What is marketing communications?

Marketing Communication refers to the means adopted by the companies to convey messages about the products and the brands they sell, either directly or indirectly to the customers with the intention to persuade them to purchase.

Marketing communications include advertising, promotions, sales, branding, and online promotion. The process allows the public to know or understand a brand. Successful branding involves targeting audiences who appreciate the organization's marketing program.

How do marketing communications work?

Marketing communications include advertising, promotions, sales, branding, and online promotion. The process allows the public to know or understand a brand. ... The marketing plan identifies key opportunities, threats, weaknesses, and strengths, sets objectives, and develops an action plan to achieve marketing goals.

What are the marketing communication activities?

Marketing communication includes advertising, direct marketing, branding, packaging, your online presence, printed materials, PR activities, sales presentations, sponsorships, trade show appearances, and more. The complexity of the MarCom topic makes it too broad to cover in one article.

What is a Marketing Communications Strategy?

As I mentioned earlier, the marketing communications strategy defines the entire range of activities you will do to market your products. This includes everything from paid marketing to media relations (PR).

Any integrated marketing communications strategy should have three guiding principles:

Brand alignment: Whatever marketing channel you choose should have the same brand perception as yours. For example, if you sell luxury watches, build relationships with journalists from TIME magazine, not those writing in your local newspaper.

Customer alignment: Follow the oldest rule in marketing – ‘be where your customers already are’. Pick channels where your consumers are already active. If you’re targeting younger millennials, advertise on social media platforms like Instagram, not Facebook, and certainly not day-time TV!

Budget alignment: Choose a marketing channel that fits your budget (obviously). If you don’t have a budget, getting a print ad in WSJ will be out of your reach. But perhaps you can get a free press mention on WSJ’s website by reaching out to the journalists.

Any large company’s marketing plan will have several campaigns on multiple channels simultaneously. The combination of all these channels – PPC, social media, advertising on TV, print, radio, etc. – is called the “marketing mix” of your marketing communications strategy.