Consulting Expertise
IMI International uses its best practices which are derived from thousands of studies of consumer-validated research to optimize client’s marketing activations around the world.
Available as a complete system, or an à-la-carte option, IMI International can help your brand with evaluations for:
- Innovative fuel
- Strategic planning
- Pre-launch testing
- Post-launch and in-market measurement
- Custom research and marketing consulting solutions
- Syndicated consumer research services and case studies
- Best practices training sessions
IMI International is committed to maximizing your marketing activations in any of the following areas:
Shopper Marketing
Shopper Marketing is a topic is creating a lot of buzz in marketing circles these days. Shopper Marketing is the latest extension of co-marketing, retail marketing and customer marketing. Ultimately, shopper marketing is the management of the full path-to-purchase cycle.
Shopper marketing is a compelling, integrated approach to meeting consumer wants and needs and instilling a sense of confidence from the moment a brand first starts interacting with consumers.
Given its intricate balance between what motivates shoppers and how they shop, it involves many unique steps– leveraging IMI International’s expertise in this area can reduce your risk and add value to your potential and current shopper marketing initiatives.
From the living room to the centre aisles and back again, getting shopper marketing right involves many aspects of the evaluation, measurement and optimization process that IMI International is renowned for. Examples of IMI’s knowledge base include:
- Generating demand and building brand equity in the planning process
- Delivering targeted & integrated campaigns to specific shopping segments,
- Learn how to use shopper ‘need states’ and occasion-based retail marketing
- Differentiating the retailer to focus consumers’ attention to drive traffic
- Aligning the brand, trade and consumer to increase likelihood of purchase
- Recruiting traffic to stores via targeted program activations
- Drive spontaneous sales while the consumer is in-store
- Avoid the gimmicks which have low proven effectiveness
- Deliver quality post- purchase which drives long term equity & word of mouth
Digital Marketing
Media options for marketers continue to evolve and the digital space is growing quickly. It is essential for marketers to utilize this space and to find out how to best leverage this typically low-cost and potentially highly-targeted medium.
Many brand marketers are making a blind, head-first rush into digital media while not knowing the risks and opportunities that lay before them. Making rational, consumer-validated decisions based on insights can help provide direction amid the tangle of options.
It’s true that digital media can captivate consumers and engage them for long periods of time. The risk, however, is that many brand marketers are investing in digital without the proof that their budgets are being wisely spent or that they are in fact motivating consumers to meet a brand’s goals.
When considering budget allocations for digital, ensure you understand what your goals and objectives are and how your digital campaign can help you meet them. It may not be an immediate sale; rather it may build brand equity, gain share of voice and mind through word of mouth and can build affinity in order to close the sale later.
As IMI International has learned, it is important to understand how consumers are finding out about your products or services and what types of marketing, including digital, are most motivating to meet your brand campaign objectives.
Mobile Marketing
The latest in digital media, mobile marketing, if done correctly, represents possibly the most target-focused consumer marketing tool ever known.
Mobile media, when accessed via cell phone, smart phone or tablet PC can be a truly personal connection, as many consumers carry around their mobile devices 24/7. This makes it possible to reach consumers from wherever they choose to use their devices and notably, where other forms of advertising and marketing cannot reach easily.
The opportunity for brand marketers, therefore, is to generate enough equity, affinity and trust in order to make a personal connection with a consumer who may grant access to selected marketers to send targeted offers, demos or news direct to their mobiles.
It is important to note which demographic group marketers are targeting since many brands have simply not yet focused energy and dedicated activation resources to generate a critical level of trust or engagement with a target consumer.
Done on a strategic basis, there are potentially huge opportunities, although there are equally frightening risks. It is a matter of pre-testing and being able to measure your campaigns against an objective database, such as the one that IMI International provides to clients.
Taking smart risks with mobile can be very lucrative, indeed. Just make sure they are the right risks and not one-offs that can lead your brand in the wrong direction.
Social Media Marketing
Now, more than ever, brands are considering and deploying social media applications, tools, communications and strategies to have conversations and build relationships with their target consumers.
For the first time in history, brands and consumers can have equal access to create, share and otherwise tell stories about experiences, fads, brands and products while reaching a very large audience for virtually no cost.
This fundamental shift to two-way brand-consumer communications is changing the landscape and is making traditional brands re-think strategies that have been the foundations of their marketing plans for decades. As a result of the viral discussions that happen in the social media space, brands, services and products can rapidly rise and fall in digital world with real life and real dollar impacts.
IMI International has been closely involved in social media since its beginnings and has critical insights and perspectives, especially noting sales and marketing efforts, and how they must adapt to stay relevant to content creators and consumers.
It’s an exciting time for brand marketers and there are more tools than ever to consider. Making the right investments with the right communication tools is critical to your brand’s success and leveraging consumer-validated insights is the best place to start.
Positioning
Your brand is everything. The positioning of your brand is the platform from which you activate your brand, demonstrate your brand’s values and engage your target consumers. When done correctly, this works to drive sales increases and image gains.
Before development of creative execution and validation, and certainly before investment in media, ensure you position your brand and products to be engaging, believable and motivational. Messaging that is relevant, believable, engaging and motivational follows IMI International’s best practices.
IMI International’s approach to positioning is to ensure your products and brands are placed before customers in circumstances that are important to them and in a believable and motivational way.
IMI International has developed proprietary evaluation methodologies and action standards and considers the synergy of two essential elements for successful positioning of your brand – strategy and communication.
IMI International’s Brand Optimization System™ – BOS™
- Analyzes key components of your brand, within your category, from a customer perspective, providing fact-based actionable insight and recommendations concerning your strategy development and optimization.
IMI International’s Positioning Brief and Validation™ – PBV™
- Identifies the positioning and messaging approach that will maximize positive attitude and behaviour change for your brand and is dependent on management’s objective. This can include re-positioning established products or brands in changing times, aligning new advertising approaches for established brands and evaluating the success potential and optimum message constructs for line extensions or new products.
To learn more and to speak with a representative about your positioning needs, please contact us.
Promotional Marketing
Promotions can be an essential part of the marketing mix, especially during key drive periods. Globally, two-thirds or more of consumers purchase as a result of a promotion – a fact that holds true across all demographics, categories and geographies.
A compelling promotional concept can become a successful global initiative – driving sales and enhancing brand equity internationally.
IMI International excels in sales promotion optimization. Through linkage of pre and post evaluations of promotional campaigns over time, IMI International has built a database of thousands of programs across over 20 countries in over 50 categories, both pre- and post-launch. IMI International leverages our database and action standards – key metrics – to facilitate decision making, organizational buy-in and cooperation.
IMI International’s experience includes all types of promotions and limited time offers:
- Sweepstakes
- Loyalty Programs
- Coupons
- Premiums
- Price Discounts
…and promotional elements including:
- Trade only vs. consumer
- Types/number of prizes
- Mechanics like in-pack vs. online vs. write-in
- Communication
- Retailer/distributor incentive
Consistent over time is our fundamental approach to maximizing your Return on Investment – consider ‘how little you need to spend’ to get the desired change in attitude, behavior and sales’.
Sponsorship Marketing
A sponsorship initiative is strengthened by the company it keeps. For all parties – brands, properties and agencies – a strategic and effective partnership can be a gateway to increased reach and recognition, enhanced brand equity and positioning, and incremental sales.
IMI International has been involved with sponsorship since the 1984 Olympics in all aspects:
- Selection & Pre-Evaluation
- ROI Measurement
- Life Time Value
- Optimization
Leveraging our extensive proprietary database of 1,250+ events/sponsorships, 9,000+ program optimizations across 80 categories in 15 countries, IMI International accurately and objectively identifies the ‘true value’ of a sponsorship: pre – during – or post.
IMI International’s approach to Sponsorship & Event Marketing considers the synergy between all fundamental partners of a partnership and from your consumer’s perspective.
A few guiding sponsorship principles:
- Stay true to your consumer
- Stay true to your brand
- Demonstrate your brand benefits
- Activate your brand
- Engage your category’s customers
With on-going global sponsorship conference leadership through immersive presentations and with IMI International’s strategically-focused syndicated sponsorship studies, IMI International continues to be a thought leader in this exciting space.
Contact IMI International now to see how we can help you succeed with your marketing initiatives.
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