Integrated Marketing Communications Plan for Sheffield City Council

Integrated Marketing Communications Plan for Sheffield City Council
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Abstract
Sheffield City Council’s objective of improving the number of visits to the region depends on an integrated marketing communication framework. One of the strategies that can be included in the framework includes social media marketing, that currently thrives on internet connectivity and smartphone availability. Based on a SWOT analysis, social media is a highly reliable platform that reaches a considerable number of audience, ultimately raising awareness regarding the tourist destinations in the city. Since the objective is to target both young and older adults, social media has limitations, including the fewer number of older adults when compared to younger ones. The city council will exploit influencer and celebrity endorsements on social media as opportunities and recommendations to increase engagement and impressions, among others that can translate into increased awareness and subsequent visits.
Table of Contents Introduction. 4 Social Media Marketing. 5 Strengths of Social Media Marketing Communication Tool 5 Limitation of Social Media Marketing Communication Strategy. 7 Opportunities from Social Media Marketing Communication Tools. 8 Recommendations. 10 Conclusion. 11 References. 13
Integrated Marketing Communications Plan for Sheffield City Council
Introduction
The contemporary organizations embrace various marketing communication tools, including advertising, public relations, sponsorship, digital communications, and social media, to increase sales, attract clients, and achieve notable success. The Sheffield City Council, for example, has to adopt an integrated marketing communications plan that would guarantee increased tourism in the region. Resultantly, it enjoys increased revenue, among other factors, such as economic development drawn from the creation of jobs, especially in the service industry. According to Rasool et al. (2021), tourism is important to any economy as it improves local and foreign investments, invites healthy competition among local firms, and reduces the rates of unemployment, among other factors. To achieve the above benefits, Sheffield City Council is compelled to embrace integrated marketing communication tools, which, in turn, raises the profile of Sheffield as a tourism destination with increased numbers of visitors. Technological innovation and the availability of the internet are key factors to consider when deciding the most reliable and efficient strategy, especially in targeting both local and foreign audiences in Sheffield City. For this reason, the council should adopt social media. This paper discusses the need for social media as an essential marketing communication tool that can be included in the integrated marketing communications plan to increase to improve tourism in Sheffield City Council.
Social Media Marketing
Sheffield Media Marketing should prioritize targeting, segmentation, and positioning to achieve notable success in its marketing plan. This primarily involves identifying the target audience, segmenting them, and positioning the service or product to capture their attention, or achieve notable brand awareness, ultimately resulting in visits to Sheffield City Council. Social media is introduced as the means of communication between the city council and the target audience. This includes platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, which have millions of users across the world, ultimately facilitating the realization of the objective (Ozkent, 2022). That is, awareness about Sheffield as a travel and tourist destination can be achieved by adopting social media marketing. Social media marketing meets the business objectives, which, as noted earlier, entails increasing the number of visitors, ultimately attracting economic growth and development, among other factors such as the city council’s social pride. The objective of the communication tool will be to increase awareness and generate new clients while at the same time facilitating retention of the existing client base. Social media marketing will position the city council as an efficient travel and tourist destination, with beautiful sceneries, activities, and events tailored to the target audiences’ liking.
Strengths of Social Media Marketing Communication Tool
Collectively, the marketing communications objective will be to increase awareness to approximately 60% within four months of the launch of the social media campaign, primarily targeting both genders, including young and older adults. The awareness includes positioning the city as a tourist destination. Jamil et al. (2022) justify the reliance on social media marketing as a reliable tool in realizing the above objective since it can influence target audiences’ intentions. The authors indicate the tremendous growth in social networking site use. Currently, brands can easily target their audience by sharing information through platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok. The widespread presence of the internet and smartphones justify the reliance on social media, which a significant number of the global population currently exploit for various purposes, including communication and access to information. This implies that if Sheffield City Council embraces social media marketing, they are likely to reach a large audience, both local and international, and enjoy increased awareness regarding the various tourists destinations such as the Kelham Island Museum, Graves Park, Sheffield Botanical Gardens, the Millennium Gallery, Meadowhall Shopping Center, National Emergency Services Museum, Sheffield Cathedral, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield Winter Garden, Tropical Butterfly House among others (Marketing Sheffield & City Future Department of Sheffield City Council, 2023; Appel et al., 2020; ). As noted earlier, once the awareness increases, the city should expect more tourist numbers, resulting in economic growth and development and social pride, among other factors.
Social media marketing influences customer intentions. As a city council, the focus should be on ensuring the customer’s intentions revolve around the desire and ultimate decision to visit Sheffield. This can be achieved through reliance on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. As the number of users of social media increases, the city council are exposed to a larger audience where they can build communications with the audience, ultimately achieving the desired awareness that translates into visit intentions (Jamil et al., 2021). To ascertain the impact of social media marketing as part of the integrated marketing communication plan, there is a need for a SWOT analysis that outlines its strengths, limitations and weakness, threats, and opportunities that can be exploited to realize Sheffield City Council’s objective. One notable strength is based on the PESO model, which includes pad, earned, shared, and owned marketing channels (Macnamara et al., 2016). Importantly, social media is an example of owned marketing channels which implies the city council owns and controls them. Earned media is a cheaper alternative to market and establish the relationship between the city and the target audience when compared to paid media, such as native advertising. In fact, owned media, such as an interactive Tik Tok video, can result in earned media, including increased mentions, reports, and shares that increase audience reach and attract considerable awareness (Podobnik, 2013). The city council is likely to attract new visitors by promoting quality content, such as interactive images, videos, and hashtags, on these platforms, ultimately achieving outcomes such as increased leads and conversations, larger audience reach, swift customer service, and relationship-building, among other factors.
Limitations of Social Media Marketing Communication Strategy
A notable limitation or weakness of the above marketing communication tool is the difference in use between older and younger adults. As of 2010, the presence of older adults aged 50 years and above was barely at 50% (Madden, 2010). However, over time, the number has increased with multiple high-income household incomes relying on social media for entertainment, and access to information, among other factors (Hruska & Maresova, 2020). According to Hruska and Maresova (2020, p. 27), despite the increased use among older adults, “as age increase, social media use decrease,” which ultimately limits the successful exploitation of platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, to realize better brand awareness, audience reach, and ultimate profitability or social pride. In other words, the average time an older adult spends on social media is less compared to young adults, even though both age groups are targeted in the marketing communication plan. Additionally, at times a brand is less likely to attract considerable engagement, successfully measure the success, can be time-consuming, and easily linked to low return on investment. This attracts the prevalence of opportunities such as influencer marketing and celebrity endorsement on social media platforms. In this case, Sheffield City Council can rely on endorsement from popular people that the locals and foreigners admire and are likely to be influenced by their decisions.
Opportunities from Social Media Marketing Communication Tools
According to Um (2022), influencer marketing and celebrity endorsements are opportunities for brands that want to improve awareness and engagement and build relationships with their target audience. Since the focus is on marketing communications, relying on celeb endorsements will yield desired marketing and communication objectives as people are easily influenced directly or indirectly to embrace a product, service, or tourist destination (Aw & Labrecque, 2020; Samarasinghe, 2019). A social media post from a celebrity will likely increase credibility and attractiveness. An example would be using the English Premier League player Aaron Ramsdale, w...