Integrated Marketing Communication Plan for St. Basils Essay

Introduction

This document is an Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) plan for a UK-based charity organization – St. Basils. The institution primarily provides shelter to homeless youth aged between 16 and 25 years (Saint Basils, 2022). The aim of doing so is to provide them with a safe environment where they can access essential services while developing their skills to improve the prospects of having a stable income to pay for their homes (Boesveldt, 2019).

Based on the success of these initiatives and in line with St. Basils jubilee year celebrations marked in 2023, the proposed IMC plan is designed to increase awareness of the organization’s operations and the number of volunteers to support the charity’s operations. The major tactics for consideration when developing the marketing communication include advertising, public relations, direct marketing, and digital marketing or social media marketing (Herzallah et al., 2022). This paper’s key tenets will justify using social media as the main communication platform for achieving St. Basils goals. The SMART objectives for the organization are listed below and are designed to describe key performance indicators that will be used to measure the project’s success.

SMART Objectives

1. To increase the audience for St. Basils operations by 25% by 2024 by collaborating with at least two other nonprofit organizations.
2. Raise awareness of social challenges affecting the community by doubling the content posted on St. Basils social media Instagram stories daily and increasing the number of followers by at least 200 people.
3. To maintain brand reputation by monitoring social media traffic and in doing so, be the organization with the leading number of followers. Results will be measured by tracking the number of followers gained within 12 months of the campaign’s launch.
4. To double the number of followers on St. Basil’s social media pages starting January 2024, quadruple the number of mentions posted daily on Instagram and check weekly statistics to see how many followers have been gained.

Situational Context Analysis

A situational context analysis of St. Basils operational environment includes discussions of internal and external factors that are likely to influence the charity’s operations. In terms of internal environmental analysis, the SWOT analysis framework, which examines a firm’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, will be used.Alternatively, the external analysis will be based on the PESTLE framework, which examines the influence of political, social, economic, technological, legal, and environmental forces on an organization’s operations.

PESTLE Analysis

Political

Homelessness, as a social and political issue, involves many players, including authorities, political leaders, community mobilizers, and their subsidiaries. International and national regulations on human rights governing the activities of nonprofit enterprises addressing social and economic problems affecting vulnerable people are likely to be relevant in developing marketing strategies for charities (Schöps et al., 2022). Issues relating to immigration and border control similarly have an impact on the number of homeless youth roaming the streets.

Economic

Changes to the economic condition of the UK and around the world directly impact the number of homeless youth in the streets (Oudshoorn et al., 2021). Periods of economic growth and political stability are often characterized by low numbers of homeless members of society. In contrast, economic uncertainty, recession, and the lack of jobs may increase the number of vulnerable people.

Social

Social problems affecting communities, such as widespread drug abuse, may affect the number of people requiring shelter assistance (Herold et al., 2019). The breakdown of family units through divorce or the death of parents may equally contribute to the growing problem of homelessness in the UK (Schöps et al., 2022). Broadly, these concerns show that social instability could precipitate homelessness.

Technological

The influence of social media in coordinating organizational activities and mobilizing personnel in marketing campaigns has become vital to the daily functioning of nonprofit businesses. Technological changes have transformed how people work, capital is moved, and accountability is measured (Junça & Dias, 2023). Marketing-related literature has equally demonstrated how branding has been dominated by technological changes (Sarpila et al., 2021). Therefore, these changes are likely to dominate marketing strategy development in the long term.

Legal

The law governing the operations of nonprofit entities, such as St. Basils operations, requires such organizations to adhere to relevant codes of conduct and ethical guidance regarding the collection of donations and use of resources (Siliunas et al., 2019). Accountability standards are equally defined by existing legal frameworks governing the operations of such firms (Arvidson & Linde, 2021).

Environmental

Concerns about the impact of organizations on communities have overtaken fears about the need to protect profitability as the primary reason organizations exist (Lerøy, 2021). Therefore, the acceptability and relevance of organizational activities to promote environmental protection and development will likely influence future strategy development.

SWOT Analysis

As highlighted above, St. Basils internal environment will be assessed using the SWOT analysis technique. The findings are listed in Table 1 below.

Table 1. SWOT analysis

The process of developing the IMC plan for St. Basils operations will be informed by the findings of the PESTLE and SWOT analyses in the situational context review highlighted above.

Strategy

The proposed marketing plan will employ an adaptive as opposed to a standardized model of marketing. In this framework, the marketing content should be adapted to fit local and regional contexts (Fernandes & Matos, 2023). In line with the recommendations of Lucarelli (2022) and Na and Kim (2020), the proposed strategy for implementing the social media plan is meant to create an element of shock and curiosity in the audience’s mind. To this end, the Instagram advertisement will include a poster of a homeless and hungry person lying on the street, as demonstrated in Figure 1 below.

The goal of including the homeless individual in the picture is to create a shock effect in the campaign. In this assessment, it is assumed that readers would be curious to know why the person is lying on the street in the first place. This plan of action is consistent with the recommendations of Pozharliev et al. (2022), which suggest that effective social media campaigns should have a surprise element that would draw audiences. Therefore, it is equally assumed that the photo would draw audiences into the main message of the poster, which is to invite them to a center where they will be furnished with more information on how to end hunger and homelessness. The meeting venue and time are equally stated on the poster.

Tactics

The proposed IMC plan is designed to appeal to young people who care for the community and are willing to make a difference in the lives of their peers. In this regard, influencers will be used to generate interest in homelessness. They are selected for use because of their impressionable traits and ability to influence public opinion or shape community discourses (Ahmadi et al., 2023). This tactic is appropriate for the proposed marketing campaign because the project targets young people below the age of 25 years, who form a majority of people influenced by celebrity actions (Ryan & Edlom, 2023). Thus, it is expected that this plan will effectively draw the interest of young adults via Instagram.

Action

The action plan for the proposed IMC plan is contained in the marketing campaign timelines and schedule highlighted in Table 2 below.

Table 2. Marketing campaign timelines and schedule

Budget

Developing an organization’s marketing budget is an inherent part of marketing. Depending on the scope, size, and purpose of a campaign, a marketing budget will help maintain costs within an organization’s limits (Soleimani et al., 2022). The cumulative sum for the proposed marketing communications plan is $20,000. The cost breakdown is highlighted in Table 3 below.

Table 3. IMC budget

Control

Monitoring the progress of marketing campaigns is an important step in ensuring they serve their intended purpose. This opinion is consistent with the views of Sanz-Blas et al. (2019), who have explored factors that have led to the failure of past marketing campaigns. Relative to the findings of Splendiani et al. (2023) and Kiili et al. (2021), the success of the present project will be evaluated by user engagement numbers on social media.

These activities will be nestled within the Instagram analytics domain, as proposed by Singh et al. (2023). This service is an appendage of Instagram’s social media pages. It allows organizations to see the number of people reached by a specific social media campaign, their geographical distributions, genders, and even the time to engage with the content (Belanche et al., 2019). These details will be used to assess the efficacy of the campaign.

Justification for Platform Selection

Instagram was selected as the preferred social media platform for the campaign launch because it is widely popular among Millennials and Gen Zs (Ahmadi & Ieamsom, 2022). It has a market outreach of one billion users per month, and out of this number, about 11% of the audience uses the platform to buy or learn about new products (Garcia, 2018). Others use the platform for educational and entertainment purposes.

The involvement theory can be used to explain why Instagram is the best platform to help St. Basils achieve the SMART marketing objectives highlighted in this document (Ahmadi et al., 2022). According to the theory’s format, brands can be either high or low involvement or generate positive vs. negative emotion (Smith et al., 2021). Products that have low involvement levels are those that play a functional role, while high involvement brands are those that generate a symbolic value (Varnajot, 2020). Instagram’s specialty is in marketing content with visual appeal, positioning it in the second needs category. Photos, animations, and videos are typical tools inherent in the platform that can generate this type of content.

How Execution Will Meet Marketing Objectives

This marketing communication plan will be designed to be sensitive to cultural, regional, and national differences as envisioned in the globalization of marketing concepts. Similarly, attention should be paid to the ethical implications of developing the marketing strategy for vulnerable youth (Testa et al., 2021). This is because some populations, such as minors, may require protection from mass manipulation, distortion of truths, and targeting of vulnerable groups by advertisers.

Conclusion

This integrated marketing communication plan is likely to enhance communication across disciplines and provide a way to reorganize the firm’s marketing and corporate strategy.This way, it will be easier to develop the brand strategy and deliver a unified message to customers. The IMC includes all core elements of marketing communication. Based on the success of its implementation, St. Basils intends to make the underprivileged and underserved sections of the community feel cared for and that they matter to mainstream societal development. This mission anchors the organization’s core vision, which is premised on the idea that providing “struggling” young adults with a safe and suitable shelter will help them to build confidence and start their journey in life.

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