Fitness Australia Organization Integrated Marketing Communication Essay

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary
Introduction
Target Market Analysis
Market Segmentation
SWOT Analysis
IMC Objectives
IMC Strategy of Fitness Australia
Conclusion
Reference List

Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to develop an Integrated Marketing Communication plan to aware specific target market about the products and services of not-for-profit organization “Fitness Australia” to increase health conscious customer base and offer exceptional service at lower costs. In order to do so, this report will focus on many external and internal factors such as objectives of IMC plan, SWOT analysis, target market, selection of media, slogan of the campaign, time frame, budget, messages, IMC strategy, and so on.

Introduction

Fitness Australia has already arranged many programs such as Business Membership Program of this organization provides benefits to the industry suppliers, Exercise Professional Registration Scheme sets an industry standard, and Continuing Education Scheme provides courses for fitness industry professionals and owners (Fitness Australia, 2011). About 10 million people who need this sort of therapy and numbers of adult citizen of the country are classified as “clinically obese” for having the notable impact of stress and disability at a larger ratio; therefore, Fitness Australia would arrange IMC Campaign to encourage the professionals to increase standards of customer services and aware customers to lead healthy life.

The core services and facilities offered by Fitness Australia comprises fitness room, composed of latest training materials, circuit training room with PACE hydraulic system, swimming pool, walking track, hot tub, cardio- centre including modern cardiovascular materials of stair climbers, elliptical cross trainers, recumbent and stationary bicycle, and treadmills saunas, racquetball courts, Wally ball court, etc.

Target Market Analysis

The healthcare products and services of Fitness Australia is suitable for all customers, but this company should target mainly health conscious people who like to lead healthy life by giving effort for regular exercise. However, Fitness Australia should target middle-class and higher-class middle-aged people and teenagers (15 to 45 age groups) for this IMC campaign project though all people would be benefited from this campaign.

Market Segmentation

Fitness Australia believes that the success of the IMC campaign would generate great awareness amongst the people of Australia and help the nation to build a new generation that will be physically fit to work on for the national welfare. With this vision, the company wants to focus on not only the people aging from 20 to 35, but rather, the entire nation; therefore, it is essential for the firm to assess the demography of the country before undertaking the IMC campaign:

Segmentation Through Age Structures and Inhabitants
Total populace	21,766,711 in 2011 estimation
Zero to fourteen year olds	18.3 percent (men 2,040,848 & women 1,937,544)
Fifteen to sixty-four year olds	67.7 percent (men 7,469,092 & women 7,266,143)
Sixty-five year olds and above	14 percent (men 1,398,576 & women 1,654,508)
Total average age of population	37.7 yrs
Men: average age	37 yrs
Women: average age	38.4 yrs
Inhabitants development rate	1.148 percent in 2011 projection
Birth- rate	12.33 births per thousand populaces
Death- rate	6.88 deaths per thousand populaces
Ethnic origins in the country	White ninety two percent, Asian seven percent, native & other one percent
Below fifteen years	1.05 man per woman
Fifteen to sixty-four years	1.03 man per woman
Sixty-five years and above	0.84 man per woman
Literacy	99 percent men and 99 percent women

Table 1: Segmentation through age structures and inhabitants in the country. Source: Self generated from Index mundi (2011).

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

At the initial stage, the people of Australia were not highly concern about fitness issue and gave less importance on healthy lifestyle (Fitness Australia, 2011). Fitness Australia is a not-for-profit organization and it has motivated people to improve health of all Australians and encouraged other fitness club to develop the standards of service. Therefore, large customer base, motivation power, long experience of the company, and collaboration with other health care center are the key strengths of Fitness Australia.

According to Fitness Australia (2011), this company has more than 26000 registered exercise professionals, health care service providers, and industry suppliers Australia-wide to help huge numbers of people who are suffering from mental and physical disability, diabetes, osteoporosis, sleep disorders and many other problems. As a result, IMC Campaign project of Fitness Australia will help the company increase number of volunteers, sponsors, and partners in order to conduct awareness program to develop Healthier Australia, increase service range and increase organizational and industry profile and enhance quality of services.

Weakness

The marketers of IMC campaign identify that the company would be able to increase numbers of conscious customers, but there is possibility of incurring high costs to import expensive gymnastic equipment, achievement of less persuasion of people towards the necessity of physical exercise and higher charges for several services cause fewer and specific customer traffic than the practical necessary groups.

Opportunities

The budget of the IMC campaign is too high to appoint sufficient number of employees, volunteers and other service providers to support their activities and to serve youth, adults, women, and older customer groups by offering a complete range of athletic, leisure, fitness, and past- time requirements. This campaign will create a field to working with national and international companies those offer similar service providers such as Australian Fitness & Health Expo, Fitness First, Good Gym Guide, Fenix Fitness Australia, C2K Fitness and Aquatic Centre, The Fitness Institute Australia (FIA) and so on.

Threats

Fitness Australia should consider several risk factors before starting campaign projects such as adverse impact of global financial crisis reduced the purchasing power of the customers, complexity of operating services and complementary of mainstream medical caring, high costs of the services, and so on. At the same time, it has other risk factors like unethical behaviors of the staff or the management team can decrease the effectiveness of the campaign project within very short time, competitors of Fitness Australia can introduce similar campaign, and entire project needs large fund, which can affect on the financial statements of the company (Keller, 2009).

IMC Objectives

The main objective of this campaign is to increase the demand of fitness club in Australia and help ten multinational Fitness Center start business in this zone within next five years. On the other hand, the motto of this IMC campaign is to aware target customers about the cost effectiveness of the products and services of Fitness Australia and increase customer base by 20% within next four years.

Message

The key message of the IMC campaign project of Fitness Australia is to give message to the conscious target audience about their health to build “Fitter, and Healthier Australia” within next three years.

Slogan

The slogan of this campaign would be “Join the world of good health”

IMC Strategy of Fitness Australia

The following flowchart shows a brief illustration of the entire IMC strategy of Fitness Australia:

Selected Media for the IMC of Fitness Australia

Selected Media	Rationale Behind Selecting the Media
IMC through television advertisement	Television campaigns are expected to be the best media to attract people of all ages, including middle-aged men and women spending their leisure, or working people watching TV at a Saturday night (Macdonald and Sharp, 2000). Deighton, Henderson, and Neslin (1994) and Doyle (1990) stated that this form of campaign would also be effective for young generation aging from 20 to 35 as well as the teenagers as they are the majority of population to watch television. Additionally, Fitness Australia could get more opportunity to exhibit the creativity through TV campaign besides of reaching mass public at the same time.
Campaign through print media	Newspaper is one of the most essential campaigning media for any company to come into attention of mass people; Fitness Australia will start and continue paid circular campaigns together with descriptions of health benefits of joining the gyms and attractive photographs; moreover, the health club also wants to come up with press kits, brochures, and posters.
Radio campaigns	The campaign of the health club will also go through radio-advertising, as this form of advertisement will better address those busy people who, for example, hear radio while driving cars; in addition, radio-advertising would develop potential-outcomes for the campaign with sense of flexibility and this can also have a good capture over audiences with help of good scripts and slogans.
Online IMC	This form of IMC may include in web marketing, including search engine optimization (SEO), advertisement through social networking sites, website development, blogs, and e-mails; moreover, by advertising through Google +, Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, or Hi5, Fitness Australia could get a better arena where further public awareness can arise. This campaigns will definitely be successful based on the fact that the individuals in networking communities “trust” each other – so, they would come up to join the fitness centre if another person appreciates it
Outdoor IMC	According to Herbig and Milewicz (1993), outdoor campaigns can be a great form of marketing to keep huge contributions to attain the aim of the IMC; this may include setting billboards at busy streets beside colleges, universities, offices, shopping malls, bus terminals, or airport roads to attract an increasing number of people to join the fitness centre
Special campaigns & others	Fitness Australia will also undertake other forms of campaigns, such as promoting through magazines, sponsoring concerts, sporting events, and so on.

Table 2: Selected Media of the IMC. Source: Self generated.

Fitness Australia’s PR Activities

Fitness Australia not only focuses on the success of the IMC by using several campaigning strategies, but also concentrates on development of public relation by addressing social-problems; so, its PR remains a practice of organizing communication between the organization and its clients, where a unique-exposure to audience concerns with communal-interests like health and fitness issues that endow an intermediary endorsement. Therefore, the PR activities of the health club has incorporated verbal communications at press conferences, functioning with the media, engagement of social media, predicament communications, public affairs, stakeholder relations, employee relation, and investor’s relations – this PR activities ensure that the local communities are appreciating the benefits of regular exercises and focusing on the importance of joining a fitness centre.

Website

Website is the store of resources and Fitness Australia has an ordinary website, which takes a long time to visit the site with high-speed internet line due to problem in designing of the sites. As a result, the marketer of Fitness Australia should develop an excellent dynamic website in order to broaden all business function and execute the IMC plan to aware target market; however, the following table give more idea in this regards –

Tasks	Functions
Web designing and hosting	At first, the marketer of Fitness Australia should need to contact with the web designers and order a dynamic Website with e-commerce systems;
	Easy to visit would be the first consideration to success the campaign, so, it will Integrate essential software in accordance with programmers advice;
	This site will create a field for blog writers and other customers to share their view regarding this issue
Start Date and Duration	Costs to develop dynamic website
30 October 2011 60 days	The anticipated costs for new website designing is $3000 to $5000

Table 3: Website Development. Source: Self generated from Belch & Belch (2009).

Objectives

Laudon & Traver (2002) stated that website provides the opportunity to the web visitors to submit the valuable opinion for future development and Johnson Seholes & Whittington (2008) pointed out that it gives the opportunity to develop customer relationship and join with social networking sites. However, the marketer of Fitness Australia would like to develop CRM systems, and professionalism of service providers

Sample IMC Campaign

Hoyer and Brown (1990) argues that the IMC campaigns should be enough eye-catchy and attractive to get the attention of the targeted groups appealing to them aesthetically, and providing an enjoyable insight. Some headings and graphics of the ads are given below –

First Campaign	Heading – You Deserve the Fitness! Graphic – A body builder swimming in the sea
Second Campaign	Heading – Stay Healthy Graphic – A horse rider inviting people
Third Campaign	Heading – Enjoy your life better Graphic – A group of youngsters cheering

Table 4: Sample IMC Campaign. Source: Self generated.

Budgetary Requirements for Fitness Australia’s IMC

Fitness Australia has planned a total IMC budget of $282.5 millions. The allotment of the finances in each of the sector is as follows:

IMC Budget for Fitness Australia
Sectors for IMC expenditure in 2011	(All figures in millions)
Advertising campaigns in television, print media, and radio	AUD 122.5
Other forms of ads and campaigns through magazines, direct mails, and leaflets	AUD 46.50
Online IMC, comprising expenses of campaigns on social networking sites, search engine optimization (SEO), website development, blogs, e-mails, and other internet ads in different areas	AUD 30.00
Researching on the target market of the IMC	AUD 62.50
Other expenses of the marketing department	AUD 21.00
Total IMC Budget	AUD 282.5

Table 5: IMC Budget for Fitness Australia. Source: Self generated.

Evaluation of the Objectives

Fitness Australia will evaluate the outcomes of the objectives of the campaign in the national market and compare the differences in participation of people in the gym. The administrative bodies should organize board meetings to assess if the demand has increased after the campaign.

Conclusion

It is arguable that if the IMC campaign of Fitness Australia remains successful, then there will be a big difference not only in the profitability of the company, but also, to a large extent, to the welfare of the society. Proper implementations of the strategies are high required for the success.

Reference List

Belch, G. E. & Belch, M.A. (2009). Advertising and Promotion. (8^th ed.). New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill.

Deighton, J., Henderson, C. M., & Neslin, S. A. (1994). The effects of advertising on brand switching and repeat purchasing. Journal of Marketing Research, 16(1), 28-43.

Doyle, P. (1990). Building Successful Brand: The Strategic Options. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 7(2), 5-20.

Fitness Australia (2011). About Fitness Australia. Web.

Fitness Australia (2011). Our Initiatives. Web.

Herbig, P., & Milewicz, J. (1993). The relationship of reputation and credibility to brand success. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 10(3), 18-24.

Hoyer, W. D. & Brown, S. P. (1990). Effects of Brand Awareness on Choice for a Common, Repeat-Purchase Product. Journal of Consumer Research, 17(2), 141-148.

Index mundi (2011). Australia Demographics Profile 2011. Web.

Johnson, G. Seholes, K. & Whittington, R. (2008). Exploring Corporate Strategy: Text & Cases. (8^th ed.). London: FT Prentrice Hall.

Keller, K. L. (2009). Strategic Brand Management- Building, Measuring and Managing Brand Equity. (3^rd ed.). New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India.

Laudon, K. C., & Traver, C. G. (2002) E- commerce- Business, Technology, Society. (4^th ed.). Dorling Kindersley Pvt. Ltd.

Macdonald, E. K., ＆ Sharp, B. M. (2000). Brand awareness effects on consumer decision making for a common, repeat purchase product: A replication. Journal of Business Research, 48(5).

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