The inherent aim of marketing communication is to effectively communicate ideas to the target audience. Marketing communication is all about sharing concepts, features, and information from the source (business) to the receiver (consumers or other businesses). It is done through the various channels of advertising, publicity, sales promotion, and salesmanship.
“Integrated marketing communications is a way of looking at the whole marketing process from the viewpoint of the customer.” – Philip Kotler.
What is meant by Marketing Communication?
Marketing communication is a fundamental part of an organisation’s marketing strategy. In simple words, it is known as all the messages and media you employ to convey information about your product or services to the market. Marketing communication services play a crucial part in effective execution of marketing communication campaigns.
Objectives of Marketing Communication:
The main purpose of marketing communication is the achievement of the various short – term and long-term goals of the organisation. Keeping this in mind, the objectives of marketing communication, achieved with the help of a marketing communication consultant, are as follows:
- Demand Creation: The marketing communication consultant’s first responsibility is to create demand by various means. Consumer preferences and tastes are studied and goods and services to satisfy the same are produced. This can also be done by informing the customers about the utilities and advantages of the products and services manufactured and provided by the organisation.
- Satisfaction Level of Customers: This is the most important part of any marketing communication campaign. Before offering the customers any products or services, the consultant should study their demands and what satisfies them. Nowadays, marketing starts and ends with customers and their satisfaction is given priority over sales.
- Changing Brand Perception in the market: Sometimes, there are unnecessary misconceptions surrounding a company in the market which significantly affect its reputation. The consultant should come up with effective marketing solutions to improve the perception of the company in the eyes of the consumers and other businesses.
- Increasing Market Share: Market share is the ratio of sales of the company to the total sales of the market. Thus, increasing the market share is a crucial part for any business. This can be achieved with the help of innovative digital marketing methods, effective advertising, attractive packaging of products, etc.
- Building and retaining Good Reputation: Good reputation is the key to success in the market. A brand that enjoys a good image has many loyal customers who happily bring in new potential customers via referrals and reviews. Good quality of products and services further enhances this reputation. Hence, the consultant should pay special attention to this aspect.
- Generation of Profits: For any business to stay afloat, profit generation is mandatory. Profits are also needed for further growth and job creation in the firm. This is directly dependent on the completion of above objectives.
What are the Roles of a Marketing Communication Consultant?
A Marketing communication consultant provides marketing communication services. The tasks performed by him / her are as follows:
- Formulating Marketing Strategies: The consultant studies and analyses the previous marketing data of the organisation. He/ She studies the highs and lows for the same and comes up with effective marketing strategies to tackle the lows and further enhance the highs.
- Stay up to date with Market Trends: The marketing consultant should stay constantly in touch with changing trends in social media marketing, online marketing and offline or direct response marketing. This helps him/ her stay alert when attracting opportunities and diverting threats.
- Effective execution of Marketing Strategies: Coming up with a good plan and failing to execute it in an effective way is as good as having no plan at all. The consultant should use marketing channels like social media, digital advertisements, ATL options, BTL tactics etc., to execute strategies and track their outcomes effectively.
- Keeping track of Website Traffic: The quality of content drives traffic to your website. The consultant should keep a track of the type of traffic, the kind of content that performs well and how it can be improved to benefit the organisation even more.
- Keeping a close watch on Competitors: The consultant should stay up to date with the strategies of the competitors and always plan to stay one step ahead of them.
How does the brand marketing and ORM consultant rebuild your brand reputation after a crisis?
He/ She plays a vital role in reputation building services. Some of their important contributions towards reputation rebuilding include:
- Analysing the level of damage: This is the first step to rebuild your lost reputation. The consultant assesses the severity level and steps back to analyse the root causes for the damage. He / She conducts a thorough evaluation of the crisis by studying sales performance, profitability and share prices. When they get all the data in their possession, they carefully segregate the facts from fiction.
- Communicating with stakeholders and investors: Once they get a clear picture of the situation, they convey the impact of the crisis to the stakeholders and the investors. They provide thorough details of their analysis and present their strategies to counter the crisis.
- Curating a media communication strategy: This step helps shape public perception of the company. This is done by involving the media and the brand leaders deliver a public statement about the crisis.
- Developing a social media response plan: Social media is the most important channel to raise brand awareness. Today’s socially driven world can worsen the impact of brand crisis. To prevent this, the consultant drafts a parking reply for the time being to mellow down the crisis, that is circulated around all the social media platforms of the organisation. It also includes reviewing websites, keeping a close watch on the conversations of website affiliated blogs and social media platforms.
- Reinstating trust and brand value: This includes revising, removing and suppressing negative content and posting positive content continuously on company websites and social media channels. A transparent demonstration of how the company is tackling the crisis helps customers reinstate their trust in the organisation.
Key Takeaways
- Rebuilding a reputation after a crisis takes a solid strategy, strong commitment, and self-disciplinTherefore, the primary purpose of marketing communication is to communicate ideas to target audiences. This is done through advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and/or public relations. Principles of effective communication are intended to achieve this task.
- To facilitate a company to compete consistently and effectively in the marketplace is the second key aspect of marketing communication. For many companies, marketing communication may offer the company its most promising marketing opportunities. Competitors may sell essentially the same product, at the same price, in the same outlets. It is only through marketing communication that the company may be able to appeal to certain segments, properly differentiate its product, and create a level of brand loyalty that can last for many years.
- Finally, the key responsibility of effective marketing communication is to convince. Although this goal is most often ascribed to marketing communication, it is the most questionable. “Convince” and “persuade” are not synonymous terms. Realistically, marketing communication does extremely well if it presents ideas in a manner that is so convincing that the consumer will be led to take the desired action. These ideas, along with a host of other factors, will help persuade the consumer to make a particular decision. Therefore, the ability of marketing communication to present information in a convincing manner is critical.
To conclude, marketing communication should focus on customer satisfaction, attach value to products or service, maintain good reputation in the market and convey the organisation’s core offerings in a clear and concise manner which will persuade prospective customers to buy into it.
