Channels of Communications

Marketing communications can contribute to brand equity in several ways: 

• creating brand awareness
• connecting parity points and associating points of difference with the brand in the minds of customers 
• Creating positive feelings related to the brand 
• enabling a strong connection between customers and the brand and the resonance of the brand.

Brand equity helps marketers determine how to design and implement different marketing communication options.

In recent years, there have been major changes in the media environment. Traditional media such as TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines have lost a lot of users due to the presence of internet media. New communication channels enable two-way communication between brands and customers, as well as communication between customers (where they can exchange experiences)

Successful digitally based brand campaigns are blended into three different forms of media: paid, proprietary, and earned (Keller, 2013). 

Source: Pixabay

Paid media are all various forms of traditional advertising media like TV and print (Keller, 2013). It also means new forms of media as paid promotions by influencers, social media advertisements, search engine advertisements, etc. Although often not as influential as the other two forms of media, they are used to reach a wider audience. It's the best way for your target audience to notice you.

Owned media are those media channels that the brand controls to a certain extent - websites, e-mails, social media, newsletters, mobile apps, blogs, retail stores, brochures, pamphlets, etc (Keller, 2013). Through owned media, the brand transmits its message directly to users and thus creates a connection between them.

Earned media refers to word-of-mouth and when third parties decide to voluntarily promote the brand. This is the only type of media on which the brand has no influence. Internet allowed consumers to share experiences and stories about brands, repost, tag and mention brands, etc.

You will hear more about this topic in our digital marketing course.

Integrating Marketing Communications

Marketers need to mix and match different channels of communication. The goal is to create the most efficient and effective communication program (Keller, 2013).

Six criteria known as 6c:

• Coverage
• Contribution
• Commonality
• Complementary
• Conformability
• Cost (Keller, 2013).

Coverage is the size of audiences that can be reached through each communication option, and how much the audience overlaps between different options. Simply, how many different communication options reach the target audience.

Contribution is the ability of marketing communication to create the desired response and communication effect from the user (Keller, 2013). The main effects of a marketing communication option in terms of how it affects consumers’ processing of communication and the resulting outcomes (Keller, 2013).

Whatever combination of communication channels marketers choose, it is important to fully coordinate it to create consistency and cohesiveness of the brand image in which brand associations share content and meaning.

The consistency and cohesive brand image is important because the image determines how easily consumers can recall existing associations and responses as well as how easily users can add new associations to the brand in their memory (Keller, 2013).

Communication options are most often effective when used in tandem (Keller, 2013). The ideal marketing communication program should ensure that the communication options chosen are mutually compensatory and reinforcing to create the desired consumer knowledge structures (Keller, 2013).

Conformity refers to the rank in which the market communication option is robust and efficient for different consumer groups. Two types of conformability: communication and consumer.

Some users have been exposed to the brand’s marketing communications before, and some have not. The ability of marketing communication to communicate on two levels, effectively with both of these groups, is of great importance. The marketing communication option is conformable when it achieves the desired effect regardless of the past history of consumer communication (Keller, 2013).

Conclusions

As we said before, you need to integrate all aspects of branding to create a strong brand.

Here you have the contents of the lesson in PDF: