Marketing communications

Definition:-

Marketing communications are the messages and related media which are used to communicate with in a market to customer.

Marketing communications can be defined as the strategy used by a company to reach their target market through various modes of communication.

Marketing communications is the "promotion" part of the "marketing mix" or one of the "four Ps": price, place, promotion, and product.

Marketing communication includes advertising, direct marketing, branding, e- marketing, printed materials, PR activities, sales presentations, sponsorships, and more.

Marketing communication objectives

Marketing communication has following objectives. As follows:

1. Increase Awareness

Increased brand awareness is typically the first for a new company. When it initially enters the market, it has to make people know about company and its products or services. This might include broadcast commercials or print ads that represent the image of company and constant repetition of your brand name, slogans and jingles. The whole objective is to become known and memorable. Established companies often use it for maintaining top position in the mind of customer, which means customers, should think first for them while purchasing any product.

2. Change Attitudes

Sometimes, misconceptions or negative publicity develop in the market about company, products or services. Advertising is a way to correct them directly.

3. Influence Purchase intention

A key communication objective is to motivate customers to buy. This is normally done through persuasive advertising, Sports drink commercials showing athletes competing, getting hot and sweaty and then taking a drink afterward is a common approach to drive purchase intent. The ads normally include benefits of the drink related to taste or nutrients. The various ways to influence purchase intension are as follows:-

Provide a money-back guarantee Competitive pricing Low interest rates Easy return policy A buy one get one free Show how the product or service will save the purchaser time

4. Stimulate Trial Purchase

Two separate but closely related communication objectives are to motivate trial use and drive repeat purchases. Free trials or product samples are common techniques to persuade customers to try company offering product for the first time. The goal is to take away the risk and get the customer to experience other brand. Once the customer gets them on the first purchase, then marketers have to figure out how to convert that into a follow-up purchase. Discounts on the next purchase or frequency programs are ways to turn one-time users into repeat buyers and, ultimately, loyal customers.

5. Drive Brand Switching

Another objective closely tied to stimulating trial use is driving brand switching. This is a specific objective of getting customers who buy competing products to switch to our brand. Tide detergent is normally pitted against "other leading brands" in comparative ads intended to motivate brand switching.

6. Encourage Action from Your Target Audience (Remind)

While encouraging the target audience is quite similar to persuading them to make a purchase. It is certainly true that using a buy one, get one FREE offer is encouragement, however, if we only advertise using one communication channel and only for a brief period, for example a one week period, you will certainly see a drop off in interest and purchases. As we know, out of sight, out of mind.

7. SHORTENING THE SALES CYCLE

Shortening the sales cycle means supporting sales and channel partners in their work or efforts to identify engage and deliver a customer. In various products, the sales cycle involves considerable amounts of customer education in the early stages of the process. Marketing communications must focus on creating, and delivering relevant information to the

buyer throughout the buying process in order to shortening the sales cycle.

Definition for integrated marketing communication(IMC)

The first definition for integrated marketing communication came from the American Association of Advertising Agencies (also 4A's) in 1989, defining IMC as:-

"An approach/ process to achieve the objectives of a marketing campaign/ program through a well-coordinated use of different promotional methods that are intended to support each other”.

A marketing concept that is designed to make all elements of marketing communication such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing, etc, work together as a unified(combined) force, rather than permitting each to work in isolation.

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) IMC “is the coordination and integration of all marketing communication tools, avenues, and sources within a company into a seamless program that maximizes the impact on consumers and other end users at a minimal cost”

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) can be defined as a blend (mix together) of various promotional & communications tools and techniques to maximize profit.

IMC is an act of combining or unified various elements of marketing communication in order to develop unity & consistency in message. .

Integrated marketing communications is an approach used by organizations to coordinate their marketing efforts across multiple communication channels.

Integrated Marketing Communications, or IMC means integrating all the promotional tools, so that they work together in harmony to develop greater impact on the targeted customer.

IMC is used practically to recover one medium's weakness by the strength of another medium's and thus create greater impact.

Reasons for the growth of IMC

Decreasing message impact and credibility: The growing number of commercial messaging made it increasingly more difficult for a single message to have a significant effect.

Decreasing costs of databases: The cost of storing and retrieving names, addresses and information from databases significantly reduced. This reduction allowed marketers to reach consumers more effectively.

Increasing client expertise: Clients of marketing and public relations firms became more educated regarding advertising policies, procedures and tactics. Clients began to realize that television advertising was not the only way to reach consumers.

Increasing mergers and acquisitions of agencies: Many top public relations firms and advertising agencies became partners or partnered with other communication firms. These mergers allowed for more creativity, and the expansion of

communication from only advertising, to other disciplines such as event planning and promotion.

Increasing global marketing: There was a rapid entry in advertising competition from foreign countries. Companies quickly realized that even if they did not conduct business outside their own country, they were now competing in global marketing.

Increasing media and audience fragmentation: With the increase of newspapers, media outlets, such as magazines and television stations, from 1980 to 1990. Additionally, companies could use new technologies and computers to target specialized audiences.

Increasing number of overall products: Manufacturers flooded retailers with a plethora of new products, many of which were identical to products that already existed. Therefore, a unique marketing and branding approach was crucial to attract customer attention and increase sales.

Results

In the traditional approach to marketing communications, businesses and their agencies plan separate campaigns for advertising, press relations, direct marketing and sales promotions. Integrated campaigns use the same communication tools to reinforce each other and improve marketing effectiveness. In an integrated campaign, you can use advertising to raise awareness of a product and generate leads for the sales force. By communicating the same information in press releases and feature articles, you reinforce the messages in the advertising. You can then use direct mail or email to follow up inquiries from the advertising or press campaigns and provide prospects with more information. To help convert those prospects to customers, you can use telemarketing to sell directly or make appointments for the sales team.

Creative Consistency

In an integrated campaign, the different tools feature the same creative treatment. By repeating the headlines, key phrases and images in each communication, you ensure that prospects and customers receive consistent messages each time they see one of the elements of the campaign. Creative consistency helps reinforce the basic campaign themes by increasing the number of times prospects see or hear the same message.

Related Reading: Brand Strategy & Integrated Marketing Communication

Cost Savings

Creative consistency in your integrated campaigns can also save you money. By using the same images and adapting the same copy for different media, you reduce copy-writing, design and photography costs. If you work with external communications suppliers, you may be able to reduce agency fees by working with a single firm that offers integrated communications services, rather than separate specialist agencies.

Customer Preference

An integrated campaign helps you provide customers with information in the format they prefer. Consumers and business customers can specify if they want to receive product

information via email, direct mail, text message or telephone. Integration ensures they receive the same information in all communications. You can also meet the needs of customers who search the Internet for product information by integrating your website design and content with other communications

Model and stages[edit]

Similar to the definition of IMC, models of the IMC approach vary according to the source cited. Frequently, models stress the importance of blending various marketing tools to maximize the customer experience and value. IMC models also often emphasize the lack of a specific hierarchy of importance in the IMC stages: all components of the model play an equally important role and a company may or may not choose to immediately implement any or all of the integration strategies.[9]

Level 1: Tactical Coordination and Marketing Communications Initial IMC focus is on the tactical coordination of diverse marketing such as advertising, promotion, direct response, public relations, and special events. This level focuses on delivering “one sight, one sound” via marketing communication.[9]

Level 2: Redefining the Scope of Marketing Communication The organization begins to examine communications from the customer’s point of view. Marketing communication begins to give consideration to all sources of brand and company contact a customer has with the product or service. Management broadens the scope of communication activities to encompass and coordinate internal marketing employees, suppliers, and other business partners and align with the existing external communication programs.[9]

Level 3: Application of Information Technology An organization’s application of empirical data using information technology to provide a basis identity, value, and monitor the impact of integrated internal and external communication programs to key customer segments over time.[9]

Level 4: Financial and Strategic Integration The emphasis shifts to using the skills and data generated in the earlier stages to drive corporate strategic planning using customer information and insights. Organizations re-evaluate their financial information infrastructure.[9]

Importance of integrated marketing communications[edit]

Integration has become an essential concept in marketing because technological advances have changed how business stakeholders interact. Marketing theory that was established during the discipline’s formative years has been overtaken by the complexities of real-time, multimodal, multi directional communication.[10]

A few examples help illustrate the growing importance of integration:

Search marketing: When someone is considering buying a product or service they will often conduct an online search. What they find, on Google and other search engines, as well as information from news sites, review sites, directories, videos and place-based searches, are presented together, so like it or not, there is a level of integration. The online experience will affect their attitudes towards a brand and their behavior. Marketers therefore need to concern

themselves with making sure their brand is found ahead of competitors' and then ensuring their audience has a positive and helpful experience.

Accessibility and convenience: Consumers expect information and services that relate to a brand to be conveniently accessible via its website. For instance when a consumer visits Virgin.com they are able to book a flight, manage their money, top up their mobile phone plan or find up-to-date news about the company.[11]

Aggregation of information and services: The traditional demarcation between a company, its suppliers and customers has become confused. For instance the Apple iTunes app store aggregates software and information from app makers, along with reviews provided by consumers.[12] Product promotion, delivery, service and information from many different sources are seamlessly presented together.

Social media: Traditionally businesses were largely in control of their brand communications. Now brand communications are multidirectional as consumers can easily share, comment and create content. Brands can use this to their advantage by creating appealing content. For instance Unilever’s campaign for Dove, The Dove Real Beauty Sketches went viral with over 54 million views on YouTube.[13]

Growth of mobile: The growing penetration of smartphones with fast internet connectivity means that marketers need to take into consideration integration between the online experience and place-based experiences. For instance when a consumer downloads the Target app they are able to receive coupons to their mobile phone and redeem them at the checkout by presenting the coupon barcode to the cashier.[14]

Notes[edit]

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