Marketing Communication: Concepts & Definitions

• Marketing communication (MACOM) has become a popular and important area in modern marketing.
• Technology advancements, mobile devices, and the internet significantly changed marketing communication in the 21st century which led to interactive and digital marketing becoming prominent.
• Marcom is used by brands as a critical component of effective marketing.
• Marketing encompasses more than just selling and advertising.
• Marketing involves strategies developed by organizations to transfer value to their customers.
• Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals.
• At its core, marketing involves exchange and customer value.
• Marketing involves moving goods from the producer to the consumer and includes activities companies undertake to bring their products or services to the market.

Marketing Concepts

• Needs: Basic human requirements like food, water, and shelter.
• Wants: Things people desire but are not essential for survival and are shaped by culture, society, and individual personality
• Demand: When a customer is willing and able to buy a need or want.
• Products: Anything that can be offered to market to satisfy a need or want, including physical objects and services.
• Value, Satisfaction, and Quality: What the customer gains from owning and using a product.
• Exchange: The act of obtaining a desired object by offering something in return.
• Transactions: A trade between two parties.
• Relationships: Long-term commitments built with valued customers.
• Markets: The environment or set of actual and potential buyers of a product.

The Definition of Marketing

• Marketing is not just personal selling or advertising and includes various activities Like public relations, sales promotion, advertising, social media, pricing, and distribution.
• Companies spend billions of dollars annually on marketing with the cumulative function to communicate, deliver, and create value to the consumer while also taking the employees, stakeholders, and society into consideration.
• Successful companies engage in consumer-oriented marketing by examining the everyday lives of their customers to create products to fill a need.
• Marketing consists of four elements which are product, place, promotion, and price that must be used in a cohesive plan to target the consumer effectively.
• Product: Can be a physical product or a service.
• Place: Where the product is purchased.
• Price: The amount the consumer pays for the product.
• Promotion: The communication tools used to effectively get the company's message out.
• Marketing is a philosophy with a main focus on providing customer satisfaction.
• 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.

Communication Basics

• Communication means common or sharing; to make something common.
• Communication is a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.

Marketing Communication (MACOM)

• MACOM is a collective term for all the various types of plan messages used to build a brand, a process of effectively communicating product information or ideas to the target audience which morphs into conversational marketing, where consumers are connectors and allows them to enter interdependent relationships.
• Within marketing communication lies the MACOM mix, with elements of communication delivery often referred to as the MACOM mix.

Marketing Communication Tools (MACOM)

• Advertising
• Digital marketing
• Point of purchase
• Direct marketing
• Sales promotion
• Personal selling
• Sponsorships
• Marketing public relations

Changes in Marketing Communication Practices

• Shift in marketing expenditure from mass media advertising to the convergence of media and technology, which has led to redefining traditional media as a passive one-way communication tool, while non-traditional media allows customers to be in control of receiving and interpreting brand messages with resulted in the rise of digital marketing.
• Growth in reliance on databases and focused communication methods using big data to target messages to selected consumer segments for greater accountability. These include: Direct mail, opt-in, or permission, Emails, Special interests, Magazines, Pay TV, and Events alongside real-time, intuitive digital platforms and best-spot communications.
• Increased demand on communications suppliers for a more diversified range instead of Traditionally offered specialized services.
• Focus on accountability and ROI.
• Changing consumer work lifestyle with remote employment implications that presents greater challenges today in reaching consumers as they're now located in multiple locations. The imminent rise of on demand everything.
• Product and service consumption with end-to-end customer experience, valuable consumer insights, and social media touchpoints being part of this on demand consumer.

Marketing Communication Process

• The process involves marketing communication decisions, objectives, positioning, target, and the budget to guide the structure.
• Objectives must be considered that communication decisions reflect brand's goals and should be mapped out from the onset.
• Key questions to be addressed include: what information has to be disseminated through this campaign, and/or what action does the campaign want to induce, what the marketing communication is supposed to say about our brand in order to motivate the target audience to take whatever action is required.
• Objectives should be expressed from a quantitative standpoint, revolving around areas such as perception, cognition, emotional, association, frustration, and behavior.
• A brand's position is directly related to the target segment as this represents the brand's meaning and shows off its uniqueness.

Explore the fundamentals of marketing communication (MACOM) and its role in modern marketing. Understand how technology and the internet have transformed marketing strategies. Learn about core marketing concepts such as needs, value exchange, and the overall process of bringing products to market.