Marketing Communications

Chapter 1, integrated marketing communications

Marketing involves identifying the firm or product’s target market and identifying the appropriate media to reach members of each particular market segment.

1.1 Communication process (p19)

1. Sender: tries to capture the customer’s attention→ Firms hire advertising agencies.

2. Encoding: forming verbal and nonverbal cues. The marketer takes an idea and transforms it to an attention-getting message. Cues are being placed in various media.

3. Transmission devise: communication move through various channels or media (TV, internet, billboards)

4. Decoding: when it reaches the receiver’s senses. (E.g. Hearing, seeing, and smelling)

5. Feedback: response to the sender. Senders can obtain feedback from receivers and use the information to start the process again.

Noise: anything that disrupts a message, including marketing communications. Most common noise affecting MC is clutter. Examples: talking on the phone during a commercial, driving while listening to the radio, looking at a sexy model in a magazine ad and ignoring the message, scanning a newspaper for articles to read, becoming annoyed by ads appearing on a social media site, being offended by an add.

Quality marketing communication takes place when receivers decode the message as the sender intended it.

Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is the coordination and integration of all marketing communication tools, avenues, and sources in a company into a program designed to maximize the impact on customers and other stakeholders. The program covers a firm’s entire business-to-business, market channel, customer focused- and internally directed communications. IMC reaches all elements of the marketing mix, coordinates every component of the MM (marketing mix) to achieve harmony in the messages relayed to customers. (p21)

The traditional view was that promotional activities included advertising, sales promotion and personal selling activities (PAS). This has expanded to incorporate online and alternative methods.

1.2 How to complete IMC plan
The following steps should create harmony in promotional messages:

1. Current situational analysis: the firm’s on-going market situation.

2. SWOT analysis.

3. Marketing objectives: e.g. higher sales, an increase in market share, a new competitive position, desired customer actions.  These objectives are identified along with key target markets.