Foodbank Integrated Marketing Communication - Free Essay

Although Foodbank is one of the biggest frontline charities and a nonprofit organization in Australia catering for over 70 percent of the relief food distributed to relief organizations worldwide, it needs a marketing communication that is coordinated to be effective. Like most nonprofit organizations, integrated marketing communication (IMC) is necessary for the organization to promote strategy. Valos et al. (2016) define IMC as a marketing communications and planning concept that acknowledges the importance of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of various communication disciplines. IMC often comprises personal persuasion, public relations, sales promotion, advertising, and even direct response communication (Porcu et al., 2019). Alternatively, instead of developing an independent sales promotion strategy, an advertising campaign, or a public relations plan, nonprofits and charities like Foodbank should first come up with communication strategy and objectives, choose which tasks are essential in accomplishing these objectives, set a budget and then decide on appropriate promotional tools to effectively achieve the nonprofit's goals and objectives (Duralia, 2018).

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Moreover, IMC is more about ensuring consistent communication on public relations as well as online ads and other sales promotional tools. It thus relates promotional tools to what is known about the target public in such a manner that every communication is consistent with the message and strategy intended for each target public (Patti et al. 2015). Most nonprofits and charity organizations effectively use IMC through sales promotion, print advertisements, public relations, and websites, all of which consistently present the same visuals, message, color, logo, and feel. Essentially, the actual visuals and words need not be identical. Instead, the rule of thumb states “that anyone exposed to any marketing communication by a non-profitable or charitable organization should recognize that the communication is from that organization even if its name is not immediately obvious” (Henley, 2001, p.2).

Integrated Marketing Communication for Foodbank Australia

As a charitable nonprofit organization distributing relief food to needy families to save them from hunger, Foodbank Australia needs an apt strategy to hire and encourage volunteers to distribute parcels across various territories and states. As a result, integrated marketing communication is essential in ensuring that Foodbank positions and differentiates their operations for effective market participation. IMC is also integral in helping Foodbank achieve its various marketing objectives, such as attracting well-wishers and other charitable organizations that can help provide and distribute food donations and differentiate itself from other similar organizations distributing relief food in Australia. Therefore a promotional mix consisting of personal selling, print, advertising, and public relations is crucial in helping Foodbank create awareness about its volunteer activities and attract volunteers to support its mission to alleviate hunger and improve its service delivery. Public relations and advertising may help the organization share the right information with its target publics and provide it with alternative options for marketing strategies. On the other hand, personal selling can help Foodbank in convincing volunteers and other institutions to support the organisation in the effective distribution of relief services.

Promotional Mix

From the positioning and differentiation statement, Foodbank needs an effective promotional strategy that enables it to serve all the demographics within its target market effectively. This plays a significant role in helping the company bolster its brand by securing a considerable market share in its operation area (Anabila, 2019). To achieve this, three promotional tools are essential for the organization to attract volunteers and needed support. These include public relations, advertising, and personal selling.

Public Relations

A public relations strategy as a promotional mix element may play a vital role in a nonprofit's promotional strategy. A well-planned approach to leverage public relations may be as important as sales promotions and advertising. Basically, public relations are one of the most effective techniques used by most nonprofits to relate and communicate to their target publics (Smith and Place, 2013). For most charity organisations, it is not only potent but also the most cost-effective promotional activity, considering that, in most instances, it is free.

For Foodbank, Public relations strategy focuses on member relations, fundraisers, and volunteers. It helps in answering concerns and questions as well as developing and maintaining positive relations with donors. It keeps all these members in the communication loop through newsletters and magazines about upcoming campaigns and fundraisers (Wiggill, 2014).

Through dialogic public relations theory, Foodbank Australia, therefore, needs to be engaged in a negotiated exchange of opinions and ideas with all the target publics. The dialogic theory claims that “organizations should always be willing and ready to interact with their publics ethically and honestly to establish effective communication channels between the two” (Chen, Hung-Baesecke and Chen, 2020). In public relations, however, a dialogue is viewed as a process of communicating issues with the relevant public (Porcu et al. 2019).

With this, Foodbank should establish a dialogic loop through its public relations strategy to allow the public to query the organisation and enable it to respond to specific concerns, problems, and questions. This should be achieved through social media and company websites. The website should strive to update and post general value information to all public, specifically those that encourage volunteers and support institutions to join hands in various organization’s projects. The website should also include features that make the organization attractive for recurrent visits such as special forums.

Another strategy of encouraging dialogue through public relations is using social media pages for constant feedback and engaging target public to promote the charity (King, 2010). Through this, Foodbank should encourage volunteering by `making it easier for people to share their donations with friends through social media sites.

Constant assurance through press releases is another strategy that Foodbank can use on a fortnight basis to increase dialogue with its public (Sembiring, 2020). The press releases should focus on transparency and hunger alleviation to encourage volunteering and donor funding. The press releases on a similar timeframe should also constantly keep the public up to date on various organizational projects and remind them of the company values and mission.

Marketing Analytics

Whenever any company, be it a nonprofit or a charitable organization, runs a PR campaign, it endows substantial effort and money in it; hence there is a need to measure the success of that particular campaign (Smith and Place, 2013). In terms of social media reach and engagement, the easiest way Foodbank can measure its social media reach during the PR campaign is to often compare the number of followers on its various social media platforms during the campaign. When it comes to engagements, the number of likes and shares on social media posts by volunteers and the organization is vital in measuring the users' actions.

Website traffic is also an essential factor to be considered by Foodbank to measure its PR campaign's success. It helps the company verify if its digital PR services are getting to its target public by evaluating its various traffic demographics like age group, location, and device (Laurie and Mortimer 2019). Through Google Analytics, Foodbank can determine its website traffic after every 30 days.

A successful PR campaign automatically increases its brand mentions on other social media platforms, blogs, and media channels. Increased online discussions of the brand, however, do not resonate to brand following (Smith and Place, 2013). Foodbank should thus monitor these unbranded channels to follow up on what people are saying about the brand as a charitable organisation.

Advertising

A prevailing popular opinion believes that nonprofits do not adequately invest in advertising due to donor pressure to minimise overhead costs. Despite the lack of sufficient evidence proving this to be accurate, nonprofits such as Foodbank Australia indeed run on tight budgets. It is usually tricky to raise awareness with limited funds and resources (Hamann and Ren, 2013). Thus Foodbank Australia needs to adopt an advertising theory that best fits its cause.

Consequently, Foodbank Australia needs to adopt the Ehrenberg advertising model, which relies on the weak theory, which includes advertising components such as awareness, trial, reinforcement, and nudging. When this is used as part of an advertising campaign, the model suggests that these components can nudge target public's behavior and convince them to buy. Awareness is vital in letting the consumer know about your existence; trial evokes the customer's interest; reinforcement inspires trust while nudging closes the sale (Santoso et al., 2020).

With Foodbank relying heavily on education and awareness to recruit volunteers and increase donor funding, the organization needs to take advantage of Google's free advertising through the Ehrenberg advertising model. Managing and running Google ads sometimes is backend savvy for most charity organizations, but with a daily budget of around $300 for advertising and $2.00 for keyword cost per click, it will be worth the effort for Foodbank to share their mission and story. For instance, the keywords that can be used by the company in its Google Ads may include Foodbank Australia, hunger relief, and voluntary support. Through this, the organisation may also increase its chances of qualifying for the Google Ad Grants Program.

Through this model, Foodbank can also take advantage of promoting the organization through its Facebook and Twitter platforms. Currently, over 700 000 nonprofits take advantage of Facebook pages to create awareness and share their cause (Greener, 2010). This advertising strategy can help Foodbank share its message globally, including organized activities and events just for free.

Marketing Analytics

There are several Google ad metrics that Foodbank can use to measure its ad campaigns' success on Google Ad. The major and the easiest one is the conversion rate, which refers to the rate at which users are willing to take desired actions post-click. Conversion rates provide a good insight into the organization's best-performing ad copies, landing pages, and keywords (Chatzithomas et al., 2014). Another important metric is the Clickthrough rate (CRT), which shows the number of people who have seen the ad and clicked.

When it comes to social media advertising analytics, the most apparent and essential metrics that the organisation can pay attention to include referrals, engagement, response rate, impressions, and conversions (Santoso et al., 2020). These metrics can help Foodbank Australia to get a 360 view of its social media advertising performance.