Marketing Communication Options

To establish contact with users, you need to use communication channels. What these channels are and how they are used will be presented in this lesson.

Advertising

Advertising is any form of paid nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor (Keller, 2013). 

It is a powerful way to create strong, favorable and unique brand associations and provoke positive judgments and feelings, but advertising is controversial because its specific effects are often difficult to quantify and predict (Keller, 2013).

Television

Television has long played a major role in advertising. This is because it provides video, sound, motion and reaches a large number of users. Many households have a TV in their house, some have a TV in each room. For example, in 2010, the average person watched 34 hours of television per week. Today, many users, especially younger ones, have replaced television with the Internet, but this channel of communication still has a great impact.

Radio

People listen to the radio every day, most often in the background. The main advantage of the radio is flexibility, advertisements are relatively cheap to create and place. It’s especially effective in the morning, and goes well with TV commercials or even boosts them. The disadvantage of the radio is primarily the inability to forward the visual image as well as the inability to interact with the listeners.

Print Media

The popularity of print media quickly began to decline as more and more users began to search for information and entertainment on the Internet. The two main print media are magazines and newspapers. Magazines are mostly effective in creating user images and uses. Newspapers are more timely and pervasive. The number of readers is declining every year due to the existence of online versions of newspapers and magazines.

Direct Marketing

Direct responses include mail, telephone, internet and other communication tools that target and require a response from specific customers and prospects.

In recent years, there has been an increase in direct marketing. First of all, technological possibilities that provided much better targeting of potential users. The advantage of direct responses is that it makes it easier for marketers to establish connections with customers.

Source: Pexels

Place advertising

Place advertising or out-of-home advertising is a large category that does not include traditional media. Through non-traditional media, marketers want to communicate with people where they work, play or shop. This group includes billboards; posters, movies, airlines, lounges, etc; product placement and point of purchase (Keller, 2013). 

Promotion

Advertising and promotion are two different things, but they often go hand in hand. Sales promotions are short-term incentives to encourage the trial or usage of a product or service (Keller, 2013). Advertising gives us a reason to buy, while sales promotions offer consumers an incentive to buy (Keller, 2013).

Web marketing

Web marketing is popular because of its low cost, level of detail, and customization capabilities. Internet marketing communications can achieve any goal of marketing communication and are great at creating relationships. The three most important tools for online brand-building are: - website - online ads and videos - social media (Keller, 2013).

Website

Many users today go online to look for relevant information. As the company website is in fact a place where all the necessary information about the company and the brand can be found, it is important that it is done properly. A website is one of the earlier and best-established forms of online marketing communication. Because of the interactivity that the web provides, marketers and web designers can create a website that will allow all types of users to find the information they need. Although different users have different brand knowledge, a well-designed website will communicate effectively to convey the necessary brand information.

Internet advertising

Internet advertising can take several different forms such as banner ads, rich-media ads, and other types of ads. There are a number of benefits to advertising on the Internet: software can track which ads went to which sales and what were the reactions of customers to the ads; non-disruptive which means it will not bother potential customers; and there is the possibility of targeting the market, so that only potential customers are shown advertising.

Social Networks

The popularity of social networks is growing from year to year, and more and more social networks are disappearing. They allow users to share text, images, audio and video content with each other.

Social networks come in many forms, but are basic: (1) message boards and forums, (2) chat rooms, (3) blogs, (4) Facebook, (5) Twitter, and (6) YouTube (Keller, 2013). 

In 2020, there are 2.81 billion people actively using social media in the world. Social media offers many benefits to marketers. It allows brands to establish a public voice and presence on the Internet (Keller, 2013). It complements and reinforces other communication activities (Keller, 2013).

Events 

Events and experiences play an equally important role in branding strategy as online marketing (Keller, 2013). What is important is that online and offline be complemented.

Events and experiences can include various things such as sponsoring some well-known events by the brand but also offering products to customers to test in passing. The point is that brand engages the consumers ’senses and imagination.

Conclusions

As a marketer, you have many options for communication. It is important that you understand them and that you understand your audience in order to reach them in the right way.

Here you have the contents of the lesson in PDF: