Marketing Communications

Marketing communications are messages and related media used to communicate with a market. Marketing communications is the "promotion" part of the "marketing mix" or the "four Ps": price, place, promotion, and product. It can also refer to the strategy used by a company or individual to reach their target market through various types of communication.
Traditionally, marketing communications practitioners focused on the creation and execution of printed marketing collateral; however, academic and professional research developed the practice to use strategic elements of branding and marketing in order to ensure consistency of message delivery throughout an organization - a consistent "look & feel".
But, Nowadays Marketing communication is use widely every sector of marketing promotion and other activities. Therefore, It is define as like this its a coordinated promotional messages delivered through one or more channels such as print, radio, television, direct mail, and personal selling.

Marketing Communication Tools

A marketing person has many tools at his disposal for generating awareness and supporting the selling effort.  While there are numerous marketing communication tools, there are also numerous mixes for these tools. The following is a list of some of the more common tools along with examples of their use and some considerations. One important note is remember that marketing communication tools do improve understanding your product or service, reinforcing your messages, supporting the sales cycle and generating awareness.

1.  Advertising

  Traditionally, advertising is defined as any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. (Kotler and Armstrong).

  Personal advertising will be very much like direct response advertising, while it has many of the traditional elements of advertising, it will be more tightly directed to individual respondents.  However, it will still be communication efforts which are nonpersonal (e.g. resumes, applications, etc.), transmitted to members of a target audience through a mass media approach (such as mail, bulletin board posting, etc.).  Obviously, the sender is identified (at least eventually). It is communication which has been undertaken and funded by the sender. More and more, strategic career management efforts are moving toward electronic media.  Web pages, email, faxes and other electronic media are fundamentally used to support personal advertising messages.

2. Public Relations & Publicity

  Public Relations is the act of building good relations with the company's various publics by obtaining favourable publicity, building up a good "corporate image," and handling or heading off unfavourable rumors, stories, and events. (Kotler and Armstrong). 

  In a traditional context, organizations will use news releases, press kits, special events and other interest generating efforts in order to get the right people (the press, stock holders, etc.) to communicate favorably about the organization.  The messages are consider to be better than advertising as they are not sponsored by the sender and are communicated freely by a reliable source of information.

3. Direct Marketing

A form of advertising in which physical marketing materials are provided to consumers in order to communicate information about a product or service. Direct marketing does not involve advertisements placed on the internet, on television or over the radio. Types of direct marketing materials include catalogs, mailers and fliers.

Direct marketing removes the "middle man" from the promotion process, as a company's message is provided directly to a potential customer. This type of marketing is typically used by companies with smaller advertising budgets, since they cannot afford to pay for advertisements on television and often do not have the brand recognition of larger firms. 

4. Personal selling

  Personal selling is paid personal communication that informs customers and persuades them to buy products. (Pride and Ferrell)

  Personal selling, in a personal context, will include all oral face-to-face communications with members of the target audience where at least one of the potential outcomes is to inform or persuade the audience about the individual. One of the most commonly used tools will be an interview, but conceivably, all business conversation may have elements of personal selling.

5. Sales promotion

  Sales promotion is an activity and/or material meant to induce resellers or salespeople to sell a product or consumers to buy it. (Pride and Ferrell)  Sales promotion efforts tend to concentrate on inducing immediate action and often rely on discounting the price of the product, restricted the consumer to specific time periods and may call on a specific action from the consumer (e.g. price discounts, coupons, limited time offers, bundling, rebates, etc.)

  Sales promotion activities are less appealing in career management context, because we are typically unwilling to offer our services at a discounted price.  Even so, some elements of sales promotion are sometimes useful, most frequently toward the end of the process and in stages of negotiations. For example, a job candidate, having already received an offer from one company, might call another organization and indicate the need for immediate action on their part - in effect a "limited time offer" promotion. 

  

Top Eight Marketing and Sales Strategies

No matter what business you work in, a "business as usual" mindset will insure your competitors are making more money than you are. Here are eight tips to help you stand out from the competition so you won't find yourself stood up by your customers.

        Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "The great thing in life is not where we stand, but what direction we are moving." No matter what business you work in, a "business as usual" mindset will insure your competitors are making more money than you are. If you don't stand out from the competition you may find yourself stood up by your customers. Now more than ever you have to focus, improve, and possibly even change what you do to attain, retain, and maintain customers.

Strategy 1. Think big and audit your time: No matter the size of your business, place a mental image in your mind as if you are the largest and most successful person in your industry. How much time is consumed by routine office work someone else should be doing? Spend more time with more important tasks such as marketing strategies, improving customer relations, and implementing new strategies to expand your services.

Strategy 2. Be different and stand out from the competition: Jordan Furniture sells more furniture per square foot than any other furniture store in the nation. They transformed their family-owned business into a multi-million dollar corporation by following a principle called "shoppertainment." To surprise employees and customers, Barry and Eliot Tatleman dressed up like the Lone Ranger and Tonto and rode horses in their parking lot. They built an IMax theater inside one store to entertain children while their parents shopped. When you drive around the back to pick up your furniture they provide you free hotdogs and wash your car windows.

Strategy 3. Build relationships with your customers: For each month that goes by, customers lose 10% of their buying power. Create a customer database and contact them on a regular basis. Mail them a postcard, birthday card, sales flyer, newsletter etc. to keep your name, phone number, and service on their mind.

Strategy 4. Collect E-Mail Addresses: Get permission from your customers to use their E-mail address. Periodically send updates and notices to your client list. As long as you have their permission and avoid overuse, E-mail can be a powerful and inexpensive marketing tool.

Strategy 5. Hire top sales people: Successful businesses realize the quality of their sales staff is critical to sustaining their growth in the marketplace. A top salesperson can outsell an average one 4 to 1. Sales people must understand their strengths and have a well-defined plan to reach their potential. Many companies can provide you sales assessments to both identify top candidates and develop currently employed sales people.

Strategy 6. Put a shopping cart on your website. Online sales are still growing at a dramatic pace. This is coming from people who want to save time, avoid crowded stores, convenience, and the ability to shop outside of store hours. Just consider E-Bay for example, which generates millions of dollars of sales each year. It does not cost anything to set up an account on E-Bay, and you pay a proportion based on the cost of the item you are trying to sell. If you don't want to use E-bay, consider using your own shopping cart system on your website.

Strategy 7. Pay-per-click advertising: Many business owners are finding classified advertising is not an effective use of their marketing dollars. Others are finding pay-per-click advertising is an easier and cheaper way to reach a larger market. Pay-per-click will insure you receive top visibility on websites driving more customers to your door. Advertisers bid on keywords and the more popular the keyword, the more expensive each click is. Prices vary between ten cents to many dollars depending on the popularity of the word. The most popular pay-per-click advertisers are Google, Business.com, and Yahoo.

Strategy 8. Use customer service commandments to create good habits: Bates Ace Hardware store located in Atlanta created "Twenty Customer Service Commandments" modeled after the Ritz-Carlton hotels outlining specific behaviours employees are to demonstrate when dealing with customers and fellow employees. For example, "Accompany a customer to the correct aisle instead of pointing to another area of the store." They print the commandments on a small card and employees carry it with them at work.

Marketing Techniques to Increase Profit & Sales

1. The Best Customer for a New Product or Service Is an Existing Customer:

    Existing customers are the best target for new products, new services or new pricing. Existing customers have already shown that they are able and willing to give you money. Your products and services have already proven themselves to be of interest to these customers, and your pricing has, at least in the past, met their requirements. So when you need to increase revenues, start your marketing efforts with your existing customers. Contact them by phone, email, fax or flyer based upon what has proven effective in the past. Consider bundling new products and services with ones they have purchased in the past to create higher value and higher profit sales.

2. Existing Customers Can Sometimes Be Your Best Connection to New Customers:

        Every customer has friends, co-workers and business associates who are ideal candidates for your products and services. One reason that pens, calendars and key chains are great marketing tools is that they are seen by people who know your customers.

Occasionally you can ask customers to make direct referrals to you. If you offer a two-for-one special to your customers, they have the opportunity to give a gift to someone they work with or work for. This can introduce you to new customers quickly.

The danger inherent in trying to connect to new customers through existing customers is that existing customers may be offended at having to play any role in your marketing efforts. Offering deep discounts on products and services, like two-for-one discounts, can be a very bad strategy if the design of your promotion doesn't deliver a huge increase in paying customers.

3. Reaching Out to Competitor's Customers:

    Usually your customers are your best avenue to increased sales and new customers. But your competitors are a great source of customers as well. Agreeing to honor your competitor's coupons and special pricing is a great way to bring new customers into your factory. You may also find that placing ads where they place them works well. If your competitors routinely run ads in the local newspaper, local phone book, or on a specific website, your ads in those locations should be slightly larger and they should offer a specific benefit to customers coming from other businesses.

4. Reaching Out to New Customers:

         It is possible to design marketing efforts that reach out to new customers. For example, if you can find other products and services your customers use with your product or service, you may be able to find a way to market through those products and services. For example, a company that sells organic baby foods may find value in marketing through a diaper service that specializes in using only all-cotton diapers. Customers interesting in one product are likely to be interested in the other.

Marketing techniques clearly shows in funnel shape process to getting improvement in sales and generating high profit by reduction of cost of goods or services. 

The techniques and materials used by those who are involved in the promotion of goods and services. Most business that need to sell their goods or services to the public will make extensive use of various marketing tools, such as market research and advertising to help further their success.

                 Marketing tools, quite simply, are the tools that a company uses to market its products and services. Therefore, regardless of your company size, you must employ the use of marketing tools. Tools start with your business card and include items such as brochures, flyers, email campaigns, and your website. Many businesses are now using social networks as a method of marketing. Bottom line, you should be equipped with every tool available to give your company the maximum marketing exposure.

   Basically in marketing tools following foremost factors are plays vital role in marketing.

1. Advertising:

 Advertising or advertizing in business is a form of marketing communication used to encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience (viewers, readers or listeners; sometimes a specific group) to take or continue to take some action.

2. Public Relation:

Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public. Public relations may include an organization or individual gaining exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment. The aim of public relations by a company often is to persuade the public, investors, partners, employees, and other stakeholders to maintain a certain point of view about it, its leadership, products, or of political decisions. 

3. Direct Marketing:

Direct marketing is a channel-agnostic form of advertising that allows businesses and nonprofit organizations to communicate straight to the customer, with advertising techniques that can include cell phone text messaging, email, interactive consumer websites, online display ads, database marketing, fliers, catalog distribution, promotional letters, targeted television commercials, response-generating newspaper/magazine advertisements, and outdoor advertising. Amongst its practitioners, it is also referred to as Direct Response Advertising.

4. E-Marketing:

E-marketing refers to the use of the Internet and digital media capabilities to help sell your products or services. These digital technologies are a valuable addition to traditional marketing approaches regardless of the size and type of your business. E-marketing is also referred to as Internet marketing (i-marketing), online marketing or web-marketing.

As with conventional marketing, e-marketing is creating a strategy that helps businesses deliver the right messages and product/services to the right audience. It consists of all activities and processes with the purpose of finding, attracting, winning and retaining customers. What has changed is its wider scope and options compared to conventional marketing methods. E-marketing also embraces the management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) and several other business management functions.

E-marketing joins creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including: design, development, advertising and sales. It includes the use of a website in combination with online promotional techniques such as search engine marketing (SEM), social medial marketing, interactive online ads, online directories, e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, viral marketing and so on. The digital technologies used as delivery and communication mediums within the scope of e-marketing include: 

• Internet media such as websites and e-mail
• Digital media such as wireless, mobile, cable and satellite.

5. Personal Selling:

In the language of sales and marketing, "personal selling" singles out those situations in which a real human being is trying to sell something to another face-to-face.  While many marketers believe salespeople are only out to make a quick sale intended to increase their income and that they often do this by making unscrupulous deals undermining the marketer’s attempt to build strong brands.

6.Exhibitions:

An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within museums, galleries and exhibition halls, and World's Fairs. Exhibitions include (whatever as in major art museums and small art galleries; interpretive exhibitions, as at natural history museums and history museums), for example; and commercial exhibitions, or trade fairs. 

       Though exhibitions are common events, the concept of an exhibition is quite wide and encompasses many variables. Exhibitions range from an extraordinarily large event such as a World's Fair exposition to small one-artist solo shows or a display of just one item. Curators are sometimes involved as the people who select the items in an exhibition. 

7. Sales Promotions:

Sales promotion is one of the five aspects of the promotional mix. (The other 4 parts of the promotional mix are advertising, personal selling, direct marketing and publicity/public relations. Media and non-media marketing communication are employed for a pre-determined, limited time to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve product availability. Sales promotions can be directed at either the customer, sales staff, or distribution channel members (such as retailers). Sales promotions targeted at the consumer are called consumer sales promotions. Sales promotions targeted at retailers and wholesale are called trade sales promotions.

  Sales promotion includes several communications activities that attempt to provide added value or incentives to consumers, wholesalers, retailers, or other organizational customers to stimulate immediate sales. These efforts can attempt to stimulate product interest, trial, or purchase. Examples of devices used in sales promotion include coupons, samples, premiums, point-of-purchase (POP) displays, contests, rebates, and sweepstakes.

Above seven tools are the main elements which resolve the marketing activity where stakeholders who are the internal powerful sector which involves every section of marketing external tools.

Marketing Mix:
Marketing mix is nothing but combination of 4p's which regulate all marketing system and procedures. Which are as follows:

• the right product
• sold at the right price
• in the right place
• using the most suitable promotion.

To create the right marketing mix, businesses have to meet the following conditions:

• The product has to have the right features - for example, it must look good and work well.
• The price must be right. Consumer will need to buy in large numbers to produce a healthy profit.
• The goods must be in the right place at the right time. Making sure that the goods arrive when and where they are wanted is an important operation.
• The target group needs to be made aware of the existence and availability of the product through promotion. Successful promotion helps a firm to spread costs over a larger output.

1. THE PRODUCT: Exactly what product or service are you going to sell to this market? Define it in terms of what it does for your customer. How does it help your customer to achieve, avoid or preserve something? You must be clear about the benefit you offer and how the customer’s life or work will be improved if he or she buys what you sell.
2. THE PRICE: Exactly how much are you going to charge for your product or service, and on what basis? How are you going to price it to sell at retail? How are you going to price it at wholesale? How are you going to charge for volume discounts? Is your price correct based on your costs and the prices of your competitors?
3. THE PLACE: Where are you going to sell this product at this price? Are you going to sell directly from your own company or through wholesalers, retailers, direct mail, catalogs or the Internet?
4. THE PROMOTION: Promotion includes every aspect of advertising, brochures, packaging, salespeople and sales methodology. How are you going to promote, advertise and sell this product at this price at this location? What will be the process from the first contact with a prospect through to the completed sales?

Controllable factors vs Uncontrollable factors:

Controllable - The 4Ps representing the elements of marketing we can control internally. They depend upon such “givens” as your budget, personnel, creativity, etc.

Uncontrollable - The current economic environment including such elements as consumer confidence, degree of unemployment, new technologies, the threat of displacement, competitors, government regulations or changing consumer preferences.

Many marketing specialists are now seeing the 4Ps as too product-oriented and have adopted the 4Cs marketing mix. This model looks at the marketing from the customer’s point of view.

1. Place becomes Convenience
2. Price becomes Cost to the user
3. Promotion becomes Communication
4. Product becomes Customer needs and wants

These C’s reflect a more client-oriented marketing philosophy. They provide useful reminders - for example that you need to bear in mind the convenience of the client when deciding where to offer a service. To apply the 4Cs approach to marketing you must consider the impact of the “uncontrollable” elements on your marketing mix. The 4Cs explicitly require you to think like a customer.

8 Keys to a Strong Marketing Strategy

Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a one person shop, to be successful, you must have a marketing strategy and you must implement it consistently. However, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune and you don’t have to be a creative genius.

The key is developing a marketing strategy that forms a solid foundation for your promotional efforts. Implementing promotional activities such as advertising, direct mail or even networking and one-to-one sales efforts without a marketing strategy is like buying curtains for a house you are building before you have an architectural plan. How would you even know how many curtains to buy or what size they needed to be? Therefore, in marketing a goods or services we need to know about the market for that following strategy gives more clarity.  

1. Defining your product or service: How is your product or service packaged? What is it that your customers are really buying? You may be selling web-based software tools but your clients are buying increased productivity, improved efficiency and cost savings. And if you offer several products or services which ones are the most viable to promote?

2. Identifying your target market: Everyone or anybody might be potential clients for your product. However, you probably don’t have the time or money to market to Everyone or Anybody. Who is your ideal customer? Who does it make sense for you to spend your time and money promoting your service to? You might define your ideal customer in terms of income, age, geographic area, number of employees, revenues, industry, etc. For example a massage therapist might decide her target market is women with household incomes of $75,000 or more who live in the Uptown area.

3. Knowing your competition: Even if there are no direct competitors for your service, there is always competition of some kind. Something besides your product is competing for the potential client’s money. What is it and why should the potential customer spend his or her money with you instead? What is your competitive advantage or unique selling proposition?

4. Finding a niche: Is there a market segment that is not currently being served or is not being served well? A niche strategy allows you to focus your marketing efforts and dominate your market, even if you are a small player.

5. Developing awareness: It is difficult for a potential client to buy your product or service if they don’t even know or remember it exists. Generally a potential customer will have to be exposed to your product 5 to 15 times before they are likely to think of your product when the need arises. Needs often arise unexpectedly. You must stay in front of your clients consistently if they are going to remember your product when that need arises.

6. Building credibility: Not only must clients be aware of your product or service, they also must have a positive disposition toward it. Potential customers must trust that you will deliver what you say you will. Often, especially with large or risky purchases, you need to give them the opportunity to “sample”, “touch”, or “taste” the product in some way. For example, a trainer might gain credibility and allow potential customers to “sample” their product by offering free, hour long presentations on topics related to their area of specialty.

7. Being Consistent: Be consistent in every way and in everything you do. This includes the look of your collateral materials, the message you deliver, the level of customer service, and the quality of the product. Being consistent is more important than having the “best” product. This in part is the reason for the success of chains. Whether you’re going to Little Rock, Arkansas or New York City, if you reserve a room at a Courtyard Marriott you know exactly what you’re going to get.

8. Maintaining Focus: Focus allows for more effective utilization of the scarce resources of time and money. Your promotional budget will bring you greater return if you use it to promote a single product to a narrowly defined target market and if you promote that same product to that same target market over a continuous period of time.

Before you ever consider developing a brochure, running an ad, implementing a direct mail campaign, joining an organization for networking or even conducting a sales call, begin by mapping a path to success through the development of a consistent, focused marketing strategy.

Marketing:

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA) Board of Directors,

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Dr. Philip Kotler defines marketing as “the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit.  Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires. It defines, measures and quantifies the size of the identified market and the profit potential. It pinpoints which segments the company is capable of serving best and it designs and promotes the appropriate products and services.”

   Actually marketing is nothing but putting the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time to the right customers. So in marketing Product, Place, Price and Time or Promotion is the key factors.

  

Seven Key Tips in Developing a Successful Marketing Plan:

Tip 1: Conduct an Overall Assessment

First, you should do an assessment of your current marketing materials. Look at what is working and what is not working. Determine how effective your marketing efforts have been and what kind of results were generated. You also need to look at how your clients perceive you. The way you see your company may be very different from the way your audience views your company.

Tip 2: Set Your Goals 

As with any initiative or task, there has to be a goal in mind. Without a goal, how can you measure your success? The goals should also align with your company objectives and should be specific, obtainable and measurable. You need to have a plan that is substantial enough to show a return on your investment, but it also needs to be flexible enough to evolve.

Tip 3: Determine Your Target Audience

In order for your plan to work, it is critical that you know who your audience is so that you can determine the best way to reach them. Some products and services are geared for a wide audience, while others target a more specific market. You need to know as much about your target audience as possible.

Tip 4: Perform Research 

Good research can go a long way. It is the backbone in how you determine and improve your strategy. Research is concrete feedback and without knowing these facts, you would be guessing about which steps to take next. This can cause you to miss your target audience all together which will lead to missed sales and opportunities. Research can be done through a variety of ways that may include focus groups, surveys and the internet.

Tip 5: Determine Your Strategy

Your strategy is your “logic” through which the goals and objectives that you have established will be achieved. The strategy will outline how a particular product or service will be promoted to your target audience. Marketing strategies are used to increase sales, drive brand awareness, launch new products and generally provide profit for a company.

Tip 6: Define Your Tactics, Budget and Resources

Now you are ready to take the plan to the next level in which you determine the appropriate tactics to utilize in order to meet your goals. When you choose the tactics, summarize what it is, how to implement, why you should use it and what you expect from the outcome. Also, determine how you will track and measure each tactic: what gets measured gets results. Next, you need to determine your budget. The best way to arrive at some estimated costs is to list the tactics that you have identified in your plan with the associated costs outlined for each. You also need to determine who will implement the tactics. Can the implementation be done in-house, or will you need to look to outside sources?

Tip 7: Evaluate Your Plan

You spent a lot of time creating your marketing plan and you also need to include ways to know if your plan is working. You’ll need to give your plan time to work however. Some things will need to evolve and some things will need time to ramp up. Keep this in mind when evaluating if something is working or not.

  

         These are key elements to consider when you are developing a plan. It should be built with an end result in mind and fit the specific markets you are reaching. It should also be flexible in order to meet the needs of your audience, because as we all know in today’s world, things can change quite rapidly. Your plan should be simple and easy to understand. It may look great on paper, but if no one can comprehend the plan, then it will simply find a home on the shelf and collect dust. In order to grow a strong company, you must have a strong marketing plan.