Introduction to Marketing Communications

Kotler 2012

Marketing communications is the means by which a supplier of goods and services, values and/or ideas creates and exchange with its target audience with a goal of stimulating dialogue, leading to better commercial or other relationship.

Defining marcomms

Marcomms are attempts organisations/brand make to create dialogue with key stakeholders.
Communication is a process through which individuals share meaning.
Individuals must interpret the meanings behind messages to begin communication.
Info needs to be transmitted for the process to work.

‘An approach to achieving the objectives of a marketing campaign through a well-coordinated use of different promotional methods that are intended to reinforce one another.’
‘A planning process designed to ensure that all brand contacts received by a customer/prospect are relevant to that person and consistent over time.’

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

Kotler 2012
The concept under which a company carefully integrates and co-ordinates its many communications and channels to deliver a clear, consistent message about the organisation and its products.

Understanding the ladder of engagement

Scope for customer engagement to create stronger and more advocates.
Primacy of identifying one’s most engaged customers.
Shifting and migrating customers upwards along this ladder: discussions, reviews and ratings.
Harnessing customers through collaborative co-creation.

Commercial imperative of marcomms

The process of cutting clutter and combating hyper competition.
Recognition that marcomms should be omnipresent, relevant and creative.
Harnessing marcomms tools - big five tools, 3D tools and 2Ws.

Critiquing marcomms and advertising

Paradoxical phenomena: adverts blamed for (some) social problems, but also treated as being ‘trivial’.
Lack of consensus as to advertising’s role: does it persuade us to buy more, can there be resistance to it; does it irritate us and does it offend us?
Scope for advertising to annoy us: intrusive, pervasive, unethical, desire for it to be subject to greater regulation.

Basic communication model

Involves communicating directly with prospects/customers.
Source/sender encodes a message which feeds through the media or any other channel in the form of a message to the other end to the receiver where it gets decoded. Outside of this process feedback can be sent back to the sender.

Two-way communication model

Involves communicating with intermediaries/opinion leaders as well as prospects/customers.
Sender encodes message which is decoded by opinion leaders where it gets looked over and a blessing to be sent out to the general public.

Communications: AIDA Model

Attention - cognitive stage
Interest - affective stage
Desire - affective stage
Action - behaviour stage

Mass marcomms

Reach audience
Speed - Fast
Cost - low
Influence on consumer
Attention - low
Selective perception - high
Comprehension - low
Feedback - One-way
Speed of feedback - low
Measuring effectiveness - difficult

Targeted Marcomms

Reach audience
Speed - slow (personal selling)/ fast (digital marketing)
Cost - high
Influence on consumer
Attention - high
Selective perception - low
Comprehension - high
Feedback - Two-way
Speed of feedback - high
Measuring effectiveness - accurate

Drip: marcomm

Task - Sub-task - explanation

Differentiate - position - to make a product/service stand out in the category.
Reinforce - Remind, reassure, refresh - to consolidate and strengthen previous messages and experiences.
Inform - make aware, educate - to make known and advise of availability and features.
Persuade - purchase or make further enquiry - to encourage further positive purchase-related behaviour.

DRIP four roles

Different communications tools will be effective in different ways when considered against the four ‘DRIP’ roles.
Advertising may help differentiate (eg Mineral Water).
Sales Promotion may help persuade (especially impulse purchases).
Selecting an appropriate marketing communications mix requires an understanding of the customer, their current level of awareness and/or attitudes.

Planning Marcomms

SOSC Model
Situation analysis - where are we now?
Marcomms Objectives - Where do we want to go?
Marcomms strategies/tactics - How will we get there?
Control and evaluation - How well have we done?

Mission - Corporative objective - Marketing objectives

Cascading Strategies

Marketing objective e.g. increase sales by 5%
determines the marketing strategy e.g. increase awareness of the brand.
determines the Communication objectives e.g. increase awareness by 20%.
determines the communications strategy e.g. develop advertising campaign and leverage through public relations campaign.

Objectives and strategy

Hierarchy of effects models
Suggests that there is a series of stages before a sale.
Knowledge - stimulate awareness and gain interest - cognitive.
Feeling - developing ‘aura’ and ‘personality’ of brand - affective.
Motivation/action - motivation toward sale conative.

Marcomms planning framework

Context analysis
Communication goals - corporate, marketing and communication goals.
Communications strategy - Relies on communication goals and mix
Communications mix - tools, media and context, feeds into agencies.
Implementation
Scheduling and resources feed into:
Evaluation loops to agencies and marketing research and back to context analysis.

Significance of IMC

Winer, 2011.

Forward looking organisations are stressing the concept called IMC. In which marketing manager does not think of all the elements separately. Instead, these messages are co-ordinated to reinforce what each is saying and to prevent customer confusion from conflicting messages.

IMC themes and channels

Brand themes: significance of managing distinctive brand values and personality through communication.
Channel integration: a consumer’s perceptions are an aggregation of their spanning different channels.

Barriers to IMC

Lack of internal communications
Turf battles ego problems
Perceived complexity of planning and co-ordination
Functional specialisation and organisational configuration incompatible.

Understanding limitations to IMC

Extent of integration will depend on creative brief: media channels are used selectively rather than universally.
Extent to which there is absolute control of media channels: leakage/editorial control, being ‘on-message’.
Extent to which absolute control is desired: authenticity and allowing to express itself organically through user-generated content rather than being seen as being sympathetic.

Integrated marcomms mix

Consistent, clear and compelling
Advertising - any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion by an identified sponsor.
Personal selling - a personal presentation by representative from the firm’s sales force.
Public relations - building a good corporate image through managing positive and negative rumours, stories and events.
Direct marketing - direct communication with specifically targeted consumers using mail, email or phones.
Digital marketing/social media.
Sales promotions - short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product.

Virgin Holidays - example

Remit - communications to add excitement and reduce stress in holidays booking process.
Context: customers being bombarded with disjointed communications.
Implementation - progress trackers to simplify process - embedded customer names into bespoke gifts, pulled in Instagram shots from local reps to give customers the ‘inside-track’ match communications to pain points that needed soothing as well as opportunities to excite; signposting and pre-filled itineraries.
Outcome: email open rate of 84%, click-through rate of 92%, in traffic to virgins concierge pages.