Managing Marketing

Communications
• Modern marketing calls for more than developing a good
product, pricing it attractively and making it accessible.
• Companies must also communicate with current and potential
stakeholders and the general public to inform them about the
attributes of their offerings.
• For most marketers, therefore, the question is not whether to
communicate but rather what to say, how and when to say it, to
whom and how often.
• Consumers can turn to hundreds of cable and satellite TV
channels, thousands of magazines and newspapers and millions
of internet pages and are actively deciding what
communications they want to receive.
• To achieve their strategic goals, holistic marketers must
craft communication campaigns that can break through
the clutter and reach customers on a personal level.
• Done right, marketing communications can have a huge
payoff.
The Role of Marketing
Communications
• Marketing Communications is the means by which firms attempt
to inform, persuade, and remind consumers-directly or indirectly-
about the products and brands they sell.
• In a sense, it represents the voice of the company and its brands;
it is a means by which the firm can establish a dialog and build
relationships with consumers. By strengthening customer loyalty,
marketing communications can contribute to customer equity.
• Marketing communication also works by showing consumers how
and why a product is used by whom, where and when.
• Consumers can learn who makes the product and what the
company and brand stand for, and they can become motivated to
try or use it.
• Marketing communication allows companies to link their
brands to other people, places, events, brands
experiences, feelings and things.
• It can contribute to brand equity by establishing the
brand in memory and creating a brand image as well as
by driving sales and affecting shareholder value.
The Communication Process
• Marketers should understand the fundamental elements
of effective communications. Two models are useful: a
macromodel and a micromodel.
Macro Communication Model
• The above figure shows nine key factors in effective
communication.
• Two factors represent the major parties – sender and
receiver.
• Two represent the major tools – message and media.
• Four represent major communication functions –
encoding, decoding, response and feedback.
• The last element in the system is noise, random and
competing messages that may interfere with the
intended communication.
Elements in the Communication
Process
• Senders must know what audiences they want to reach
and what responses they want to get.
• They must encode their messages so the target
audience can successfully decode them.
• They must transmit the message through media that
reach the target audience and develop feedback
channels to monitor the responses.
• The more the sender’s field of experience overlaps that
of the receiver, the more effective the message is likely
to be.
Micromodel of Consumer Responses
• Micromodels of marketing communications concentrate
on consumers’ specific responses to communications.
• The above figure summarizes four classic response hierarchy
models.
• All these models assume the buyer passes through cognitive,
affective and behavioral stages in that order.
• This “learn-feel-do” sequence is appropriate when the audience
has high involvement with a product category perceived to
have high differentiation, such as an automobile or house.
• An alternative sequence, “do-feel-learn”, is relevant when the
audience has high involvement but perceives little or no
differentiation within the product category, such as airline
tickets or personal computers.
• A third sequence, “learn-do-feel”, is relevant when the
audience has low involvement and perceives little
differentiation, such as with salt or batteries.
• By choosing the right sequence, the marketer can do a
better job of planning communications.
Hierarchy-of-Effects Model
• Awareness: If most of the target audience is unaware of
the product being sold, the communicator’s task is to
build awareness. Awareness is built by repeated
exposure. Awareness consists of recognition and recall.
• Knowledge: The target audience might have brand
awareness but not know much more. Hence create
more relevant content that can build knowledge about
your brand.
• Liking: Giving target members know the brand, how do
they feel about it? Communicate all the positives about
your brand to generate liking.
• Preference: The target audience might like the product but not
prefer it to others. The communicator must then try to build
consumer preference by comparing quality, value, performance
and other features to those of likely competitors.
• Conviction: A target audience might prefer a particular product
but not develop a conviction about buying it. The communicator’s
job is to build conviction and intent to purchase.
• Purchase: Finally, some members of the target audience might
have conviction but not quite get around to making the purchase.
• The communicator must lead these consumers to take the final
step, perhaps by offering the product at a lower price, offering a
premium or letting them to try it out.
Developing Effective
Communications

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Target Comm Chann Marke
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Identify the Target Audience
• The process must start with a clear target audience in
mind: potential buyers of the company’s products,
current users, deciders or influencers, as well as
individuals, groups, particular publics or the general
public.
• The target audience is a critical influence on the
communicator’s decisions about what to say, how,
when, where and to whom.
Set The Communication Objectives
• Establish need for category; Build brand awareness; Build
brand attitude; Influence brand purchase intention
• Establish Need for Category: Establishing a product or service
category as necessary for removing or satisfying a perceived
discrepancy between a current motivational state and a desired
motivational state.
• Build Brand Awareness: Fostering consumer’s ability to recognize
or recall the brand in sufficient detail to make a purchase.
• Build Brand Attitude: Helping consumers evaluate the brand’s
perceived ability to meet a currently relevant need.
• Influence Brand Purchase Intention: Moving consumers to
decide to purchase the brand or take purchase-related action.
• The most effective communications can achieve
multiple objectives.
Design the Communications
• Formulating the communications to achieve the desired
response requires answering three questions: What to say
(message), how to say it (creative strategy) and who should
say it (message source).
• Message Strategy In selecting message strategy,
management searches for appeals, themes, or ideas that will
tie in to the brand positioning and help establish points-of-
parity or points-of-difference.
• Some of the appeals or ideas may relate directly to product or
service performance (the quality, economy or value of the
brand); others may relate to more extrinsic considerations
(the brand as being contemporary, popular or traditional).
• Creative Strategy Communications effectiveness
depends on how well a message is expressed as well as
on its content.
• If a communication is ineffective, it may mean the
wrong message was used or the right one was poorly
expressed.
• Creative Strategies are the way marketers translate
their messages into a specific communication.
• We can broadly classify them as either informational
or transformational appeals.
• Informational Appeals An informational appeal
elaborates on product or service attributes or benefits.
• Examples – product-solution ads, product
demonstration ads, product comparison ads, and
testimonials from unknown or celebrity endorsers.
• Informational appeals assume strictly rational
processing of the communication on the consumer’s
part. Logic and reason rule.
• Transformational Appeals A transformational appeal
elaborates on a nonproduct-related benefit or image.
• It might depict what kind of person uses a brand or
what kind of experience results from use.
• Transformational appeals often attempt to stir up
emotions that will motivate purchase.
• Communicators use negative appeals such as fear, guilt
and shame to get people do things (brush their teeth,
have an annual health checkup) or stop doing things
(smoking, abusing alcohol, overeating).
• Fear appeals work best when they are not too strong,
when source credibility is high, and when
communication promises, in a believable and efficient
way, that the product or service will relieve the fear it
arouses.
• Messages are most persuasive when they moderately
disagree with audience beliefs.
• Stating only what the audience already believes at best
just reinforces beliefs, while messages too much at
variance with those beliefs will be rejected.
• Communicators also use positive emotional appeals such as humor,
love, pride and joy.
• Motivational or ‘borrowed interest’ devices – such as cute babies, frisky
puppies, popular music, and provocative sex appeals – are often
employed to attract attention and raise involvement with an ad.
• These techniques are thought necessary in the tough new media
environment of low-involvement processing and competing messages.
• Attention-getting tactics may also detract from comprehension,
however, or wear out their welcome fast or overshadow the product.
• Thus, one challenge is figuring out how to break through the clutter and
deliver the intended message.
Selecting the Message Source
• Message Source Research has shown that the source’s credibility is
crucial to a message’s acceptance.
• The three most often identified sources of credibility are expertise,
trustworthiness and likability.
• Expertise is the specialized knowledge the communicator possesses to
back the claim.
• Trustworthiness describes how objective and honest the source is
perceived to be.
• Friends are trusted more than strangers or salespeople, and people who
are not paid to endorse a product are viewed as more trustworthy than
people who are paid.
• Likability describes the source’s attractiveness, measured in terms of
candor, humor and naturalness.
• Message delivered by knowledgeable, trustworthy and
likable sources can achieve higher attention and recall,
which is why some advertisers use celebrities as
spokespeople.
Developing the Creative Execution
• A practical tool to facilitate discussion about the
creative output is given by the ADPLAN framework.
• Once an agency or creative team supplies a storyboard
or advertising execution, ADPLAN helps a strategist
consider important factors that facilitate success and/or
point out where missteps can take place.
• The ADPLAN acronym encompasses six dimensions:
Attention, Distinction, Positioning, Linkage, Amplification
and Net Equity.
• Attention indicates whether an advertisement will
garner interest from the target audience. This reflects
both initial capture as well as sustained interest. For
example, if a consumer who begins listening to an ad
airing on YouTube hits the ‘skip ad’ message after five
seconds, the ad has failed to capture sufficient attention
and the company’s message probably will not be heard.
• Recognizing this problem, Geico created a 5-second
advertisement that was not skippable. Other brands
have addressed this issue by using engaging creative
content that people want to watch to completion.
• Distinction assesses whether an advertisement uses
themes, content or creative devices that distinguish it
from other advertisements in the category or in general.
• For example, Apple’s historic ‘1984’ Super Bowl ad,
despite being aired only once, achieved massive
distinction because it featured high production values
that represented Apple as a hero in a technological
dystopia. In contrast, many local automotive
commercials seem redundant.
• Positioning describes whether an advertisement
situates the brand in the right category, provides a
strong benefit, and anchors the benefit with a reason for
customers to believe the message.
• This dimension is a check that the desired positioning is
ultimately conveyed in the execution.
• For example, OldSpice ran a famous campaign that
emphasized that it was the most masculine body wash
available.
• Linkage communicates whether the target audience
will remember the creative execution. Often, it is not
enough that the target audience recalls seeing an
advertisement.
• A strong linkage between creativity and message will
ensure that target customers remember the brand that
was presented.
• It if possible, for example, for a person to remember an
ad but forget its message.
• For a number of years Ameriquest Mortgage ran Super
Bowl commercials that people loved but could not
remember what brand they promoted.
• Amplification captures whether individuals’ thoughts about
an advertisement are positive or negative.
• For example, Nike aired an ad featuring Collin Kaepernick
following the former NFL player’s refusal to stand for the
national anthem to protest racial injustice that received both
positive and negative reactions from consumers.
• Brands typically seek to elicit primarily positive thoughts
from their target audience.
• Amplification of positive thoughts is important because they
can lead to the formation of favorable attitudes – and
ultimately to purchase.
• Net equity pertains to how an advertisement fits with
a brand’s heritage and established associations.
• For example, the BMW brand is associated with high
performance. As a consequence of BMW’s objectives is
to make sure that new advertisements do not threaten
or undermine this equity.
• Although the ADPLAN tool is meant to guide strategic
discussions of advertisements, each element of the ADPLAN tool
can be measured empirically.
• Thus the framework serves as a means to foster deeper
conversations around advertising, as well as to direct where test
and measurement might occur.
• Note that ADPLAN is meant to function as just one aspect of a
strategist’s effort to evaluate creative output.
• Strategists must also develop a proper creative brief and
consider the purpose of the advertisement, the appropriateness
of the media channel and the company’s advertising budget.
Measuring Communication
Effectiveness
• Senior managers want to know the outcomes and
revenues from their communication investments.
• Too often, however, their communication managers
supply only inputs, like press clippings or the number of
ads, and expenses like media costs.
• In fairness, communication managers try to translate
inputs into intermediate outputs, such as reach and
frequency (the percentage of the target market exposed
to a communication and the number of exposures),
recall and recognition scores, persuasion changes and
cost-per-thousand calculations.
Formula for Measuring Different
Stages in the Sales Impact of
Advertising

Share of
Share of Share of Share of
Expenditur
Voice Mind/Heart Market
es
• A company’s share of advertising expenditures
produces a share of voice (proportion of company
advertising of that product to all advertising of similar
competitive products) that earns a share of consumers’
minds and hearts and ultimately a share of market.
• Share of voice (SOV) is a measure of the market
conversation your brand owns compared to your
competitors. It measures your brand’s visibility and
influence within industry conversations.
Designing an Integrated Marketing
Campaign in the Digital Age
• As the communication landscape becomes ever more
complex, companies are faced with the growing
challenge of coordinating communication activities to
ensure that they deliver a consistent message across
different channels – and do so in a way that enables
them to achieve their strategic goals.
• As a result, companies are adopting integrated
marketing communications as an approach to
designing, communicating and delivering a message
through multiple strategies that work together and
reinforce one another.
Managing Integrated Marketing
Communications
• Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is an
approach to managing a communication campaign
through a coordinated use of different communication
tools that work in concert and reinforce one another to
enable the company to achieve its strategic goals.
• IMC ensures that a company’s communication activities
are consistent with one another and can achieve the
company’s communication goals in an effective and
cost-efficient manner.
• IMC can occur on four distinct levels: horizontal,
vertical, internal and external.
• Horizontal Integration involves coordinating all relevant marketing
actions – including packaging, pricing, sales promotions and distribution –
with the communication campaign to achieve maximum customer impact.
• Vertical Integration involves aligning the communication objectives
with the higher-level goals that guide the company’s overarching
marketing strategy.
• Internal Integration involves sharing the relevant information from
different departments – including product development, market research,
sales and customer service –with the communication team to create an
effective and cost-efficient campaign.
• External Integration coordinates a company’s communication activities
with those of the external collaborators – including advertising, social
media and public relations agencies; event organizers and campaign co-
sponsors.
• Having a well-integrated communication campaign is
crucial to the company’s market success.
• Indeed, without an explicit focus on consistency, a
company’s communication can easily become a random
compilation of unrelated (and sometimes even
conflicting) messages, designed by different creative
teams working in isolation from one another, and
distributed through disparate media channels in a way
that fails to emphasize their joint impact and might
ultimately confuse rather than inform and persuade
target customers.
• In developing an integrated marketing communications
program, the marketer’s overriding goal is to create the most
effective and efficient communication program possible.
• The following criteria can help ensure that communications
are truly integrated.
• Coverage. Coverage is the proportion oof the audience
reached by each communication option employed, as well as
the amount of overlap among those options. In other words,
to what extend to different communication options reach the
designated target market and the same or different
consumers making up that market?
• Contribution. Contribution is the inherent ability of a
marketing communication to elicit the desired response
from consumers, and to exert communication effects on
them, in the absence of exposure to any other
communication option. How much does a
communication affect consumer processing and build
awareness, enhance image, elicit responses and induce
sales?
• Commonality. Commonality is the extent to which
common associations are reinforced across
communication options – that is, the extent to which
different communication options share the same
meaning.
• The consistency and cohesiveness of the brand image
are important because they determine how easily
existing associations and responses can be recalled and
how easily additional associations and responses can
become linked to the brand in memory.
• Complementarity. Communication options are often more
effective when used in tandem. Complementarity involves
emphasizing different associations and linkages across
communication options.
• For effective positioning, brands typically need to establish
multiple brand associations. Different marketing
communication options may be better suited to establishing a
particular brand association.
• For example, sponsorship of a cause may improve perceptions
of a brand’s trust and credibility, but TV and print advertising
may be needed to communicate its performance advantages.
• Conformability. In any integrated communications
program, the message will be new to some consumers
and familiar to others. Conformability reflects the extent
to which a marketing communication option works for
both groups of consumers.
• The ability to work at two levels – effectively
communicating to consumers who have seen other
communications and to those who have not – is
critically important.
• Cost. Marketers must evaluate marketing
communications on all these criteria against their cost
to arrive at the most effective and most efficient
• Let us briefly outline some of the key aspects of the
most popular communication formats: advertising;
online, social media and mobile communications;
events and experiences; word of mouth; publicity and
public relations; and packaging.
Advertising
• Advertising consists of any presentation and
promotion of ideas, goods, services and brands
by identifying sponsor using paid media.
• Typically, the advertiser purchases media time or space
in order to convey the company’s message to its target
audience.
• The most popular forms of advertising are television,
print, radio, online and place advertising.
Advertising – Television Advertising
• Television is generally acknowledged as the most powerful advertising medium
and reaches a broad spectrum of consumers.
• TV advertising has three particularly important strengths. First, it can vividly
demonstrate product attributes and persuasively explain their corresponding
consumer benefits.
• Second, it can dramatically portray user and usage imagery, brand personality and
other intangibles.
• Third, television has the opportunity to tap a captive audience during live
programming at important events.
• Because of the fleeting nature of commercials, however, and the distracting
creative elements often found in them, product-related messages and the brand
itself can be overlooked.
• Further, the high volume of competitive advertisements and other
nonprogramming material on television creates clutter that makes it easy for
consumers to ignore or forget ads.
Advertising – Print Advertising
• Print media offer a stark contrast to broadcast media.
• Because readers consume them at their own pace,
magazines, and newspapers can provide detailed
product information and effectively communicate user
and usage imagery.
• At the same time, the static nature of the visual images
in print media makes dynamic presentations or
demonstrations difficult, and print media can be fairly
passive.
Advertising – Radio Advertising
• Radio is a pervasive medium: About 93 percent of all US
citizens age 12 and older listen daily and for about 20
hours a week on average – numbers that have held
steady in recent years.
• Much radio listening occurs in the car and out of the
home. To be successful, radio networks are going
multiplatform with a strong digital presence to allow
listeners to tune in anytime, anywhere.
Advertising – Search Advertising
• Web users continue to look for information on specific topics, maps
and directions, news and current events, general information,
shopping and entertainment – in other words, just about everything!
• Millions of searches everyday encompass a wide range of subject
matter.
• Search has radically transformed fields such as health care, with
patients walking into their doctor’s office armed with information
and home buyers depending on real estate search sites and virtual
tours to limit their possibilities before they even set foot in a home
for a real-world tour.
• No wonder marketers have found opportunities for marketing
through search engines on the web medium and now on mobile
devices.
• Marketers are also using search engine marketing for
just about everything.
• Web marketers use search for branding, online sales,
lead generation for both manufacturers and
dealers, driving traffic to websites and simply to
provide content.
Search Engine Marketing
• The entire process of getting listed on search engine so
consumers can find a company online is called search
engine marketing (SEM).
• SEM – a form of internet marketing that seeks to
promote websites by increasing their visibility in search
engine results page.
• There are two aspects of SEM:
1. SEO
2. Pay-per-click
Search Engine Optimization
• Referes to the process of designing a site and its
content whereby search engines find the site without
being paid to do so.
• SEO – The process of editing a website’s content and
code in order to improve visibility within one or more
search engines.
• The free aspect of SEM is known as SEO is also called
natural search, organic search and algorithmic search.
Pay Per Click
• Or paid search advertising involves text ads targeted by
keyword search results on search engines, though
programs such as GoogleAdWords sometimes refereed
to as Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and cost-per-click
(CPC) advertising.
• The paid aspect of SEM is also called paid search and is
based on an advertising model where firms seeking to
rank high in specific search search categories will bid on
certain terms or keywords in the hopes of a lucrative
search ranking.
SEO Versus PPC
Advantages Disadvantages

SEO (Natural or Organic * Better response since • Results are not immediate
Search) majority of clicks are organic • Ranking is difficult to
(more chances of predict
conversion). • Initial time investment
• More return traffic and time is major cost
• Lower cost • Takes time for results to
• Long-term marketing be displayed
solution
• Brand Recognition and
loyalty

Paid Search (PPC, Pay-Per- • Immediate results based • Easy to lose ranking or
Click) on bidding system in spot
which there are charges • Daily budget can be
for clicks received. expensive depending on
Organic Search
• Page Rank – A mathematical algorithm named after
Google co-founder Larry Page to indicate how important
a page is on the web’ used as a metric when evaluating
websites.
• Keywords – Terms, words or phrases that are selected
by the user when making a search in a search engine;
also refers to terms that are bid on in a PPC system, or a
section in the HTML code for a website where site
developers put terms that they hope search engines will
classify the site when users search for those terms on
the web.
• In the case of HTML code, keywords are designated by a
“meta name” also known as a meta tag or meta
element.
• The first meta tag is the description that often contains
a sentence or two describing the site.
• The second meta tag is ‘keywords’, which states the
keywords for searches in which the site would like to be
ranked.
• In the past, search engines paid close attention to the
description and keywords in the meta names.
• However, the major search engines, particularly Google
are now concerned with customer intent in search and
whether the page is a good fit for the search terms.
The SEO Process
• Define the target market
• Find out what they search for and why they search
• Develop a search strategy: find keywords and phrases
• Develop a content strategy: to align with the keyword
strategy
• Redesign the site with those keywords and content in
mind
• Implement a paid search campaign to complement or
inform the organic search campaign (optional).
Search Engines
• Search engines are the focus of attention in SEM because they
are the heart of the search process.
• Search engines have the ability to organize and make
accessible the vast amount of information available on the web.
• When a user enters a query, the search engine looks for
information on the web and returns a list of results known as a
search engines result page (SERP).
• These results are in the form of suggested web pages, images,
videos maps or other types of files.
• Increasingly, they include results from the users’ social
contacts.
• The inclusion of search results from multiple content
sources such as videos, images, news, maps, books and
websites into one set of research results is called
universal search.
• While the search results are rather instantaneous for the
user, there are a multitude of processes that occur
behind the scenes.
• First, the user initiates a query that goes to the search
engine’s web server.
• The web server then sends the query typically to an
index server, which stores information on previously
categorized websites as a best fit to certain keywords.
• In order to index all this information, search engines use
spiders or robots, which are programs that crawl the
web and follow every link or piece of data that they see
and bring this information back to be stored.
• The contents of each page – words extracted from the
titles, headings or the special fields (meta tags) – are
then analyzed to varying degrees to determine how it
should be indexed.
• The relevant documents are then taken from the search
engine’s document server based on an appropriate
algorithm and then displayed for the user.
• The word “algorithm” in the context of search does not
refer to the process of solving a mathematical problem.
• A search engine algorithm displays the search
engine’s “best guess” at which pages are most relevant
to the user’s search and in which order they should be
shown.
The Generic Search Process

Query

Web
Users
Server

Docume Index
nt Server Server
The Top Ranking Factors on Google
• Content
• Links
Other Considerations in SEO
• Voice Search
• User Experience
• Meaningful Content Length
• Video Content and Unique Images
• Mobile Optimization
• Social Content Ranking
• Beyond Keywords
• SEO as part of an inbound marketing plan
Advertising – Place Advertising
• Place advertising is a broad category that includes
many creative and unexpected forms to grab
consumers’ attention where they work, play and of
course, shop.
• Popular options include billboards, public spaces,
product placement and point of purchase.
• Billboards use colorful, digitally produced images,
graphics, backlighting, sounds and movement. Outdoor
advertising is often called the “15-second sell” because
consumers have a fleeting exposure to the ad and must
grasp its message almost instantly.
• Public Spaces Ads are appearing in such unconventional
places as movie screens, airplane bodies, and fitness
equipment as well as in classrooms, sports arenas, office and
hotel elevators and other public places.
• Transit ads on buses, subways and commuter trains have
become a valuable way to reach working men and women.
“Street furniture” – bus shelters, kiosks and public areas – is
another fast-growing option.
• As the effectiveness of many traditional means of
communication is declining, advertisers turn to using public
spaces to create a memorable impression of the company and
its offerings in customers’ minds.
• Product Placement Marketers pay hundreds of
thousands of dollars for their products to make cameo
appearances in movies and on television. Sometimes
such product placements are the result of a larger
network advertising deal, but small product-placement
shops also maintain ties with prop masters, set
designers and production executives.
• Some firms get product placement at no cost.
• Point of Purchase The appeal of point-of-purchase
advertising is that consumers make many brand
decisions in the store. There are many ways to
communicate at the point of purchase (POP) including
ads on shopping carts, cart straps, aisles and shelves
and with in-store demonstrations, live sampling and
instant coupon machines.
Social Media
• An important component of digital marketing is social media.
Social media are a means for consumers to share text,
images, audio and video information with one another and
with companies and vice versa.
• Social media enable marketers to establish a public voice and
presence online. They can also cost-efficiently other
communication activities. In addition, because of their day-to-
day immediacy, they can encourage companies to stay
innovative and relevant.
• Marketers can build or tap into online communities, inviting
participation from consumers and creating a long-term
marketing asset in the process.
Social Media Platforms
• There are four main platforms for social media: online
communities and forums, blogs, social networks,
and customer reviews.
Online Communities and Forums
• Online communities and forums come in all shapes and
sizes. Many are created by consumers or groups of
consumers with no commercial interests or company
affiliations.
• Others are sponsored by companies whose members
communicate with the company and with one another
through postings, text messaging and chat discussions
about special interests related to the company’s product
and brands.
• These online communities and forums can be a valuable
resource for companies and perform multiple functions
by both collecting and conveying key information.
• A key for success in online communities is to create
individual and group activities that help form bonds
among community members.
• Apple hosts a large number of discussion groups
organized by product line and type of user. These
groups are customers’ primary source of product
information after warranties expire.
• These groups are customers’ primary source of product
information after warranties expire.
• Blogs Blogs regularly updated online journals or diaries, have become
an important outlet for word of mouth. There are millions in existence,
and they vary widely; some are personal for close friends and families,
and others are designed to reach and influence a vast audience. One
obvious appeal of blogs is that they bring together people with common
interests.
• Corporations are creating their own blogs and carefully monitoring
those of others. Because many consumers examine product information
and reviews contained in blogs the Federal Trade Commission has also
taken steps to require bloggers to disclose their relationship with
marketers whose products they endorse.
• At the other extreme, some consumers use blogs and videos as a
means of getting retribution for a company’s bad service or faulty
products.
Social Networks
• Social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram,
YouTube, Twitter and WeChat have become an important
force in both business to consumer and business to
business marketing.
• Marketers are still learning how to best tap into social
networks and their huge, well-defined audiences.
• Given networks’ noncommercial nature – users are
generally there looking to connect with others –
attracting attention and persuading are challenging.
• Also given that users generate their own content, ads
may appear beside inappropriate or even offensive
material.
• Much online content is not necessarily shared and does
not go viral.
• Only a small fraction of content ends up “cascading” to
more than one person beyond the initial recipient.
• In deciding whether to contribute to social media,
consumers can be motivated by intrinsic factors such as
whether they are having fun or learning, but more often
they are swayed by extrinsic factors such as social and
self-image considerations.
• Viral marketing tries to create a splash in the
marketplace to showcase a brand and its noteworthy
features.
• Some believe viral marketing efforts are driven more by
the rules of entertainment than by the rules of selling.
• An increasingly important component of a company’s
online communication is the use of social media
influencers.
• The term influencer marketing refers to the use of a
popular online figure to promote a product, service or
brand within his or her social media feed.
• Strictly speaking, influencer marketing can be viewed as
mix of publicity and paid endorsement that takes place
in the context of social media.
• Here, the company pays the endorser to promote its
offerings, but rather than using this endorsement in its
own communications, the company relies on the
influencer’s own social media networks to disseminate
the message.
Customer Reviews
• Customer reviews can be especially influential in shaping customer
preferences and buying decisions.
• One Nielsen survey found that online customer reviews were the
second most trusted source of brand information (after
recommendations from friends and family).
• Research has shown that social influence can lead to
disproportionately positive online ratings, and subsequent raters are
more likely to be influenced by previous positive ratings than by
negative ones.
• Consumers posting reviews are susceptible to conformity pressures
and to adopting the norms of others.
• On the other hand, positive online reviews or ratings are often not as
influential or values as negative ones.
• Consumers are also influenced by the online opinions
and recommendations of other consumers.
• The informal social networks that arise among
consumers complement the product networks set up by
the company.
• Online “influentials” who are one of a few people – or
maybe even the only person – to influence certain
consumers are particularly important and valuable to
companies.
Events and Experiences
• Becoming part of a personally relevant moment in
consumers’ lives through sponsored events and
experiences can broaden and deepen a company’s or
brand’s relationship with the target market.
• Daily encounters with brands may also affect
consumers’ brands attitudes and beliefs.
Managing Events - Reasons
• To identify with a particular target market or lifestyle
• To increase the salience of a company or product name
• To create or reinforce perceptions of key brand image
associations
• To enhance image
• To create experiences and evoke feelings
• To express commitment to the community or on social
issues
• To entertain key clients or reward key employees
• To permit merchandising or promotional opportunities
Publicity and Public Relations
• Publicity aims to promote a company and its offerings. Unlike
advertising, where the company pays for the media, publicity
uses editorial space and does not incur media costs.
• Common forms of publicity include news stories, articles and
editorials.
• The primary goal of publicity is to attract attention to the
company or its offerings.
• In contrast, public relations (PR) focuses on more than just public
attention.
• The ultimate goal of public relations is to manage the overall
reputation of the company and its offering, while building
relationships with the community.
Publicity
• Publicity involves securing editorial space – as opposed to
paid space – in the media to promote a product, service,
idea, place, person or organization.
• Publicity plays an important role in a variety of tasks:
a. Launching new products
b. Repositioning mature products
c. Building interest in a product category
d. Defending products that have encountered public problems
e. Building the corporate image in a way that reflects
favorably on its products
Public Relations
• Public Relations (PR) includes a variety of programs
to promote or protect a company’s image among the
relevant stakeholders.
• Public relations can involve different media formats.
Some of the most popular PR media formats are
publications, events, news, speeches, public service
activities and identity media
Packaging
• Because packaging is usually perceived during a
buyer’s first encounter with the product, it can be
determining factor in piquing the buyer’s interest.
• It will also shape the buyer’s subsequent evaluation of
the product and the final purchase decision.
• Because of its ability to influence consumer perceptions
and choice, many companies use packaging to create
distinct customer value and differentiate their products
from those of the competition.
• The label is a highly visible and important element of
packaging.
• Labels include written, electronic or graphical communication
placed directly on the packaging as well as anything associated
with and attached to the product, such as an information tag.
• The label’s primary functions are to communicate, to
consumers, channel members and the company, information
that facilitates identification of the offering; describes the
offering’s key attributes; highlights the offering’s benefits;
instructs buyers on the proper use, storage and disposal of the
product; increases the offering’s aesthetic appeal and
leverages and enhances the brand associated with the offering.
• Following a set of three core packaging principles can
help develop effective packaging that contributes to the
product’s ultimate success in the market.
• These core principles are visibility, differentiation
and transparency.