The Role of Marketing Communications
- Marketing communications- are the means by which firms attempt to inform, persuade, and remind consumers-directly or indirectly-about the products and brands they sell.
- The Marketing Communications Mix- consists of eight major mods of communication.
- Advertising- any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor via print media, broadcast media, network media, electronic media, and display media.
- Sales promotion- Short-term incentives to encourage trial or purchase of a product or service including consumer promotions, trade promotions, and business and sales force promotions.
- Events and experiences- Company sponsored activities and programs designed to create brand-related interactions with consumers, including sports, arts, entertainment, and cause events as well as less formal activities.
- Public relations and publicity- Programs directed internally to employees of the company or externally to consumers, other firms, the government, and media to promote or protect a company's image or individual product communications.
- Online and social media marketing- Online activities and programs to engage customers or prospects and directly or indirectly raise awareness, improve image, or elicit sales.
- Mobile marketing- A special form of marketing that places communications on consumer's cell phones, smart phones, or tablets.
- Direct and database marketing- Use of mail, telephone, fax, e-mail, or Internet to communicate directly with or solicit response or dialogue from specific customers and prospects.
- Personal selling- Face-to-face interaction with prospective purchasers for the purpose of making presentations, answering questions, and procuring orders.
Communications Process Models
- · Marketers should understand fundamental elements of effective communications
- · Two models are useful: macro model and micro model
- · Response hierarchy models- Theses models assume the buyer passes through cognitive, affective, and behavioral stages in that order.
Developing
Effective Communications
- · Basics steps of developing effective communications:
o
Identifying the target audience
o
Setting the communications objectives
o
Designing the communications
o
Selecting the communication channels
o
Establishing the total marketing communications budget
Set the Communications Objectives
- · Establish need for category- establishing a product or service category as necessary for removing or satisfying a perceived discrepancy between a current motivational state and a desired motivational state.
- · Build brand awareness- Fostering the consumer’s ability to recognize or recall the brand in sufficient detail to make a purchase.
- · Build brand attitude- Helping consumers evaluate the brand’s perceived ability to meet a currently relevant need.
- · Influence brand purchase intention- Moving consumers to decide to purchase the brand or take purchase-related action.
Design the Communications
- · Formulating the communications to achieve the desired response requires answering three questions:
o
What to say
o
How to say it
o
Who should say it
- · Message Strategy- in selecting the message strategy, management searches for appeals, themes, or ideas that will tie in to the brand positioning and help establish point-to-parity or point-to-difference.
- · Creative Strategy- the way marketers translate their messages into a specific communication.
o
Informational appeal- elaborates on product or service
attributes or benefits.
o
Transformational appeal- elaborates on a non product-related
benefit or image
- · Message Source- the source’s credibility is crucial to a message’s acceptance.
- · The three most often identified sources of credibility are:
o
Expertise- the specialized knowledge communicator possesses
to back the claim.
o
Trustworthiness- describes how objective and honest the
source is perceived to be.
o
Likability- describes the source’s attractiveness, measured
in terms of candor, humor, and naturalness.
- · State of congruity- if a person has a positive attitude toward a source and a message or a negative attitude toward both.
- · Principle of congruity- implies that communicators can use their good image to reduce some negative feelings towards a brand but in the process might lose some esteem with the audience,
Select the Communications Channels
o
Communications channels may be personal and non personal.
Within each are many sub channels:
o
Personal Communications Channels- let two or more persons
communicate face to face or person to audience through a phone, surface mail,
or e-mail.
o
They derive their effectiveness from individualized
presentation and feedback and include:
§ Direct
marketing
§ Personal
selling
§ Word of
mouth
·
We can draw further distinction between:
1.
Advocate channels- consist of company salespeople contacting
buyers in the target market.
2.
Expert channels- consist of independent experts making
statements to target buyers.
3.
Social channels- consists of neighbors, friends, family
members, and associates talking to target buyers.
·
Personal influence carries especially great weight:
1.
When products are expensive, risky, or purchased
infrequently
2.
When products suggest something about the user’s status or
taste.
Non personal (Mass) Communications Channels
- · Communications directed to more than one person and include advertising, sales promotions, events and experiences, and public relations.
Integration of Communications Channel
- · Although personal communication is often more than mass communication, mass media might be the major means of stimulating it.
- · This two-step flow has several implications:
o
First, the influence of mass media on public opinion is not
as direct, powerful, and automatic as marketers have supposed. It is mediated
by opinion leaders and media mavens, people who track new ideas and whose
opinions others seek or who carry their opinions to others.
o
Second, the two-step flow challenges the notion that
consumption styles are primarily influenced by a “trickle-down” or “trickle-up”
effect from mass consumption styles are primarily within their own social
groups and acquire ideas from other opinion leaders and others engaged with
media if possible and let them carry the message to others.
Establishing the Total Marketing Communications Budget
- · Marketing communications budgets tend to be higher when there is low channel support, the marketing program changes greatly over time, many customers are hard to reach, customer decision making is complex, products are differentiated and customer needs are non homogeneous, and purchases are frequent and quantities small.
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