Effective Marketing Communications: Strategies, Ethics, and Impact

Marketing Communications

1. Target Audience

Who are they?

2. Communication Objectives

Awareness, knowledge, preference, satisfaction

3. Effective Communications

Advertising, publicity, sales promotion, personal selling.

Effective Advertising: 10 Rules

1. Consumer-oriented
2. One selling idea
3. Emphasizes the most persuasive idea
4. Presents a unique proposition
5. Involves the consumer
6. Credible
7. Simple and clear
8. Associates the selling idea with the brand name
9. Exploits the medium
10. Makes the sale

5 M's of Advertising

• Mission
• Money
• Message
• Media
• Measurement

Sponsorship

• Credibility (provides validity)
• Imitation
• Image
• Bonding (involvement of customers)
• Retention (enduring awareness and exposure)

General Marketing

• Mass audience through mass media
• Impersonal communications
• Promotional programs
• Incomplete data for decision-making purposes

Direct Marketing

• Communicates with customers directly
• Personalized communications
• Promotional programs
• Comprehensive database
• Analysis conducted at the individual level

Benefits of Direct Marketing

• Accuracy of customer reach
• Measurable effect
• Quality of message
• Cost of the delivered message
• Increased customer loyalty

Process of Effective Selling

1. Identify customer needs
2. Prospect for qualified customers
3. Understand the customer
4. Contact the customer
5. Present the product and service with the entire customer support package
6. Negotiate price, terms, conditions, and make the sale
7. Manage and support the account

Ways of Organizing the Salesforce

• Product focus
• Geographic focus
• Customer focus
• Country group focus

Consumer Rights

• To be well-informed
• To be protected against questionable products and marketing practices
• To improve the quality of life
• To preserve the world for future generations of consumers

Marketing Impact on Individuals

• High prices
• Deceptive practices
• High-pressure selling
• Shoddy, harmful, or unsafe products
• Planned obsolescence
• Poor service to disadvantaged consumers

Marketing Impact on Other Businesses

• Acquisition of competitors
• Marketing practices that create barriers to entry
• Unfair competitive marketing practices

Marketing Ethics

Developed by firms as guidelines for handling various issues such as:

• Distributor relations
• Advertising standards
• Customer service
• Pricing
• Product development
• General ethical standards