Marketing Communications
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| Marketing Communications |
Marketing communications consist of the marketing mix, which is 4Ps: Price, Promotion, Place, and Product, for a business selling merchandise, and 7Ps: Price, Promotion, Place, Product, People, Evidence, and Process, for a service-based business.
Overview
Marketing communications include advertising, promotions, sales, branding, campaigning, and online promotion. The process allows the public to know or understand the brand and get a clear idea of what the brand will offer. With growing technologies and methods, there is direct customer involvement. This is done, including their ideas and creations, in product development and brand promotion. Successful branding includes a target audience that appreciates the organization's marketing program.
Advertising is a small but important part of marketing communications; A marketing communications mix is a set of tools that can be used to deliver clear and consistent information to a target audience. It is also commonly referred to as an advertising mix. Crozier (1990) argues that all terms have the same meaning in the context of 4ps: product, price, place, and promotion. The price can send a message to the target audience. For example, when comparing a $50 bag with a $10 bag, the former can be seen as a luxury item or more durable.
The marketing plan identifies key opportunities, threats, weaknesses, and strengths, sets goals, and develops an action plan to achieve marketing goals. Each 4P section sets up its object; for example, pricing might be to increase sales in a particular geographic market by pricing your product or service lower than their competitors. This creates significant changes in the market. More people in the target market will seek to do business with your organization than with your competitors, as pricing is one of the most important aspects of marketing that can change the entire market positively or negatively.
Definitions
- Communication Barriers: Communication barriers are factors that interfere with the goals of marketing communication. The main communication barriers are noise and confusion, consumer apathy, brand parity, and weak creative ideas or strategies. Noise is an unrelated sensory stimulus that distracts the consumer from the marketing message (for example, people talking nearby making it difficult to listen to radio ads). Clutter is the large number and concentration of advertisements presented to the consumer at any given time. Since attention cannot be divided, there is a limit to how much can be taken and processed, which means that strong marketing communication must stand out from the clutter and be heard above the noise. (Ang, 2014. Principles of Integrated Marketing Communications. p. 11.)
- Consumer apathy is the consumer's tendency to avoid marketing communications. The consumer may not be interested or consider themselves "in the market" and try to eliminate unnecessary marketing incentives; this is known as selective attention. Alternatively, the consumer may be "in the market" but not aware of the existence or prevalence of the brand or products. Consumers tend to buy familiar brands but are not inspired to explore alternatives. One approach marketers use to overcome apathy is to create incentives such as competitive pricing or loyalty rewards. (Ang, 2014. Principles of Integrated Marketing Communications. p. 11.)
- Brand parity means that a brand is not significantly different from its competitor. Without a clear value proposition, consumers do not develop brand preferences or associations, but instead buy based solely on price (Ang, 2014. Principles of Integrated Marketing Communications, p. 12). This is not ideal as effective marketing communication increases brand equity. One of the important goals of marketing communications is to create a strong, unique brand identity that allows you to position the brand apart from competitors.
- The marketing mix is the most important part of a marketing strategy, which is "the framework for managing marketing and incorporating it into a business context".
- Marketing Strategy: How a business achieves its marketing goals. The first step to achieving a marketing strategy is to identify a target in the market and develop a plan that the business can implement.
- Marketing research does not include a proven order of steps leading to a conclusion. This is an iterative process that requires a broader perspective. From time to time, projects may need to degrade and change the entire process. Let's take the example of Nokia when they were preparing to compete in the smartphone market. In November 2011, they decided to come up with something new, especially aimed at young people who were switching to Finnish smartphones. This switch should bring several changes, from the basics of training in-house teams, targeting product promotion, and marketing people for innovations.
Communications
Communication is one of the important aspects of the marketing mix.
In marketing in the 21st century, communication goals are focused on more personalized messages aimed at groups of customers or individuals to create high responses and enhance brand engagement.
As business becomes more global with increased access to the Internet, mobile phones, and ones and media the rand media challenges to inform people in targeted overseas markets. Changes in the global economy and access to new markets also lead to an increase in demand for the delivery of products and related services.
To be effective, communication strategies must align with marketing objectives and take into account local languages, dialects, and cultural norms.
External communications may include market research questionnaires, the office's website, warranties, the company's annual report, and presentations to investors.
Internal communications can be marketing materials, price lists, product catalogs, sales presentations, and management communications. On the other hand, each market requires different types of communication.
For example, the industrial market requires more personal communication, while the consumer market, on the contrary, does not require personal communication.
There are also 4 different basic types of communication.
- From one to many: this kind of communication is the most original. It is "generated from a single broadcast location and then available over the airwaves or in mass distribution." This type of communication is usually adapted for the dissemination of news that is not specific or even interactive. For example, in an emergency broadcast announcement, this is useful for a general announcement.
- Many to One: Many to One is usually associated with one-to-many communication. For example, a reply button in your inbox, or a prepaid number purchased from Spark. All methods of communication were extended to the public through bi-directional communications from mass communications.
- One-to-One Communication: This is the most intense and interactive communication on an individual level. There are so many examples, such as a sales presentation; market negotiation, or dropshipping, which are based on individual communication. With the development of the Internet, e-mail, and online shopping, there is a chance to meet people face to face. This allows sellers and buyers to communicate more directly.
- Many-to-many: Against the backdrop of the highly developed Internet, many-to-many communication has grown, such as online chat rooms, and "blog" websites. Many-to-many communication booths allow participants to exchange ideas and experiences.
One-to-one is more immediate, while many-to-many channels tend to be less urgent but with a longer lifespan.
Psychology of communication
One of the main goals of marketing communications is to convince consumers, either by changing their perception of a brand, product, or service or by persuading them to purchase (or feel motivated/tempted to buy) a product or service.
The "Design Probability Model" is used to demonstrate how persuasion occurs. When a marketing communication message is sent, it must first be acknowledged and received.
By paying attention to marketing communications, consumers will begin to process and understand the message.
There are two ways of persuasion: central and peripheral.
Route central processing is used in high-engagement purchase decisions. These are infrequent, high-risk purchases that usually involve a lot of money and a significant amount of time (for example, buying a house or a car). Because these buying decisions are high-risk, a lot of cognitive effort goes into rationally choosing the most logical and valuable option available. In these marketing messages, information about the product or service itself is the most valuable.
Peripheral route processing is used in low-engagement purchasing decisions. These are frequent, low-risk purchases, usually of low or medium value, in which choices are made more on affective (or emotion-based) values rather than cognitive (or rational) values. Because of this, marketing messages will use more storytelling and imagery that will focus on how a product or service gives a feeling and its associated associations rather than attributes and specifications.
Types of Marketing Communications
Main directions of marketing communications:
- advertising ;
- public relations (PR);
- branding ;
- publicity ;
- loyalty programs ;
- direct marketing ;
- sponsorship ;
- sales promotion.
Other marketing communications tools:
- package;
- branded souvenirs as gifts;
- granting a license to use company or product trademarks;
- after-sales (service) service;
- personal selling;
- unplanned calls;
- point-of-sale promotional or display products that deliver a marketing message directly to the point of sale and increase the likelihood of purchase by customers (in-store coupons, etc.).
Industry-related marketing communication
Social media market penetration is on the rise thanks to services such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Tiktok.
Companies use these external platforms to engage existing and future customers, strengthen brand messaging, influence customer opinions, deliver targeted offers, and serve customers more effectively.
The following activities are closely related to marketing communications
- marketing ;
- branding ;
- graphic design ;
- sales.
Relationship Marketing Communications
From this, Tom Duncan and Sandra E. Moriarty formed the concept of relationship marketing based on communication. This model was at odds with the concept of a general one-way scenario where business influences consumers, and what to believe.
However, Duncan and Moriarty argued that communication between businesses and consumers is the key to building a strong institution for consumer-facing marketing efforts.
The IMC process through communication marketing goes through a sequential three-step process. Organizations start by choosing an effective mix of communication methods; then marketing methods are selected; after that, the best of each element is fused and integrated, and then transferred from the organization to the audience.
Subsequently, these results have shaped modern marketing by focusing on an interactive two-way approach that builds rapport with stakeholders.
The development of integrated marketing communications has evolved into three categories: the inside-out approach, the outside-in approach, and the cross-functional strategic approach.
Integrated Marketing Communications
Integrated marketing communications is the concept of sharing all types of marketing communications based on common goals.
The communications complement each other. There is a synergy effect, which allows you to achieve the efficiency that is difficult to achieve when using certain types of marketing communications.
Then integrated marketing communications means the use of complex marketing and communication tools to implement a specific marketing strategy.
Benefits of Integrated Marketing Communications:
- unity of campaign management to promote the product;
- unity of campaign planning;
- campaign funding unity.
As a result, this approach is much cheaper than the traditional one. Significant savings are possible because we approach that that that that that makes it possible to refuse the advertising on television.
On the other hand, integrated communications are more labor-intensive and intellectually intensive. They make higher demands on the qualifications of employees and the quality of management.
For an integrated approach to developing an integrated communications strategy, there are several models. One of them is the PESO model. Based on it, you can develop a unified communication strategy for promotion across all channels. The name of the model encodes four main groups of information dissemination channels - Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned.
The Internet provides a completely new approach to integrated marketing communications. If communication in traditional media channels is impersonal, then the World Wide Web allows you to personalize the message, track the stage of communication with the consumer, and apply dynamic pricing.
