A business-to-business deal, which requires a sales representative to make the sales call, here, the additional information provided by him with the help of certain pamphlets and brochures are the key tones for advertising. The telemarketers can handle the calls made once the pamphlets and brochures are effective enough for eliciting a response. Often toll free numbers are provided in the pamphlets and brochures.

Integrated marketing communication with the help of another tool namely Public Relations, is important to accommodate complex buying decisions. The key to the success lies in the effective monitoring of the various tools used in order to avoid dilution to the plan by any one. One important impact of IMC is greater consistency to their communication including media waste.

In addition we must answer the following in order that the marketing communication is successful:

• What are the target audience and their behavioral pattern?
• What are the media that the target audience normally comes in touch with?
• What behavior or attitudes do we want to affect?
• What are the communication goals?
• What is the best marketing program(s)?
• How should we allocate the budget?
• Who is responsible for the programs?
• How will we measure the degree of success of each part?

The answer to the following would indeed give us a fair amount of idea as which plan could be the most effective.

Another important tool within the marketing communication is the Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Relationship management is emerging as the core marketing activity for businesses operating in fiercely competitive environments. On average, businesses spend six times more to acquire customers than they do to keep them (Gruen, 1997). Therefore, many firms are now paying more attention to their relationships with existing customers to retain them and increase their share of customer’s purchases.

Worldwide service organizations have been pioneers in developing customer retention strategies. Banks have relationship managers for select customers, airlines have frequent flyer programs to reward loyal customers, credit cards offer redeemable bonus points for increased card usage, telecom service operators provide customized services to their heavy users, and hotels have personalized services for their regular guests.

An effective Integrated Marketing Communications program involves pulling together the thoughts and ideas contained in the Clow and Baack textbook.

While not an actual part of the IMC Campaign, it is beneficial to think about how your product relates to the communications model. You can do this by locating a print or television advertisement for your product and then examine the communications model to the advertisement.

• What message do you think the advertising agency intended to encode into the ad. What types of noises could effect the decoding?
• What are some the possible decoding problems that could occur?
• What other transmission devices could be used to convey the message that is in the ad and what type of problems might the transmission device create?