Part 3: Pricing, Distribution and Integrated Communication Strategies

Development of Pricing Strategies

The strategic pricing team for LinexNexis includes a group made up of pricing strategists, as well as analysts. They are involved in developing recommendations for the company aligned with the company’s pricing opportunities. In that case, the team has been developed as part of internal consultancy in order to draw attention, discipline, analytical strength, and experience to LinexNexis’ strategic pricing themes. LexisNexis provides online and offline subscription services. The schedule price catalogue has been organized in order to support the customers and offer the products and services through a meaningful manner. Strategic pricing plan of the company incorporates pricing options along with the discount plans in order to enhance easy subscription. The products provided, hence, those, requiring pricing; include subscription-based research, practice management, and case management among other value adding products (Araiza & Medina, 2011).

In order to enhance effective prices by LexisNexis, it can adapt two of the most prominent strategies including transactional pricing alongside flat-rate pricing. In that case, the company can decide to transactional-buy its products. That means that the company will only be paying for all that they can utilize. For instance, clients will be able to pay for a dollar for every search through the company’s website or a dollar for retrieval of information. In that case, transactional prices determine the functionality and characteristics linked to the products and services provided by the company. It is the transactional prices that formulate the foundation for overall incentives along with the discounts accessible through the flat-rate pricing strategy. For the transactional pricing strategy, the company can charge $5.00 per every search, and $20.00 per each standard file. For the large group files, LinexNexis can charge $35.00 per search (Aaker, 2002).

In its pricing strategy, LinexNexis should consider several pricing factors including both fixed and variable expenses. The other factors include competition, company objectives, target group, and proposed positioning plans. Penetration pricing can work effectively for this company. Penetration pricing includes an organization setting decreased prices in order to raise its sales. That way, the company can increase the prices at later stages after full subscription has been achieved. For instance, LinexNexis can set low prices or provide discounts as discussed above in order to get more subscribers to its products and services through its website. That will be a good way to increase the customer base over the short-term period. However, all the internal and external factors mentioned above should also be considered (Araiza & Medina, 2011).

Development of Distribution Strategies

LinexNexis should use effective distribution channels in order to ensure effective customer relationship and overall performance of the business. Enhancing effective distribution can be enabled through the means of leveraging social syndication. That means that the company can adopt the act of sharing its content on the social media and bookmarking platforms and ping directories. In that case, LinexNexis can work on that by making the content as easy as possible for the subscribers. The company can utilize the tools, which allow it to submit its content to Digg, Facebook, and Twitter among other social networking platforms. Most importantly, utilizing more than one format of distribution of content will play a huge role in enhancing effective subscription to its products and services. That means that the company should not limit itself to texts, but also use video, audio, or eBooks (Aaker & McLoughlin, 2010). That is due to the fact that every client will consume the products and services in a different way from the others. In most cases, there are people who tend to grasp the information through the social media in a more effective way than through other channels. Distribution can also incorporate downloadable content. Therefore, downloadable content can include eBooks, audio, or videos that are both portable and downloadable.  That is one of the best ways for the company to reach customers that it could not reach through the blog posts.

Distribution can also be enhanced through the third party integration. The idea can be borrowed from the famous retailers, such as Amazon and eBay, where sellers are able to access their customers without forming their website. That way, LinexNexis can decide to use external distribution channels or third parties in its practices in order to have a diversified market. That will also save LinexNexis huge amounts of expenses that will be used on the distribution channels. Research has indicated that most businesses have continued to use e-newsletters in order to provide exclusive content to their subscribers. E-newsletters will enhance effective understanding of what the company offers including products and services. That should be followed by the insightful information that attracts subscribers (Aaker, 2002).

Development of Integrated Communication Strategies

The process of developing an integrated communication strategy should be aimed at coordinating various promotional drivers. That way, the process should be implemented at particular times at a time when marketing campaign is on in order to make sure that the message is actually acquired by the audience. In that case, an effective marketing communication strategy needs a clear blend of planning design along with communications ingenuity that enables the marketer to go through many channels. It should be noted that the strategy is created as an aggressive marketing plan, which is able to capture and utilize the extensive quantities of client information in forming marketing strategy. The communication strategy will be client-centered. That will be done so in order to make sure that success of the company is measured under the basis of its ability to draw new clients into its subscription services (Aaker, McLoughlin, 2010).