Published on Sep 03, 2023
"Integrated marketing communication simply recognizes the need to plan and build-up all relevant marketing communications so that they work together in harmony to greatest effect with greatest efficiency" In its simplest form, it is the "process of integrating all elements of marketing communications mix across all customer contact points to achieve greater brand coherence
IMC has an increasingly central role to play in today's market place, because if offers company a way to strategically coordinate messages and establish a meaningful dialogue with customers. In short, IMC provides organizations with a strategic method for both establishing and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders. And this is essential for marketing success in the twenty-first century.
The marketplace is changing. What was once a single audience has fragmented and companies have to establish and maintain brand relationships with a variety of groups of people-customers, as well as other stakeholders, such as employees, investors, suppliers and distributors, local communities, and the media. Organizations now have to communicate with these groups using a wide variety of media. Because the mass media now have considerably less importance than they have had in the past, dialogue is becoming increasingly critical in this marketplace. That means that companies can no longer rely only on one-way communication targeted to large groups of customers. To be successful now, organizations must not only be able to target messages to individual customers, but also to listen and respond to all their stakeholders. That means they must know who these people are, and the key to that is database-driven communication.
IMC is critical to brand relationship programs, because it provides the skills and new ways of thinking that are necessary if organizations are to create and successfully manage dialogue with customers and other key stakeholders.
The study was designed and conducted to accomplish the following objectives:
To find out the specific roles played by the various constituents of integrated marketing communications.
To identify the most effective among the IMC
To identify the ineffectual constituents.
To suggest various ways of improving the IMC
In today s highly competitive environment companies are rigoursly searching for programmes which would give them an edge over their competitors.These programmes range within a myriad of activities,the marketing communications form the pivotal among them.A marketing communications which includes the various promotional tools mixed in appropriate proportion and integrated into a single marketing programme is supposed to give an strategic advantage to the companies. This project aims at finding out the specific roles that the constituents of promotional programmes in life insurance play so that the stronger areas could be further reinforced ,the ineffectual areas could be weeded out as they unnecessarily consume useful resources and the other important areas could be given a facelift, such that upon their integration into a single marketing programme they could become a lethal armory in the marketers quiver
Advertisements of ICICI PRULIFE should be more products expressive and easily comprehensive, so that a customer feels an urge to enquire about the products.
Since from the findings it is clear that advisors are extremely Important in selling the policies, they should be trained on the concepts of marketing and not just selling.
They should be equipped with proper CRM techniques so that they could increase the frequency of call conversion as well as they could retain the existence clientele.
Sales literature should be written in more customer friendly language, the technical terms should be clearly explain since it is considered as providing credibility to company s promise, company s seal on it will give even more authenticity to the promises made in the brochure.
Telemarketers should enquire the brief background of prospects during the appointments calls so that proper strategies could be planned before the visit of the sales personnel.
Internet should be used to maintain CRM and update policy holder about the position of their fund, as well as informing them about a new product even before it is launched so that they would get a feeling of preferential treatment.
Company should engage in keeping itself in news, should organize events, seminars etc.
The company should initiate hassle free claim settlements as this communicates to the consumers that the company
is prompt in keeping its promises and this influences consumer decision making in a big way.
The IMC program is effective when the message carried by its constituents is uniform that is each constituents of this program should communicate the same message to the prospects, this is when the tools of IMC will work in tandem and their fusion and unison will bring about the desired impact in influencing consumer decisions.
Target customer base very small.
No presence in semi urban sector.
Promotional campaigns are nearly absent.
Poor advertising.
Less number of ATM s and Branches (In PCMC area).
High interest rates.
The three interlinked groups that work together to develop promote and deliver services, should be put into effect in the life insurance industry and could be best done while settling the claims. The services providers who deal in interactive marketing should get full backup while enabling the promises which were made through external marketing. Thus the internal marketing assumes a paramount importance in life insurance, and an effective internal marketing communication would ensure that the promises, which are made, are delivered and this in turn will induce publicity.
IC33 Life Insurance S. Bal Chandran (Insurance Institiute of India)
www.iciciprulife.com
Marketing Management by Philip Kotler
www.wikipedia.org
www.seminarsonly.com
