Marketing communications


Marketing communications, marcomm refers to the use of different marketing channels and tools in combination. Marketing communication channels focus on how businesses communicate a message to their desired market, or the market in general. It can also include the internal communications of the organization. Marketing communication tools include advertising, personal selling, direct marketing, sponsorship, communication, public relations, social media, customer journey and promotion.
MC are made up of the marketing mix which is made up of the 4 Ps: Price, Promotion, Place and Product, for a business selling goods, and made up of 7 Ps: Price, Promotion, Place, Product, People, Physical evidence and Process, for a service-based business.

Overview

Marketing communications include advertising, promotions, product sales, branding, advertising campaigns, events, and online promotions. This process allows the public to become aware of a brand and get a clear idea of what it has to offer. Brand awareness is the first stage; brand preference over its competitors is the desired outcome. Due to growing technology and techniques, customers can participate directly. This is done by including their ideas and creations in product development and brand promotion. Successful branding involves targeting audiences who appreciate the organization's mission and vision, business values and marketing program.
Advertising is a small but important part of marketing communications; the marketing communications mix is a set of tools that can be used to deliver a clear and consistent message to target audiences. It is also commonly called the promotional mix. Crosier states that all terms have the same meaning in the context of the 4ps: product, price, place and promotion. Price can send a message to the target audience. For example, comparing a $50 bag to a $10 bag, the former may be viewed as a luxury or more durable item. The higher goal of advertising is to establish a relationship between the brand and its target market.
The marketing plan identifies key opportunities, threats, weaknesses, and strengths, sets objectives, and develops an action plan to achieve marketing goals. Each section of the 4P's sets its own objective; for instance, the pricing objective might be to increase sales in a certain geographical market by pricing their own product or service lower than their competitors. This creates a significant change in the market because more people in the target market would aim to do business with your organization than with your competitors because pricing is one of the most significant aspects of marketing that can change the whole market positively or negatively.

Definitions

  • Communication barriers: Communication barriers are factors that hinder the objectives of marketing communication. Major communication barriers are Noise and clutter, consumer apathy, brand parity, and weak information design, creative ideas, or strategies. Noise is an unrelated sensory stimulus that distracts a consumer from the marketing message. Clutter is the high number and concentration of advertisements presented to a consumer at any time. As attention cannot be divided, there is a limit to how much can be taken in and processed, which means that strong marketing communication needs to stand out from the clutter and be heard above the noise.
  • *"Consumer apathy" is the tendency of a consumer to avoid marketing communications. The consumer may not be interested, or consider themselves "in the market," and as such attempt to shut out the irrelevant marketing stimuli; this is known as selective attention. Alternatively, a consumer may be "in the market," yet not be aware of the brand or product's existence or prevalence. Consumers tend to purchase familiar brands, and will not be inspired to investigate alternatives. One approach marketers use to overcome apathy is to create incentives, such as competitive pricing or loyalty rewards.
  • *Brand parity means a brand is not significantly different from its competition. Without a distinct value proposition, consumers do not develop brand preference or associations and instead purchase purely based on price. This is not ideal, as effective marketing communication increases brand equity. One important objective of marketing communications is to develop a strong, unique brand identity that allows the brand to be positioned separately from its competition.
  • Marketing mix is the most important part of marketing strategy, which is "the framework to manage marketing and incorporate it within a business context".
  • Marketing strategy: how a business achieves its marketing objectives. The initial step to achieve a marketing strategy is to identify the market target and build up a business plan.
  • Marketing Research does not involve a proven order of steps resulting in an ultimate inference. It is a repeated process that requires a broader outlook. At times, projects may require going in-depth and changing the entire process. Let us take the example of Nokia when they were preparing themselves to compete against the smartphone market. In November 2011, they decided on coming up with something new, especially targeting the youth, who were switching over to the Finnish Smartphones. This switchover required several changes, starting from brand fundamentals to training in-house teams, from targeting to product advancement, and from hiring talented marketing people to new innovations.

    Communications

Communication is one important aspect of the marketing mix. Marketing communication is often the largest component of communication within a company, which may be to present company values, objectives or specific products and services to investors, customers or the general public. In the 21st century, communications objectives focus on more customized messages, targeting customer groups or individuals to create high responses and greater brand interaction.
As business becomes increasingly global with greater access to the Internet, mobile phones and social media, new challenges exist to inform people in targeted foreign markets. Shifts in the global economy and access to new markets lead also to greater demands for product shipping and associated services. To be effective, marketing communications must be tailored to its channels. For example: the public relations messaging set is customized to its target audience which is media and the industry, the messaging will be about data proofed achievements, whereas in social media messaging content is more friendly and about the brand's soft qualities. communication strategies must converge with marketing objectives while also accounting for local languages, dialects and cultural norms.
External communications might involve market research questionnaires, an office website, guarantees, company annual reports and presentations for investors. Internal communication can be marketing materials, price lists, product catalogs, sales presentations and management communications. On the other hand, each market demands different types of communications. For example, the industrial market demands more personal communication but the consumer market demands non-personal communication.

Types of communication

There are also 4 different fundamental types of communication.
  • One-to-many: this kind of communication is the most original communication. It is "generated from a single broadcast point and then available over airwaves or in mass print runs". This type of communication is usually adapted to news distribution that is not specific, not even interactive. Such as in an urgent notice play over airwave from broadcast in an industry, it is helpful for the general announcement.
  • Many-to-one: many-to-one is usually connected to the one-to-many communication. For example, a reply button in your email box, a prepaid number bought from Spark. All the communication techniques proceeded to the public with bi-directional communication from mass communications.
  • One-to-one: this is the most intensive and interactive communication at a one-to-one level. There are so many examples like a sales presentation; a negotiation in the market or direct delivery is based on one-to-one communication. Most of this communication is face-to-face. But with the development of the Internet, email and online shopping are taking the chance to be face to face with people. Which provided the chance for sellers and buyers to talk more directly. Another important is instant message 'chat' channels like Wechat and Facebook, which are becoming extremely popular in business.
  • Many-to-many: on the background of the highly developed Internet, the many-to-many communication has been growing up such as online chat rooms, 'blogging' websites. The many-to-many communication stands for the participants being able to exchange their ideas and experiences.
One-to-one is more immediate, while the many-to-many channels tend to be less urgent but with greater longevity.

Psychology of communication

One of the primary goals of marketing communication is to persuade consumers or businesses, by either changing their perception of a brand, product, or service or persuading them to purchase a product or service. The "Elaboration Likelihood Model" is used to demonstrate how persuasion occurs. When a marketing communication message is sent out, first it must be acknowledged and attended by the receiver. By giving their attention to marketing communication, consumers will begin to process and comprehend the message. There are two routes to persuasion: Central and peripheral. Central route processing is used in high-involvement purchase decisions. These are infrequent, high-risk purchases, usually involving large amounts of money and a significant amount of time. Because these purchase decisions are high risk, a large cognitive effort is expended in order to rationally select the most logical and valuable option available. In these marketing messages, information about the product or service itself is most valuable.
Peripheral route processing is employed in low involvement purchase decisions. These are frequent, low-risk purchases, generally of a low or medium cost in which choices are made more on affective values rather than cognitive values. Because of this, marketing messages will employ more storytelling and imagery, focusing on how the product or service makes one feel, and the associations it has, rather than the attributes and specifications it possesses.