Rentobuy.com.au: Integrated Marketing Communication Plan Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) plan for Rentobuy.com.au, a real estate web portal. It begins with a brief background of the company, its market offerings, and its target audience segmentation based on demographics and online behavior. The report outlines the communication objectives and goals, emphasizing the importance of relevance, clarity, and consistency in messaging. It then delves into creative advertising styles, including generic, pre-emptive, unique-selling proposition, positioning, brand image, resonance, and affective messages. The report focuses on the resonance message strategy, detailing its approach to engaging the target audience through conversation and shared values. It also discusses ethical considerations, media planning, and methods for measuring campaign effectiveness, including KPIs and ROI. The report concludes with references and aims to provide a strategic framework for Rentobuy.com.au's marketing efforts.

Running Head: Integrated Marketing Communication Plan
Rentobuy.com.au
Marketing Communication Plan
IMC

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Table of Content:
Brief Background (History)...................................................................................................................2
Market Offering:....................................................................................................................................2
Target audience.....................................................................................................................................3
Segmentation of audience..................................................................................................................3
Communication objectives/goals...........................................................................................................4
Measurable Objectives......................................................................................................................4
Creative advertising...............................................................................................................................5
Generic Message...............................................................................................................................5
Pre-emptive message.........................................................................................................................5
Unique-Selling Preposition Message.................................................................................................5
Positioning Message..........................................................................................................................5
Brand Image Message.......................................................................................................................6
Resonance Message...........................................................................................................................6
Affective Message.............................................................................................................................6
Communicative strategy: Resonance Message......................................................................................6
Objective...........................................................................................................................................7
Abstract Idea of Advertisement.........................................................................................................7
Ethical issues.....................................................................................................................................8
Media Plan.............................................................................................................................................8
Measuring effectiveness of campaign/KPI/ROI:...............................................................................9
References...........................................................................................................................................10

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Brief Background (History)
Rentobuy.com.au is a company based in Perth(Australia ) and was founded in the year 2012
by Mr Robert Zackerman and his friends. The company works in the space of housing and
provides buying, selling & renting solution to the population. The company works in the
space of e-commerece as it’s a real estate web based portal. The company was founded by a
couple of Engineers from Monash university who wanted to disrupt the online real estate
industry. The idea behind this model was problem these guys faced while hunting for an
apartment to rent in Western Australia, because of lack of information available online and
only 1-2 players doing something in the digital space, the concept strike to these young
college passouts and hence rentobuy came in existence. At the same time real estate industry
was in boom and the penetration of digital literacy was even reaching the rural population, so
it all made a great sense to go forward with the idea of rentobuy. The idea was received well
by venture capitalist and after Series A round of funding the company came in existence on
Dec 4 2012.
Market Offering:
At rentobuy, the traffic which is coming on the website gets diverted either for looking
residential properties to buy, sell, rent & leasing activities, with renting & buying services
leading. The USP of the company is providing 100% verified listing and leads, which are
passed only after somebody enters his phone number and gets him verified, this is something
which makes us more competitive in the industry. The website is extremely customer friendly
and makes the navigation for even a first time user a delight, filled with ease of surfing and
loads of information to consume fitted in a neat and uncluttered web space. Floating
advertisement and company policy of not clouding property listing with bundles of paid and
Buying
Selling
Rent
Leasing

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sponsored ads makes the website really easy to load and gives customer an experience of
surfing.
The company has developed a data science lab which helps to work on the data available
online along with consumer behaviour in real estate, based on the finding the team came up
with some fantastic findings viz relative comparison of pricing in different localaities,
amenities, popular localities, location density, children friendly localities etc, combining all
these features makes rentobuy as one of its kind company working in web based real estate
space.
Target audience: It can be defined as the audience/people whom the company sees fit for its
product or services, someone who is not using their services/product can at least promote
them by word of mouth, can influence people in the surrounding and so on. This is one of the
most powerful concepts when it comes to marketing because of the sole reason that if the
targeting goes wrong, no other strategy would work because the audience selection is wrong,
resulting in an absolute waste of uncounted money spend on advertising. It can also be
defined as demographic of people who would be interested in company’s product/services,
because these are the people who would eventually put money in the pockets of the owners.
Hence it becomes really tricky and at the same time extremely pivotal for companies to select
their target audience (Thorson & Moore, 2013) the segmentation can be on the basis of
geographical, demographic, physiographic and behavioural.
The target audience in this case is considered keeping in mind that we at rentobuy are doing
only online advertising and not going with the traditional means of advertising, hence the
reasoning for target audience.
Segmentation of audience:
Demographic Category of service Behaviour Solution
18-25
Who are these
people
Rent/Early buyers
College students
New jobbers,
entrepreneurs
This cluster is always
online, they consume
information,
entertainment, news
everything online.
Music/cricket/shopping/
E-paper/blogs etc.
They strongly believe
in Word of mouth
They don’t require
much expensive
solution; this
audience will prefer
cost over quality.
25-40
Who are these
people
Buying/Selling
Corporate
professionals/
Business owners
This audience is
purpose seeking in their
online behaviour.
They are on internet for
a purpose, they
consume what is
required by them and
also make their buying
decision on the basis of
social advocacy, driven
Good quality
service-CRM/CSM
Neat and uncluttered
web space
Less adv. and more
information
Feedback is
important to them.

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by aspirational values
Communication objectives/goals: These can be understood as the desired result a
communication strategy is intending to achieve. To put in other words, how the firm would
like to resonate with its audience and answer the important question of what, why & how in
the minds of customers. A very well defined and measurable communication objective lays
down the success of any communication strategy as one is primary to another.
Communication objectives must have:
 Relevancy: The message should be relevant to the target audience, without relevancy
to the target audience , any brilliantly designed communication plan can fail
 Clarity: The message should be loud and clear and not confusing
 Consistency: The message should be consistent , inconsisitency in communicating
message might turn off your audience
 Medium: The communication channel is really important keeping in mind the target
audience, some of the relevant medium are: Radio, TV, print,Digital, social
marketing, influencer marketing, mailers, newsletters, etc
 Structure: It should have all, a body, opening line & a closing line
 Primacy/Recency: After a week or so , any business communication can only be
remembered because of one or both the things: Power and memorability of its
opening or the close. Similarly Primacy is known as the effect of remembering the
first few items presented and similarly recency as the effect of last few items
presented, and as the individual might differ in both primacy/recency it becomes of
great importance to have both the basis covered and make an impression in the
beginning as well as in the end.
 Psychological rule: (7±2 rule) It states that no matter how much information is given
in an advertisement , a human brain can absorb and remember only some of it, the
range of his absorbtion of info ranges from 5 to 9, so its of primary importance to
keep the communication limited rather than bombarding the client with lot of
information.
Measurable Objectives:

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Creative advertising:
It is the abilitiy to design & develop ideas that are novel and useful. Newness, usefulness &
originality defines creative advertising.The creative elements describe what to say , how to
say and where to say it, a perfect mix of all these concepts make it a creative advertising
(Ashley & Tuten, 2015)Before working on a style of creative advertising , lets understood
briefly some of the creative styles:
Creating brand awareness
Increase the traffic on website
Get 1M unique visitors in duration of 6 months
Projecting an image of finding quality homes
Increase in ad sales on the portal
Drivng change of buying house through the portal.
Generic
Message
Pre-emptive
Message
Unique selling
proposition
Positioning
Message
Brand image
Message
Affective
Message

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Generic Message: It is the simplest type of advertising style, this type of messages provides
information about the brand, without making any claim regarding the superiority over other
brand/rival brand. This type of style can be used when the audience is informed and the
advertiser wants to just educate the audience, or else when the advertiser is the market leader
in its category.
Pre-emptive message: In this type of style, a brand makes a claim, before the rival brand
has done it, and the rival brand cannot use the same as the point of differentiation.
Unique-Selling Preposition Message: The name itself explains this type of creative style,
the brand uses a unique selling proposition unique to its brand , claiming some kind of benefit
in the process.
Positioning Message: In this type of messaging the brand tries to establish its position in the
minds of the consumer , and for future reference they can relate to the positioning of brand
established for their purchasing behaviour.There are multiple ways of positioning, listing
down some for better understanding.
 Positioning by product features
 Positioning by service quality
 Positioning by service
 Positioning by price
 Positioning by social status
 Positionig by lifestyle
 Positioning by aspirations
 Posititoning by values
Brand Image Message: In this type of styling , the advertising only focuses on the brand and
not on the features, product, services etc. The aim is to just register the brand in the minds of
consumers, it is primarily used by established brands, luxury, beauty products etc.This type
of styling focuses on inner needs & experience rather than the product.
Resonance Message: This type of styling uses statements or phrases that users can identify
with or resonate with, the message appears to speak on behalf of the audience. It resonates in
the the entire realm.
Affective Message: This type of styling creates some kind of feeling in the mindset of an
audience, the feeling might be of love, fear, anxiety, joy, sexual attraction, shock, sorrow,
security, pride, pleasure,embarrassment, nostalgia and other such emotions.
These type of styles can be then divided in 2 categories :
Generic
Pre-emptive Rational appeals
USP & Posititoning

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Brand image message
Resonance message Emotional appeals
Affective message
Communicative strategy: Resonance Message
As explained above, resonance message styling can be described as the strategy wherin we
engage the audience in a conversation and message that reflects their values and interest
which in turn will result in wanting them to do business with your company. In this type of
marketing, brands don’t focus on the price, product, features ,service etc , this can come later,
what brand focuses on is being able to vibrate on the same wavelength as the target audience
is, that would make a deep connect and would interest them in the brand. It has a 3 fold step
to get to the audience:
In short, key to Resonance is conversation, once the audience is engaged with the message,
consider advertising department job to be done, and then it’s the product which talks. Hence
communication is the most important factor in this type of style, so it becomes extremely
important as to what we communicate with the audience:
 Who are we
 What are we about
 Interest alignment with the audience: Values, Interes, product/services
Konwing oneself which can include:
 What is image of the company
 What does the company wants to project- Brand, personality , reputation, etc.
 What is the company seling: Dreams, productivity, convenience etc
And finally being able to articulate the same on different channel which can be on the likes of
social media, website, marketing collaterals, ATL & BTL.
Demonstrates authenticity and shared values
Creating affinity for the brand
Adds value to custmer relationship

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Its very important to understand resonance marketing style of advertising is not a quick fix ,
but it’s a long term strategy based on building relationship.
Objective:
 Getting more people on the portal.
 Helping people find better homes.
 Disrupt the way real estate portal work.
 Change the entire ecosystem in the way homes are being searched.
Abstract Idea of Advertisement: The idea for advertisement is, creating importance and
value of home and family in the audience. The audience in our case is very diverse, ranging
from people at the age of 18 to 40 years of age, and hence our ad will be targeted to students,
young couples, professionals, single people who are hunting for a place to live in and then
families who want to stay in suburb and raise their children. The idea will basically revolve
around the importance of home for the target audience.
Ad line can be: We help you, not just in finding houses but in creating homes.
Ethical issues: These are issues that develop around communication objective, some of them
can be:
 Marketing causes people to buy more than they can afford.
 Marketing overemphasizes materialism.
 Marketing increases cost of goods and services.
 It perpetuates stereotyping.
 It creates offensive advertisement.
 They use unfiar tactics
 Marketers prepare deceptive & misleading advertisements.
 Advertising to children is unethical.
 Salespeople use deceptive practices.
The only ethical issue I believe can arise in our advertising plan is, increasing the cost of
goods, in this case( Price of house, rent of apartments etc). The reason can be, as rentobuy
doesn’t provide a platform to buy homes directly, it can be an additional cost to the property
developers and to take care of the marketing cost, the rates of homes go up.
Media Plan:
Medium Purpose Schedule Budget
Articles Reach Daily Low
Links Reach Ongoing Low to medium
Website content Reach Ongoing Low to medium
Pay-Per-Click Reach 2-12 per year Medium to high
Banners Reach 1-12 per year High
TV Ad Reach 4 per year High
Web-tv Reach 2 Per year High
Email Frequency 3 times a week Low

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Blog Frequency Twice a month Low
SEM Frequency As per the search
query
Medium
SEO Frequency Daily Low
Newsletter Frequency Once in a month Low
Social Media Frequency Daily Medium
In case of rentobuy, traditional media will not be working as the target audience is millennial
and the people who surf net, hence targeting them through online channels of communication
makes more sense. Also, Australia as a country is extremely digitally literate and thus the
solutions would be cost effective and also yield better results.
A unique idea, to spread the word more about the brand , tie-up with Netflix and creating a
series in partnership with it and integrating the brand with the subject of web series, its
expensive , but the connect with the audience will be long lasting.
Measuring effectiveness of campaign/KPI/ROI:
Measurement of online marketing becomes easier as a lot of tools are there which provide us
with valuable insight on the data gathered. It helps us in understanding what the user is doing
with our content, how much time he is spending , what is the engagement rate, what is click-
through rate and so on. Because of specific targeting the result we obtain can be really
beneficial, and with the concept of remarketing, it becomes easier for the marketer to
remarket the product/service to the user. Some of the measures can be:
 Increase in the traffic on website.
 Getting more unique user.
 CTR-Click through rate has to be between .2-.5
 The traffic driven from banner ads to the website
 The number of repeated mention in the blogs
 Improvement in organic ranking of website.
 Repeatedly the Ad (SEM) appearing on top of the search page beating the
competition.
 Number of conversation on social media with our brand name
 Number of times people are sharing, liking, commenting with our content.
 Engagement of the user with a post.
 Number of impression on the banner ads/PPC
 Time invested in the site.
 Bounce Rate- Number of people who after coming on the website from any source ,
drop out from the home page in less than 40 seconds
 Page views
These are some of the metrics which can be used to measure the effectiveness of any
campaign, and with the help of data science and Google analytics we can rework on the
campaign targeting and put the resources to good use as well.

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References:
Ashley, C & Tuten, T 2015, Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
study of branded social content and consumer engagement, Psychology & Marketing,
32(1), pp.15-27.
Thorson, E. & Moore, J 2013. Integrated communication: Synergy of persuasive voices.
Psychology Press.

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