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Marketing communications

Marketing Communications are "all strategies, tactics, and activities involved in getting the desired marketing messages to intended target markets, regardless of the media used" (MarcommWise, 2006). Tony Yeshin (1999) defines marketing communications as "the process by which a marketer develops and presents stimuli to a defined target audience with a purpose of eliciting a desired set of responses" (Yeshin, 1999).

Marketing communications are: adverting, sales promotions, personal selling, PR and direct and interactive marketing (Fill, 1999). Consequently Marketing Communications Plan is the marketing plan which promotional plan incorporates two or more integrated marketing communications mediums aiming to reiterate the same goals and objectives. Marketing Communications Plans are considered by many professionals as an excellent way to effectively communicate with target audience.

Marketing Communications Plans are generally based on two different frameworks: Marketing Communications Planning Framework and SOSTAC (Fill, 1999).

Marketing Communications Plans consist of the following vital elements:

"Context analysis
Promotional objectives
Marketing communications strategy
Promotional mix (methods and tools)
Budget schedule
Evaluation and control" (Fill, 1999).

When writing marketing communications plan it is important to:

1. Set corporate, marketing and marketing communications objectives, which would support and integrate with each other.
2. Develop segmentation, targeting and positioning strategies
3. Develop creative message with which Marketing Communications Plan with communicate with target audience
4. Select and justify one or combination of marketing strategies (push, pull or profile)
5. Develop well-rounded and creative set of promotional mediums and allocate appropriate budget for each medium.
6. Create contingency planning strategy (in case something goes wrong)
7. Set strict set of evaluation and control mediums which would include milestones and continuous evaluation

Marketing communications is nothing but the science and art of communicating information that the company wants to divulge to the public. The information could be related to the marketing of a product, talk about a new product launch or community initiatives taken by the company. The whole exercise is called a science and an art because though there are set rules and patterns to the manner in which communication should be drafted, the ability to communicate effectively is an art that only some can master. Even as just communicating may seem an easy task since that is what we do every day in our normal lives, there is a science behind what to communicate to whom and in what tone and manner. The process becomes more complex when the market to which one is communicating is an evolved market.

To give you an example of the underlying concepts of marketing communications let us consider the example of the promotional emails that we receive almost everyday. Any person who has some technology background will tell you that the communication is filled with embedded action scripts, flash, cookies and a lot of technological techniques to decipher your movement through the Internet. These are the best practices that are being used in marketing communications today.

These technological wonders enable the marketing professionals to track the navigation of the user through the sites. It registers whether you open the email or not and the activities that you undertake once you have reached the landing page. It measures the amount of time that you spend one each page, the links that you click on and therefore the products and options that you are interested in.

This information is then delivered to the marketing department where it is analyzed and a specific customized communication is created for the user. This tracking and monitoring has enabled marketing programs to become more result oriented and measurable. And it is now becoming a significant tool to justify marketing spends and link the increase in sales to marketing efforts directly.

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