Marcom establishes a dialogue and builds relationships with consumers. Show
May 16.2019 What is Marcom?Marcom or Marketing Communication are ways by which companies educate, inform, urge, and apprise consumers—directly or indirectly—about their products, solutions, and brands. Marcom represents the voice of a company and its brands that enable it to have a dialogue and build relationships with consumers. It helps companies to connect their brands with people, places, experiences, events, and emotions. It can even enable companies to showcase how a product works, its use cases, why is it used, who benefits from using them, and its value to the target audience. Marcom vs. MarketingThe American Marketing Association defines marketing as “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” However, Marcom refers to the individual elements within the entire gamut of marketing. It includes advertising, sales promotion, events, public relations, online, mobile, social media, direct, and personal selling. In simple terms, marketing includes Marcom. The Marcom ProcessMarcom involves transmitting, receiving, and processing information. We defined the various elements of the Marcom process in one of our earlier blogs with a real-life example. It has two parties (sender and receiver), four functions (encoding, decoding, response, and feedback), and two communication tools (message and media). Anything that distorts the intended message is called noise. Integrated Marketing Process | Source: Philip Kotler, Principles of MarketingMarketers need to be firmly aware of each aspect of the communications process to ensure that the target audience receives a consistent message. Having a tightly integrated Marcom process helps the message cuts through noise and clutter to increase in market share, sales, and brand loyalty. An effective program integrates all marketing activities. Steps in MarcomThe steps involved in Marcom are:
We explain each step in Marcom below: 1. Identify the Target AudienceThe target audience includes the potential buyers of a company’s products, present users, influencers, groups, or the general public. The composition of the target audience determines the message, mode, place, and form of communication. Here's a link to a quick guide on how to identify a target audience. 2. Set Marcom ObjectivesWhat do companies expect to achieve from the Marcom process? Potential Marcom objectives include:
3. Design CommunicationsDesigning Marcom requires answering three key questions:
4. Select communication channelsSelecting the right Marcom channel can be either personal or non-personal. Personal influence helps when the products are expensive or risky (such as stock recommendations). People often ask for recommendations for a good hotel, lawyer, doctor, accountant, a financial consultant to their friends. It is because they have confidence in the advice. Even a celebrity endorsing a brand can be a form of personal Marcom channel. A positive word of mouth can generate organic growth. Personal Marcom channels include online marketing, social media, personalized microsites, email marketing, etc. Non-personal Marcom channels such as advertising, sales promotions, events, public relations are mass communication tools to spread the word around. Companies sponsor events, and charity shows to appeal to a wide variety of target audience. Integration of personal and non-personal Marcom channels helps in maximizing the message. Opinion leaders and influencers first receive the message through non-personal channels, who then relay it to communities and groups in the target audience. Integrated marketing communication helps build momentum for a product and inform consumers and population groups that are not touched by mass media. 5. Establish Marcom budgetThe budget for Marcom varies across companies. A B2C company such as Snickers may have 35% of its sales for Marcom, while a heavy industries company may allocate only 5% of its sales. There are four approaches to establishing the Marcom budget:
Features of the MARCOM mixEach Marcom tool is unique and has its pros and cons. Let us now understand these tools and their characteristics.
Factors to consider while selecting marcom mixBusinesses must consider factors to develop the most suitable Marcom like the type of product market, customer willingness, and product life cycle stage.
Measuring Marcom ROIEvery Marcom plan must be measured for its effectiveness. Some marketers administer surveys to customers to know if they recall the message, when are they likely to recall it, what they felt about it, and how their attitude towards the brand before and after the Marcom campaign. However, measuring the effectiveness of Marcom goes beyond surveys and questionnaires. As the Marcom mix uses a variety of content assets such as PDFs, videos, images, GIFs, PPTs to reach the target audience, measuring the ROI of Marcom is essential to know what is resonating with the target audience. Here are the different metrics that are measured for the Marcom mix for the target audience:
Besides, content aggregators can view analytics such as discovery, engagement, number of conversations, content popularity, and engagement. Marcom: ConclusionMarcom can build brand equity for a company by creating a perception in the minds of customers, drive revenues, and impact shareholder value. Marketers need to think about every touchpoint for a customer and how a brand positions itself, the importance of the marketing mix, and its timing. Having a coherent Marcom strategy can help build brand equity and create higher sales impact. Which of the following marketing communications tools is most effective at the later stages of the buying process?Personal Selling
This proves to be the most effective tool in the later stages of the buying process. The advantage is that the message can be customized to the needs of the buyer and is focused on building a long-term relationship with the buyer.
Which of the following is more effective tool for promotion process?Personal selling is most effective form of promotion because with this the sales person can convince the buyer by demonstrating the use of product and making changes in the product according to the need of customer.
Which method is used to establish total marketing communications?Four common methods are: the affordable method, percentage-of-sales method, competitive parity method, and objective-and-task method. Affordable method: Many companies set the promotion budget at what they think the company can afford.
Which of the following elements of the marketing communications mix refers to any paid form of nonpersonal?The right answer is *A.
Advertising is a non-personal presentation of goods or services by an identical sponsor via any media. Other forms of promotion mix require personal communication or presentation through a direct or indirect mode.
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