MKT 202:Marketing

Communications
Prepared by
Gopi Bhandari
Syllabus
Unit 1: Introduction
Unit 2: Advertising Business
Unit 3: Advertising agencies
Unit 4: Creation of advertisements
Unit 5: Designing the advertising message
Unit 6: Advertising Appeals
Unit 7: Media planning and scheduling
Unit 8: Establishing and allocating advertising budget
Unit 9: Advertising effectiveness measurement
Unit 10: Advertising business practices in Nepal
 Unit 1
Introduction
Meaning of Marketing communication :
• Transmitting the message and meaning from one person to another.
• Flow of information and understanding between the sender and receiver.
• Communication is the life blood of marketing.
• Tells the target customer about the company, its products, price, and the
availability of products.
• It creates awareness about the company and its products through informing.
• Persuades the target customer to choose the company ‘s brand.
• Re-enforce the benefit of the brand
• Communication can be oral through word of mouth and telephone.
• Communication can be written in the form of visual and print
• It can be body language, expressed by facial expression, eye contacts,
gestures, hand movement and body posture.
 Key elements of marketing communication.
• Two way process-Two persons are needed to communicate. The sender is
the source of message, the receiver is the target of communication.
• Flow- Communication involve flow of information and meaning from one
person to another. The flow can be upward, downward, horizontal, as well as
diagonal.
• Symbols- Many symbols in terms of words, pictures, music signs are used in
communication. They can be verbal and non-verbal.
• Channels- Different kinds of channels are used in communication. The
channels may be indoor, outdoor, direct, display media etc.
• Networks- Specific channel networks are used for information flow of
communication. Communication patterns are developed into network.
• Noise- Communication is adversely affected by noise. It is unplanned
distortion due to external factors.
• Feed back- The response of the receiver about the understanding of meaning
is feed back to the sender. Feed back helps to re-design and improve the
communication system.
Components of Marketing communication

Advertising: Advertising is the impersonal method of

communicating messages to perspective buyers. It is
an efficient tool to reach numerous buys at low cost.
It uses various media for delivering message. They
are:
Indoor media---- News paper, journal, Radio, TV, Film
Outdoor media---- posters, electrical signs, wall panting
Direct media----direct mail, booklets, catalogs ,internet.
Personal selling- Personal selling consists the
executing sales through sales persons. It
involves the two way communication process
between the sellers and potential buyers.
Sales persons provide feedback about the
market, competitors, and customers to the
organization. It is very effective form of
communication particularly when the buyer
needs full explanation of the product
attributes, utilities and other associated
benefits.
 Sales promotion
• Sales promotion is an short term marketing strategy
for promoting the products and services. It is non-
current in nature e.g.. – festival offers during Dashain
and Tihar. The main purpose of sales promotion is to
stimulate consumer to increase sales for a short-
term like premium, contest, coupon etc.
• Public Relations- Public relations are broad set of
communication activities used to create and
maintain favorable relationships with customers,
government officials, press and society. Public
relation is networking with people. The tool of public
relations are:
• Direct marketing Direct marketing involves selling directly to
consumers by passing all forms of marketing intermediaries.
The traditional methods of direct marketing are door-to-door
selling, catalog marketing, mail-order marketing, and
telephone marketing. Modern methods of direct marketing
include television marketing, online marketing, e-marketing,
and database marketing.
• Publicity: Publicity is any unpaid form of communication
through media about an organizations its policies and
products. It appears as news stories in the media. Publicity is
a part of public relation. It includes positive editorials
coverage in the media. The tool of publicity are:-press
conference and speeches, news releases, feature articles,
editorials, publications.
 Role of marketing communication

Communication provides valuable information to buyers about

the product, its availability, prices, utilities and benefits. The
information helps buyers to make a choice decision that
favors the organizations and its products. Major Role:-
• Informing- to inform the buyers about the products, price,
availability, utility and benefits.
• Persuading- marketing communication seeks to persuade
buyers to make purchase decision in favors of a company or
brand. Persuasive communication seeks to influence buyer’s
feelings, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior so they would favor
the organization’s product
• Reminding- Marketers believe that buyers have a
short-lived memory and a limited capacity to
remember brand and company names. They may
forget the names unless they are constantly
reminded about the product and the company
• Reassuring- Communication also plays the role of
reassuring the buyer’s on the quality and benefits of
the product. Marketers also provide reassuring
communication to provide increased satisfaction
from the use of the product.
The steps in developing effective marketing communications
are:
Identify target audience.
 target audience should be clearly identified.
can be individual, groups, specific public or general
public.
 target audience can be of following types:
current buyers-They are current using the product.
potential buyers-potential to buy the product in
future.
 Influencer-They influence buying decision.

Determine communication objective.

• Communication objective should be specific, measurable,

agreed upon, realistic and time bound.
• The objective can be:-
• Informing-Developing awareness about the product brand by
building image.
• Persuading-influencing customers to purchase the brand by
developing favorable preference.
• Reminding-Remind about the brand and its potential to satisfy
needs.
• Reinforcing-reassure about the benefits to product after
Select creative platform
Message design
selecting advertising appeal
visualization
Copy writing
Layout and production
Message source
Select Channel Establish Budget-
Affordable method
Incremental method
Percentage of sales method
Competitive parity method
Deciding Marketing Communication Mix
Advertising
Publicity or public relation
Sales promotion
Personal selling
Direct marketing
Measure Results
The impact of communication on target audience should be measured
a) Personal channel-They consist of persons communicating directly with
each other face to face over the telephone or through e-mail.
b) Non-personal channel-Print media, audio-visual, Net-work, Display.
 Integrated Marketing Communication(IMC)

Modern marketing practices integrated marketing communication. It

views communication as coordinated interactive dialogue between
the company and its target customers. It takes place during the pre-
selling, selling, consuming and post-consuming stage. The IMC
components mainly include the communication or promotion mix
(advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relation, and
direct marketing). The IMC programs integrates the efforts of all the
communication tools available to the company. The program is very
flexible and can be modified to meet new communication challenges
in the market place.
 The IMC programs are built on the
following 4 stage
Stage 1-Identify all forms of communication.
Identified, coordinate and manage all forms of external communication to bring a unified
focus of the companies brand. In this stage all advertisements brochures, logo, colors,
and themes are standardized and adopted across the company’s various units.
Stage 2-Coordinates all forms of communication
Coordinate external communication with internal communication. All departments and
staffs are made to project the unified image and communicate with out side external
agencies with the same message. This effort becomes important when the company
implements public relations.
Stage 3- Use information technology.
Ay information technology in the IMC program: Develop databases on customer’s
purchases ,activities and interaction with the company.
Stage 4- Integrate all elements of promotion mix
.Treat IMC as an investment not as expense or a simple department function. Companies
reaching these stage use customer database to establish customer value for each of
their customers
Benefits of IMC

IMC creates competitive advantages. They boost sales and

profits.
• Save time and money.
• Customer relationship improves.
• Organizational image also improves.
• Customer gets timely reminder, updated information and
special offers.
• Buying process become easy.
Requisites for the success of IMC.

1. Top management support for IMC.

2. Integration of message by advertising, public relation and sales
promotion staff.
3. Common standards for use of logo, typeface, colors etc.
4. Clear cut marketing communication strategy based on sustainable
competitive advantages.
5. Adequate budget to achieve objectives.
6. Think customer first philosophy.
7. Build life long customer relationship for customer retention.
8. Develop effective marketing information system with customer
database.
9. Share art work for various media.
Growing value of IMC program.
The value of IMC programs have increased due to several factors in
the global market place.
1. Information technology—The use of computer and the internet
has given unprecedented power in the hands of marketing
executives. Computer and computer software have given the
power to store and process huge amounts of data and
information about customer, use of credit cards and e-banking
provides purchase data immediately to the marketing firm.
2. Changes in channel power -e-marketing—With the advancement
of WWW and information technology the channel power is
gradually shifting to the consumer. Consumers are able to obtain
information about products and services from their homes and
make purchase almost every thing over the internet. The e-
marketing has become powerful mode of delivering satisfaction
to the customers. E-marketing has totally changed the channel
structure and the mode of selling through retail stores.
3. Increase in competition-- The market today has become
too complex and too competitive. Consumers have access to
the global market and they can purchase product from any
where in the world.
4. Brand parity-- The market today suffers from brand parity
because consumers are offered with wide choice of brands.
Consumers are found to purchase from among a group of
brands rather than a particular brand. Similarly many brands
are perceived to be equal in terms of quality, they base their
purchase decisions on price availability and special
promotional mix.
5. Integration of information– Consumers today do not take
information provided by a firm at its face value. They seek
additional information and can access to such information
through the various websites on the internet or other consumer
information sources such as retail outlet or consumer
magazines.
6. Decline in the effectiveness of mass-media advertising– The
effectiveness of mass-media advertising is gradually decreasing
as most consumers have become tired of watching the
advertisement in the print, display and electronic media.
Marketers are looking for other means of communication to
pass on the messages to the potential buyers.
7. Global Integrated Marketing Communication.(GIMC)—
The emergence of the concept of global village and use of
global marketing has brought a challenge to design
message that can be delivered to the international
audience with their cultural differences.
International firms are following adaptation strategy that
requires a deep understanding of the local cultures and
value system.