Marketing communications

Marketing communications include advertising, promotions, sales, branding and online promotion. The process allows the public to know or understand the brand. Successful branding entails a target audience that appreciates the organization’s marketing program.

Advertising is a small but important part of marketing communications; the complex of marketing communications is a set of tools that can be used to provide clear and consistent information to the target audience. It is also commonly called an advertising mix. Crozier (1990) claims that all terms have the same meaning in the context of 4ps: product, price, location and promotion ^[3] . Price can send a message to the target audience. For example, comparing a $ 50 bag with a $ 10 bag, the former can be considered a luxury item or more durable.

A marketing plan identifies key opportunities, threats, weaknesses and strengths, sets goals and develops an action plan to achieve marketing goals. Each 4P section sets its own object; for example, pricing may consist in increasing sales in a particular geographic market by setting the price of your own product or service lower than that of their competitors. This creates significant changes in the market. More and more people in the target market will strive 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.

• 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 consumers from marketing messages (for example, people talking nearby make it difficult to listen to radio ads). Clutter is the large amount and concentration of advertising presented to the consumer at any 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 mess and be heard over the noise. (Ang, 2014. “Principles of Integrated Marketing Communications.” P. 11.)

• Consumer apathy is a consumer’s tendency to avoid marketing communications. The consumer may not be interested or consider himself “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 typically buy familiar brands, but are not inspired to explore alternatives. One approach that marketers use to overcome apathy is to create incentives, such as competitive prices or rewards for loyalty. (Ang, 2014. “Principles of Integrated Marketing Communications.” P. 11.)

• Brand parity means that the brand is not significantly different from its competitor. Without a clear value proposition, consumers do not develop brand or association preferences, but instead buy exclusively on the basis of 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 separately from competitors.
• The marketing mix is the most important part of the marketing strategy, which is “the basis for marketing management and its inclusion in the business context ^[4] ”.

• Marketing strategy: how a business achieves its marketing goals. The first step to achieving a marketing strategy is to define a goal in the market and develop a plan that a business can implement ^[4] .

Communication is one of the important aspects of the marketing mix. Marketing communications are often the largest communications component within a company that can represent the values, goals, or specific products and services of a company to investors, customers, or the general public. In the 21st century, communication goals focused on more personalized messages aimed at groups of customers or individuals in order to create high responses and expand interaction with the brand.

As the business becomes more global with the expansion of access to the Internet, mobile phones and social networks, new problems arise for informing people in the target foreign 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 be consistent with marketing goals, and take into account local languages, dialects, and cultural norms.

External communications may include market research questionnaires, an office website, guarantees, a company annual report, and investor presentations. 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 communications. For example, the industrial market requires more personal communication, and the consumer market, on the contrary, is not personal.

There are also 4 different basic types of communication.

• From one to many: this type of communication is the most original. It is "generated from a single broadcast point and then available via radio waves or in mass runs." This type of communication is usually adapted for the distribution of news that is not specific or even interactive. For example, in an urgent broadcast broadcast notification, this is useful for a general announcement.

• From many to one: many to one are usually associated with one-to-many communication. For example, the response button in your inbox, the prepaid number purchased from Spark. All communication methods were distributed to the public using bi-directional communication from mass communication.
• Individual communication: this is the most intense and interactive communication on an individual level. There are so many examples, such as a sales presentation; negotiations in the market or direct delivery, which are based on individual communication. In the development of the Internet, email and online shopping, there is a chance to meet people face to face. This allows sellers and buyers to communicate more directly.
• From many to many: against the backdrop of a highly developed Internet, many-to-many communication has grown, for example, online chats, “blogging” websites. Many-to-many communication stands allow participants to exchange ideas and experiences.

One-to-one is more direct, while the channels of many to many tend to be less urgent, but with a longer life span ^[5] .

Communication Psychology

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 convincing them to purchase (or feel motivated / tempted to buy) a product or service. A “development probability model” is used to demonstrate how persuasion occurs. When a marketing communication message is sent, it must first be acknowledged and received. Paying attention to marketing communications, consumers will begin to process and understand the message. There are two ways of persuading: central and peripheral. Central route processing is used in high-engagement purchasing decisions. These are infrequent purchases with a high degree of risk, which are usually associated with a lot of money and a significant amount of time (for example, buying a house or car). Since these purchase decisions are fraught with high risk, great cognitive efforts are expended in order to rationally choose 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 used when making purchase decisions with low involvement. These are frequent purchases with a low level of risk, usually with a low or medium cost, in which the choice is made more on affective (or based on emotions) values, rather than on cognitive (or rational) values. Because of this, marketing messages will use more storytelling and images, which will focus on how the product or service gives a feel, as well as on the associations associated with it, rather than the attributes and specifications that it possesses.

The main directions of marketing communications:

1. advertising ;
2. public relations (PR);
3. branding
4. publicity ;
5. loyalty programs ;
6. direct marketing ;
7. sponsorship
8. sales promotion .

Other marketing communications tools:

1. packaging;
2. branded souvenirs as gifts;
3. Granting a license to use company or product trademarks;
4. after-sales (service) service;
5. personal sale;
6. unplanned appeals;
7. means of trade promotion or advertising and design tools for points of sale that deliver marketing messages directly to points of sale and increase the likelihood of buyers buying goods (internal store coupons, etc.).

The following activities are closely related to marketing communications:

• marketing
• branding
• graphic design ;
• sales .

Integrated marketing communications ( Eng. Integrated marketing communications ) - the concept of sharing all types of marketing communications, based on common goals.

Communications at the same time complement each other. There is a synergy effect, which allows you to achieve efficiency, elusive when using certain types of marketing communications.

Integrated marketing communications shares mean the use of a set of marketing and communication tools to implement a specific marketing strategy. ^[6]

Benefits of Integrated Marketing Communications:

1. unity of management of a product promotion campaign;
2. unity of campaign planning;
3. unity of campaign financing.

As a result, this approach is much cheaper than the traditional one. Significant savings are possible because This approach allows you to abandon direct advertising on television.

On the other hand, integrated communications are more time consuming and intellectually demanding. They place higher demands on the qualifications of employees and the quality of management.

For an integrated approach to developing an integrated communication strategy, there are a number of models. One of them is the PESO model ^[7] . On its basis, a unified communication strategy can be developed for promotion across all channels. In the model name, four main groups of information distribution channels are encrypted - Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned.

A completely new approach to integrated marketing communications is provided by the Internet. If in traditional media channels communication is impersonal, then the World Wide Web allows you to personalize the message, track the stage of communication with the consumer, and apply .