THE ROLE OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS Marketing communications are the means by which firms attempt to inform, persuade, and

d remind consumersdirectly or indirectly about the products and brands that they sell.

Marketing communications performs many functions for consumers:

Told or shown how and why a product is used. By what kind of person. Where and when . Learn about the product, the company, and what it stands for. Allows consumers to be given an incentive or reward for usage or trial. Allows companies to link their brands to people, places, feelings, and events. Marketing communications can contribute to brand equity by establishing the brand in memory and crafting a brand image.

 Marketing Communications and Brand Equity Marketing communications mix consists of six major modes of communication: Advertising. Sales promotion. Events and experiences. Public relations and publicity. Direct marketing. Personal selling.

 Marketing communication activities contribute to brand equity in many ways: By creating awareness of the brand. By linking the right associations to the brand image in the consumers memory. Eliciting positive brand judgments or feelings. And/or facilitating a stronger consumerbrand connection.

 The Communication Process Models Marketers should understand the fundamental elements of effective communication. Two models are useful: a macro model and a micro model

Macro Model of the Communication Process A) Two represent the major parties in a communication: Sender. Receiver. B) Two represent the major communication tools: Message. Media. C) Four represent major communications functions Encoding. Decoding. Response.

 4) Feedback. D) The last element is noise. E) The model emphasizes the key factors in effective communication: Senders must know what audiences they want to reach and what response they want to get. They must encode their messages so that the target audience can decode them. They must transmit the message through media that reaches the target audience.

 Develop feedback channels to monitor the responses. F) The more the senders field of experience overlaps with that of the receiver, the more effective the message is likely to be. G) Remember that: Selective attention. Distortion. Retention processes may be operating during communication.

 Micro Model of Consumer Responses Micro models of marketing communications concentrate on consumers specific response to communications.

 All these models assume that the buyer passes through a: Cognitive stage. Affective stage. Behavioral stage (in that order).
This learn-feel-do sequence is appropriate when the audience has a high involvement with a product category perceived to have high differentiation. An alternative sequence, do-feel-learn is relevant when the audience has high involvement but perceives little or no differentiation within the product category.

 A third sequence, learn-do-feel is relevant when the audience has low involvement and perceives little differentiation within the product category. By choosing the right sequence, the marketers can do a better job of planning communications.

 Here we will assume that the buyer has high involvement with the product category and perceives high differentiation:

1) A hierarchy-of-effects model in the context of a marketing communication campaign:

Awareness. Knowledge. Liking. Preference. Conviction. Purchase.

G) To increase the odds for a successful marketing communications campaign, marketers must attempt to increase the likelihood that each step occurs.

 DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATIONS There are five steps in developing effective communications: identifying the target audience, determining the objectives, designing the communications, selecting the channels, and establishing the budget.

Identifying the Target Audience A) The process starts with a clear target audience in mind. Potential buyers of the companys products. Current users, deciders, or influencers. Individuals, groups, or particular publics. General public. B) The target audience is a critical influence on the communicators decisions on: What to say. How to say it. When to say it. Where to say it. To whom to say it. C) The target audience can potentially be profiled in terms of any market segment.

 Determine the Communication Objectives Communication objectives can be set at any level of the hierarchy-of-effects model. A) Rossiter and Percy identify four possible objectives: Category need. Brand awareness. Brand attitude. Brand purchase intention.

 Design the Communication Formulating the communication to achieve the desired response will require solving three problems: what to say (message strategy), how to say it (creative strategy), and who should say it (message source

 Message Strategy In determining message strategy, management searches for appeals, themes, or ideas that will tie into the brand positioning and help to establish points-of-parity or points-of-difference.

 Creative Strategy Communication effectiveness depends on how a message is being expressed as well as the content of the message itself. An ineffective communication may mean that the wrong message was used or the right message was expressed poorly. Creative strategies are how marketers translate their messages into specific communication. Creative strategies can be broadly classified as either informational or transformational appeals.

 Message Source Messages delivered by attractive or popular sources can potentially achieve higher attention and recall. What is important is the spokespersons credibility. The three factors underlining credibility are:
Expertise. Trustworthiness. Likability.

C) The most highly credible source would be a person who scores high on all three dimensions.

 Select the Communication Channels Selecting efficient channels to carry the message becomes more difficult as channels of communication become more fragmented and cluttered. A) Communication channels may be personal and non-personal

 Integration of Communication Channels Although personal communication is often more effective than mass communication, mass media might be the major means of stimulating personal communication.

 A) Mass communications affect personal attitudes toward behavior through a two-step process: Ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders. Opinion leaders to the less media-involved population groups. B) This two-step flow has several implications: The influence of mass media on public opinion is not as direct, powerful, and automatic as supposed.
It is mediated by opinion leaders.

This two-step flow challenges the notion that consumption styles are primarily influenced by a trickle-down from mass media.
People interact primarily with their own social groups and acquire ideas from opinion leaders in their group.

The two-step process suggests that mass communicators should direct messages specifically to opinion leaders and let them carry the message to others.

Establish the Total Marketing Communications Budget

One of the most difficult marketing decisions is determining how much to spend on promotion. Industries and companies vary considerably in how much they spend on promotion. Companies decide on the promotion budget in four common ways: the affordable method, percentage-of-sales method, competitive-parity method, and objective-and-task method.

 Affordable Method Many companies set the promotion budget at what they think the company can afford. This method completely ignores the role of promotion as an investment and the immediate impact on sales volume. It leads to uncertain annual budget, and makes long-range planning difficult.

 Percentage-of-Sales Method Many companies set promotion expenditures at a specified percentage of sales (current or anticipated). A) Supporters of the percentage-of-sales method see a number of advantages Promotion expenditures will vary with what the company can afford. It encourages management to think of the relationship among promotion cost, selling price, and profit per unit.

 Competitive-Parity Method Some companies set their promotion budget to achieve share-of-voice parity with competitors Maintaining competitive parity prevents promotion wars.

 Objective-and-Task Method The objective-and-task method calls upon marketers to develop promotion budgets by defining specific objectives, determining the tasks that must be performed to achieve these objectives, and estimating the costs of performing these tasks. The sum of these costs is the proposed promotion budget.

Marketing communications budgets tend to be higher: When there is low channel support. Much change in the marketing program over time. Many hard-to-reach customers. More complex customer decision-making. Differentiated products and non-homogeneous customer needs. Frequent product purchases in small quantities

 DECIDING ON THE MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS MIX Companies must allocate the marketing communications budget over the six major modes of communicationadvertising, sales promotion, public relations and publicity, events and experiences, sales force, and direct marketing. Within the same industry, companies can differ considerably in their media and channel choices. Companies are always searching for ways to gain efficiency by replacing one promotional tool with others.

Characteristics of the Marketing Communications Mix

Each communication tool has its own unique characteristics and costs. Advertising Advertising can be used to build up a longterm image for a product or trigger quick sales. Sales Promotion Companies use sales-promotion tools to draw a stronger and quicker buyer response.

 Public Relations and Publicity Marketers tend to under-use public relations, yet a well-thought out program coordinated with the other promotion-mix elements can be extremely effective. Promotion Decision Wholesalers rely primarily on their sales force to achieve promotional objectives.

Events and Experiences A) There are many advantages to events and experiences: Relevant. Involving. Direct Marketing The many forms of direct marketingdirect mail, telemarketing, and Internet marketingshare three distinctive characteristics. A) Direct marketing is: Customized. Up-to-date. Interactive.

 Personal Selling Personal selling is the most effective tool at the later stages of the buying process, particularly in building up buyer preference, conviction, and action. A) Personal selling has three distinctive qualities: Personal interaction Cultivation Response

MANAGING PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS: DIRECT MARKETING AND PERSONAL SELLING

 Marketing communications are increasingly seen as an interactive dialogue between the company and its customers. Companies must ask not only, How can we reach our customers? but also, How can our customers reach us? Personalizing communications is critical: Saying and doing the right thing to the right person at the right time.

 DIRECT MARKETING Direct marketing is the use of consumerdirect (CD) channels to reach and deliver goods and services to customers without using marketing middlemen. A) These channels include: Direct mail. Catalogs. Telemarketing. Web sites. Mobile devices.

 Direct marketers seek a measurable response, typically a customer order. This is sometimes called direct-order marketing.

 INTERACTIVE MARKETING The newest channels for direct marketers are electronic. The Internet provides marketers and consumers with opportunities for much greater interaction and individualization. Today companies can send individualized content and consumers themselves can further individualize the content. Companies can interact and dialogue with much larger groups than in the past. The exchange process has become increasingly customer-initiated and customer-controlled.
Define what information they need. What offering they are interested in. What prices they are willing to pay.

 Designing An Attractive Web Site Clearly all companies need to consider and evaluate emarketing and e-purchasing opportunities. A key challenge is designing a site that is attractive on first viewing and interesting enough to encourage repeat visits. Rayport and Jaworski have proposed that effective Web sites feature seven design elements that they call the 7Cs:
Context. Content. Community- how site enables use to user communication Customization. Communication. Connection.-degree to which it is linked to other sites Commerce.-sites capabilities to enable commercial transactions

 To encourage repeat visit, companies need to pay special attention to context and content factors and embrace another Cconstant change. Visitors will judge a sites performance on its ease of use and its physical attractiveness. Ease of use breaks down into three attributes:
The Web site downloads quickly. The first page is easy to understand. The visitor finds it easy to navigate to other pages that open quickly.

 F) Physical attractiveness is determined by the following factors: The individual pages are clean looking and not overly crammed with content. The typefaces and font sizes are very readable. The site makes good use of color (and sound). G) Retuning to a site depends on content. Content must be: Interesting. Useful.

 Continuously changing. H) Certain types of content function will attract first-time visitors and bring them back again:
Deep information with links to related sites. Changing news of interest. Changing free offers to visitors. Contests and sweepstakes. Humor and jokes. Games

DESIGNING THE SALES FORCE

The original and oldest form of direct marketing is the field sales call. A) Today most industrial companies rely heavily on a professional sales force to: Locate prospects. Develop them into customers. Grow the business.

 No one debates the importance of the sales force in marketing programs. 1) However, companies are sensitive to the high and rising costs of maintaining a sales force. E) The term sales representative covers a broad range of positions. F) Six can be distinguished, ranging from the least to the most creative types of selling:

Deliverer. Order taker. Missionary. Technician. Demand creator. Solution vendor.

 Sales-Force Objectives and Strategy Today, sales reps need to know how to diagnose a customers problem and propose a solution. Salespeople show a customer-prospect how their company can help a customer improve profitability.

The specific allocation scheme depends on the kind of products and customers, but regardless salespeople will have one or more of the following specific tasks to perform: Prospecting. Targeting. Communicating. Selling. Servicing. Information gathering. Allocating.