Marketing Communications

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Marketing Communications
Fundamentals Of Communication In Marketing

MAKE COMMUNICATION EASY: Many competitors exist in the marketplace ready to snatch your
customer, it is important that business marketers make it easy for their customers to communicate. It
is a fact that competitor’s salespeople are always in your customers’ offices, ready to sympathize with
the least complaint. If you do not receive the complaint, you cannot respond to it, but your competitors
will take advantage of such complaint at first hearing. Similarly, if a customer is ready to reorder, it may
go to competitor.

Some of the methods that make communication easy are:

•    Inbound telemarketing, by providing customers with many telephone numbers to call and

then empowering the customer service department or representative so that complaints can

be resolved immediately thus making it easy for customers to offer their concerns.

•    Customers must also find it easy to order, through telephones, electronic data interchange

or regular calls.

•    Catalogues may also be used by an industrial marketer to make it easy for customers to

order. This may be very useful to a firm that sells multi-products.

CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COMMUNICATION: Customer acquisition communication must
follow the same principles of proactive communication, making communication easy and making it
simple to respond. Customer acquisition communication must, in addition, convince the buyer to receive
the communication because the link between the buyer and seller is going to be newly established. Unlike
the customer retention situation which has a natural communication link already established.

THE ROLE OF PROMOTION

PROMOTION is the coordination of all seller-initiated efforts to set up channels of information and
persuasion to sell goods and service or promote an idea.

Most of an organization’s communication with the external environment takes place in a carefully
planned and controlled promotional programme. The basic tools used to accomplish an organization’s
communication objectives with its external environment are usually referred to as the promotional mix.
These tools include: advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, publicity and public relations, plus
personal selling. Each element of the promotional mix plays a distinctive role in an integrated marketing
communication programme.

Five participants of integrated marketing communication process have been identified; each one plays
a specific role in the process.