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Part Four Objectives and Budgeting for Integrated Marketing
Communications Programs
Belch: Advertising and
Promotion, Sixth Edition
IV. Objectives and
Budgeting for Integrated
Marketing
Communications Programs
7. Establishing Objectives
and Budgeting for the
Promotional Program
© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2003
how it intends to get there, and the role advertising and promotion will play. Marketing
goals defined in terms of sales, profit, or market share increases are usually not
appropriate promotional objectives. They are objectives for the entire marketing program,
and achieving them depends on the proper coordination and execution of all the
marketing-mix elements, including not just promotion but product planning and production,
pricing, and distribution.
Integrated marketing communications objectives are statements of what various
aspects of the IMC program will accomplish. They should be based on the particular
communications tasks required to deliver the appropriate messages to the target audience.
Managers must be able to translate general marketing goals into communications
goals and specific promotional objectives. Some guidance in doing this may be
available from the marketing plan, as the situation analysis should provide important
information on
• The market segments the firm wants to target and the target audience
(demographics, psychographics, and purchase motives).
• The product and its main features, advantages, benefits, uses, and applications.
• The company’s and competitors’ brands (sales and market share in various
segments, positioning, competitive strategies, promotional expenditures, creative
and media strategies, and tactics).
• Ideas on how the brand should be positioned and specific behavioral responses
being sought (trial, repurchase, brand switching, and increased usage).
Sometimes companies do not have a formal marketing plan, and the information
needed may not be readily available. In this case, the promotional planner must
attempt to gather as much information as possible about the product and its markets
from sources both inside and outside the company.
After reviewing all the information, the promotional planner should see how integrated
marketing communications fits into the marketing program and what the firm
hopes to achieve through advertising and other promotional elements. The next step is
to set objectives in terms of specific communications goals or tasks.
Many promotional planners approach promotion from a communications perspective
and believe the objective of advertising and other promotional mix elements is
usually to communicate information or a selling message about a product or service.
Other managers argue that sales or some related measure, such as market share, is the
only meaningful goal for advertising and promotion and should be the basis for setting
objectives. These two perspectives have been the topic of considerable debate and are
worth examining further.
Sales versus Communications Sales-Oriented Objectives
To many managers, the only meaningful objective
Objectives
for their promotional program is sales. They take the
position that the basic reason a firm spends money
on advertising and promotion is to sell its product or
service. Promotional spending represents an investment of a firm’s scarce resources
that requires an economic justification. Rational managers generally compare investment
options on a common financial basis, such as return on investment (ROI). As
we’ll discuss later in this chapter, determining the specific return on advertising and
promotional dollars is often quite difficult (as seen in the chapter introduction). However,
many managers believe that monies spent on advertising and other forms of promotion
should produce measurable results, such as increasing sales volume by a
certain percentage or dollar amount or increasing the brand’s market share. They
believe objectives (as well as the success or failure of the campaign) should be based
on the achievement of sales results. For example, two of the largest three oral care
manufacturers (Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive) recently joined Procter & Gamble in
the marketing of at-home tooth-whitening kits (Exhibit 7-3). Unilever spent $20 million
on Mentadent and Colgate allocated $60 million on Simply White in their product
launches. Colgate’s objective was to get $100 million in sales in the first year (the total
category sales are estimated at $300 million and growing). Mentadent focused on in-