to the magazine company
about the preference of the user and their spending habit. Accordingly, innovations
are used and loyalty is created for the brand in future (Kitchen, & Uzunoglu, 2014).
Advertising method
There are a number of possibilities when the question is to promote the product in the market.
Once the market to be targeted has been decided and the objectives have been planned, then
communication and promotion becomes profitable. The main step now is selecting the
medium and focus on the message to be delivered in the market. As an IMC manager of the
Women’s era magazine, the best way to indulge the audience and communicate our message
is advertising through online sources. There are listings online on search engines like Yahoo
and Google. As soon as the seeker searches for the magazine using key words, the results are
made available. In online sources social networking advertising is the best way Women’s era
magazine can be advertised (Tagg, Stevenson, & Vescovi, 2013). This method cost efficient

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 7
and draws maximum attention of the audience. In fact reviews and feedbacks can be too
taken while advertising through online sources. There are sections like FAQ’s and Ratings
which helps the company to adapt to audience preferences.
Communication Objective: The main advantage of selecting the above communication way of
advertising is it will give the magazine company an opportunity to interact with the audience
frequently. There should be no gap. Taking feedbacks through comments and tweets on
Facebook, Twitter will allow avoiding any misconceptions, negative publicity. It will also
help in tapping the mass market as the advertisement will be seen by lots of people. This will
increase the product awareness. The major issue with respect to ethical compliance while
advertising through social media is accuracy of the material to promote the product must be
very high (Goodyer, 2015). The audience is large and they tend to hamper the image of the
product by misinterpreting the information and listening to the competitor’s word of mouth
(Kelley, & Jugenheimer, 2015). The features advertised about the Women’s era magazine
need to reflect the exact information to its users in order to avoid the risk of
miscommunication. The company may come across situations when the customer
relationship is damaged as wrong information is communicated while promotion.
Media plan Development
Amongst the infinite media vehicles available to campaign about the product, Women’s era
magazine will choose to reach the people with the help of digital media which includes the
social networking sites as well. It is the best and cost efficient vehicle to build viewer’s
emotions and increase awareness. This includes all the networking networks like linkedin,
facebook and interactive sites which gives the product an online presence and reduces the gap
between audience and the company through two way communication (Zarrella, 2009). This
taps the readers behavioural pattern by engaging him through various interactive tools like
tweeting, ratings, commenting, pressing likes and tagging etc. The subscribers feel that they
are a continuously in contact with the company and develop a relationship and a personal
connection.

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 8
Budget of the IMC plan
As we are targeting the mass market as our audience, we would require a budget of AUS$
5000 for the promotion of the magazine through social media. This would include activities
like finding the target audience through surveys, research and other marketing activities. We
would require AUS$1500 for creating a profile on the social networking site would include
profile picture, cover photo, videos and icons to be uploaded to enhance the content. We
would further need AUS$1600 to run our ad on Twitter or Instagram to establish our brand
by exposing it to get high number of clicks and tweets. Additionally, we need to manage the
schedule of time so that our new updates and news posts are posted before time. Going
further, if we want to keep a track of the number of visitors who see us through social media,
then we need to spend AUS$500 per month to build in analytics for our site. To gather
information about the needs and difficulties of our target audience tools like Follower wonk
need to be managed to locate our followers, to know their timings when do they tweet and to
find who are our followers. This would need an amount of AUS$1000. In order to receive the
feedback we would include sections like Ratings, Reviews and FAQ’s and need AUS$400 for
evaluating the effectiveness of our plan under the heading miscellaneous expenses.
Creation of a style guide
stating the kind of
punctuation, number of
characters and using
capital letters or small in
tweets on social media.
Keeping the followers
engaged with the help of
editors to develop
formulas for posting
retweets, quotes so that
followers increase.
Deciding the calender to
create visibility of posts
and aligning them such
that they dont become
unfollowed.
Adding on chat options
and contests like asking
the followers to give a
caption to a posted
photo to increase
participation.
Use Social media to
promote the magazine
giving emphasis upon
the longevity of the
content so that it does
not loose its visibility.

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 9
Evaluation of Integrated marketing plan
It is required that Women’s era magazine monitors and evaluates whether the designed plan
for integrated marketing communication is in accordance with the main aim. Since, our
mission is to communicate various aspects of improving and developing the lifestyle of
women who are into entrepreneurship, household work and relationships etc. It is hence,
important to assess the consequence our plan will create when executed. The company would
need to conduct surveys and research to observe the following points which are whether the
message has been communicated, the targeted women buyers have been addressed according
to their requirement (MacArthur, 2015). Additionally, the plan is in accordance with
company’s budget, the response gathered matches the set standards, there is an increase or
decrease in number of subscriptions. Finally, the last step is taking corrective actions for
improving the shortcomings in the feedbacks and reviews. This process of developing
standard targets against which the actual number of tweets, reviews and likes received will be
compared will further lead to increase the number of subscribers.

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 10
Conclusion
The communication plan is effective when it persuades the subscriber to buy and read
the magazine. This needs that the advertising is not misjudged by the targeted
segment of people and a strong customer relationship is developed. There are various
indicators to identify the above result. Women’s era magazine would make this plan
by introducing effective elements such as keeping the track of awareness related to
our brand, attitudes and behaviour of the women audience, likes and tweets received
through social media etc. Additionally, keeping in mind the comments and reviews
would help the company to cope up with the competitiveness and improve customer
engagement. It is important to create a balanced mix of various communication
methods and channels to uphold a good market position. It is differentiation in the
brands which makes our product identify the challenges the company needs to cope
up in order to build the brand (Parente, & Strausbaugh-Hutchinson, 2014). It involves
the people who are targeted to be addressed, fulfilling the aim of the communication
of the message, deciding the content to be communicated, determining the mediums
through which the message is to be communicated, finances, and finally assessing the
consequences and results after the execution of all these activities.

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 11
References
Ang, L. (2014). Integrated Marketing Communications: A focus on new technologies and
advanced theories. UK: Cambridge University Press.
Blakeman, R. (2014). Integrated Marketing Communication: Creative Strategy from Idea to
Implementation (2nded.). US: Rowman& Littlefield.
Egan, J. (2014). Marketing Communications (2nd ed.). US: Sage.
Goodyer, M. (2015). What are the legal and ethical issues in marketing. Retrieved from
https://spinsucks.com/communication/legal-and-ethical-issues-in-marketing/
Kelley, L., &Jugenheimer, D. W. (2015). Advertising Account Planning: Planning and
Managing an IMC Campaign. UK: Routledge.
Kitchen, P. J., &Uzunoglu, E. (2014). Integrated Communications in the Postmodern Era.
US: Springer.
Lusch, R. F., &Vargo, S. L. (2014). The service-dominant logic of marketing: Dialog, debate,
and directions. UK: Routledge.
MacArthur, A. (2015). A 7-Step Social Media Plan For Your New Magazine. Retrieved from
http://www.inpublishing.co.uk/kb/articles/a_7step_social_media_plan_for_your_new
_magazine_1483.aspx
Martin. (2016). Major Marketing Concepts You Need to Know. Retrieved from
https://www.cleverism.com/marketing-concepts/
Parente, D., & Strausbaugh-Hutchinson, K. (2014). Advertising campaign strategy: A guide
to marketing communication plans. US: Cengage Learning.
Percy, L. (2014). Strategic integrated marketing communications. UK: Routledge.
Persuit, J. M. (2013). Social Media and Integrated Marketing Communication: A Rhetorical
Approach. US: Lexington Books.
Schultz, D., Patti, C. H., & Kitchen, P. J. (2013). The Evolution of Integrated Marketing
Communications: The Customer-driven Marketplace. UK: Routledge.

PLAN FOR INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION 12
Shin, K. Y. (2013). The Executor of Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy:
Marcom Manager’s Working Model. Germany: Springer Science & Business Media.
Tagg, S., Stevenson, A., &Vescovi, T. (2013). New Developments in Online Marketing Key
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Thorson, E., & Moore, J. (Eds.). (2013). Integrated communication: Synergy of persuasive
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Young, A. (2014). Brand media strategy: integrated communications planning in the digital
era. US: Springer.
Zarrella, D. (2009). The Social Media Marketing Book. US: “O’ Reilly Media, Inc.