Integrated Marketing Communication, Reading material for marketing management 2 nd year students

CHAPTER 2
Analysis of Marketing Communications Process
2.1. Introduction
Definition of Communication
A process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs,
or behavior; also: exchange of information; a system (as of telephones) for communicating: a system of routes
for moving troops, supplies, and vehicles; a technique for expressing ideas effectively (as in speech); the
technology of the transmission of information (as by print or telecommunication)
Marketing Communications
Marketing communications is a management process through which an organization engages with its various
audiences. By understanding an audience's communications environment, organizations seek to develop and
present messages for its identified stakeholder groups, before evaluating and acting upon the responses. By
conveying messages that are of significant value, audiences are encouraged to offer attitudinal and behavioral
responses.
2.2. Basic Model of Communication and Elements of the Communication Process

To communicate effectively, marketers need to understand how communication works. Communication

involves the nine elements shown in Figure 18.2. Two of these elements are the major parties in a
communication — the sender and the receiver. Another two are the essential communication tools - the
message and the media. Four more are primary communication functions - encoding, decoding, response and
feedback. The latest element is noise in the system.
A. Sender. The party sending the message to another party. It may be the company wanting to target the
consumer group.
B. Encoding. The process of putting the intended message or thought into symbolic form
Message. The set of' words, pictures or symbols that the sender transmits.
C. Media. The communication channels through which the message moves from sender to receiver
(Radio, TV, newspaper, internet etc)

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Integrated Marketing Communication, Reading material for marketing management 2 nd year students

D. Decoding. The process by which the receiver assigns meaning to the symbols encoded by the sender
E. Receiver. The party receiving the message sent by another party (the consumer)
F. Response. The reactions of the receiver after being exposed to the message -any of hundreds of possible
responses, such as the customer is more aware of the attributes of the product actually buys a product or
does nothing.
G. Feedback. The part of the receiver's response communicated back to the sender
H. Noise. The unplanned statics distortion during the communication process, which results in the receiver
getting a different message than the one the sender sent - for example, the customer is distracted while
reading the magazine and misses the IIP copier ad or its key points.

2.3. Keys to Effective Communication (Analyzing Receivers)

Many of us communicate with people every day, whether in person or on the countless digital platforms available
to us. But how much of our communication actually reaches the intended audience or person the way we hoped?
Effective communication requires us to be clear and complete in what we are trying to express.

Being an effective communicator in our professional and personal lives involves learning the skills to exchange
information with clarity, empathy, and understanding. In this article, we’ll define what effective communication
looks like, discuss its benefits and offer ways to improve your communication skills.

What is effective communication?

Effective communication is the process of exchanging ideas, thoughts, opinions, knowledge, and data so that the
message is received and understood with clarity and purpose. When we communicate effectively, both the sender
and receiver feel satisfied.

Communication occurs in many forms, including verbal and non-verbal, written, visual, and listening. It can occur
in person, on the internet (on forums, social media, and websites), over the phone (through apps, calls, and video),
or by mail.

For communication to be effective, it must be clear, correct, complete, concise, and curtsy or consideration.
We consider these to be the 5 C’s of communication, though they may vary depending on who you’re asking.

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 Integrated Marketing Communication, Reading material for marketing management 2 nd year students

While the effectiveness of communication can be difficult to measure, its impact is hard to deny. According to one
study, surveyed companies in the United States and United Kingdom with at least 100,000 employees lost $62.4
million per year on average due to poor communication. On the flip side, companies led by effective
communicators had nearly 50 percent higher total returns to shareholders over companies with less effective
communicators at the helm

Benefits of effective communication

The benefits of communication effectiveness can be witnessed in the workplace, in an educational setting, and in
your personal life. Learning how to communicate well can be a boon in each of these areas.

In the workplace, effective communication can help you:

 Manage employees and build teams
 Grow your organization more rapidly and retain employees
 Benefit from enhanced creativity and innovation
 Build strong relationships and attract more opportunities for you or your organization
In your personal life, effective communication can lead to:
 Improved social, emotional, and mental health
 Deeper existing connections
 New bonds based on trust and transparency
 Better problem–solving and conflict resolution skills

How to improve your communication skills

Communication, like any other skill, is one you can improve upon with practice. Here are a few ways to start
improving your communication skills, whether at home or on the job.

1. Consider your audience.

Who are you communicating with? Make sure you are aware of your audience—those you intend to communicate
with may differ from those who actually receive your messages. Knowing your audience can be key to delivering
the right messages effectively. Their age, race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, income, education level, subject
knowledge, and professional experience can all impact how they’ll receive your message.

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 Integrated Marketing Communication, Reading material for marketing management 2 nd year students

If you’re advertising a fast food restaurant, for example, you might want to deliver your message to an audience
that’s likely to be hungry. This could be a billboard on the side of a busy highway that shows a giant cheeseburger
and informs drivers that the closest location is just two miles away.

Or suppose you’re telling your family about your engagement. You might host a gathering after to celebrate, send
those photos of the engagement in a group chat, surprise them in conversation over dinner two weeks later, or post
on social media. Your chosen form of communication will depend on your family dynamics.
2. Practice active listening.
Active listening is the practice of giving your full attention in a communication exchange.
Some techniques include paying attention to body language, giving encouraging verbal cues, asking questions,
and practicing non-judgment. Before executing your communication, be sure to consider your
audience and practice active listening to get to the heart of their needs and desires. This way, you can improve
your communication as a counselor, social worker, marketer, professor, colleague, or friend.

Here are some examples of active listening in practice:

 If you work in marketing, you might engage in social listening to gather consumer data on social media
platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
 If you are a professor, you might take advantage of end-of-semester feedback forms and act on your students'
needs by hosting one-on-one meetings during office hours. Likewise, your students might choose to participate in
discussions after your lecture or at least sit attentively and ask questions.
 If you are a team leader, you might read Slack messages from your teammates, gauge that they are frustrated
with the workload, and respond by resetting priorities for the next few weeks. This communicates to the team that
their voices are heard.
 If you are a parent, you might have a disagreement with your child about finishing their homework, but if you
probe deeper with open communication, they may confess that their teacher made a discouraging comment that
left them unmotivated.
3. Make your message as clear as possible.
Once you have successfully identified your audience and listened to their intentions, needs, and desires, you may
have something to communicate. To do this effectively, turn to the 5 C’s of communication to ensure your
message is:
 Clear

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 Correct
 Complete
 Concise
 Concerned
Prepare to communicate in a way that achieves most of these characteristics.
4. Use the right medium or platform.
Using the right medium or platform to communicate matters. Effective communication requires you to consider
whether you need to meet in person or if Zoom would suffice. Is your message casual enough to use WhatsApp,
or would a formal email be more efficient and thorough? If you are catching up with a friend, do you two prefer to
talk on the phone or via old-fashioned letters? Whatever you choose should be intuitive and appropriate for you
and your current situation.

You might assess the priority level and the type of communication needed. In a marketing campaign, is there a
visual component on Instagram or is it a spoken podcast ad? Will the platform be a Facebook post, product
placement in a film, or a printed poster hung in cafes? For a university lecture, do students prefer to be online or
meet in person? Will there be a discussion afterward, and would it be fruitful to conduct it in a pub, cafe, or in a
field outdoors?

By considering your audience, practicing active listening, clarifying your communication, and choosing the right
medium or environment, you are well on your way to exercising communication effectiveness.

2.5. Steps in Developing Effective Communication

This topic includes the two major topics: Analyzing source, message and channel factors and Establishing
communication goals and objectives.

We now examine the steps in developing an effective integrated communications and promotion programmer.
The marketing communicator must do the following:
1. Identify the target audience
A marketing communicator starts with a clear target audience in mind. The audience may be potential buyers or
current users, those who make the buying decision or those who influence it. The audience may be
individuals, groups, special publics or the general public. The target audience will heavily affect the

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communicator's decisions on 'what will be said, how it will be said, when it wills he said, where it will be said
and who will say it.
2. Determining the Communication Objectives
Once the target audience has been defined, the marketing communicator must decide what response is wanted.
Of course, in many cases, the final response is purchase. But purchase is the result of a long process of
consumer decision making. The marketing communicator needs to know where the target audience now stands
and to what state it needs to be moved. To do this he or she must determine whether or not the customer is ready
to buy.
The target audience may be in any of six buyer-readiness stages - the stages that consumers normally pass
through on their way to making a purchase. These stages are awareness, knowledge, liking, preference,
conviction and purchase they can be described as a hierarchy of consumer response stages. The purpose of
marketing communication is to move the customer along these stages and ultimately to achieve final purchase.
• Awareness
The communicator must first know how aware the target audience is of the product or organization. The
audience maybe totally unaware of it, know only its name or know one or a few things about it. If most of the
target audience is unaware, the communicator tries to build awareness, perhaps starting with just name
recognition. This process can begin with simple messages that repeat the company or product name. For
example, when Nissan introduced its Infiniti automobile line, it began with an extensive 'teaser' advertising
campaign to create name familiarity. Initial ads for the Infiniti created curiosity and awareness by showing the
ear's name, but not the car.
• Knowledge
The target audience might be aware of the existence of the company or of the product, but not know much
more. Nissan may want its target audience to know more about the Infiniti. The company needs to learn how
many people in its target audience have little, some or much knowledge about the Infiniti. To create product
knowledge Infiniti ads must inform potential buyers of die car's high quality and other innovative features.
• Liking
Assuming target audience members know the product, how do they feel about it? Once potential buyers
identified about the Infiniti, Nissan's marketers would want to move them along to the next stage - to develop
favorable feelings about the Infiniti. If the audience looks unfavorably on the Infiniti, the communicator tries to
find out why. And then resolve the problems identified before developing a communications movement to
generate favorable feelings.
• Preference

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The target audience might like the product, but not prefer it to others. In this case, the communicator must try to
build consumer preference by promoting the. Product quality, value and other beneficial features. The
communicator can check on the campaign's success by measuring the audience's preferences again after the
campaign. If Nissan finds that many potential customers like the Infiniti, but prefer other car brands, it will have
to identify those areas where its offerings are not as good as competing deals and where they are better. It must
then promote its advantages to build preference among prospective clients, while redressing its weaknesses.
• Conviction
A target audience might prefer the product, but not develop a conviction about buying it. Thus some customers
may prefer the Infiniti to other car brands, but may not be absolutely sure that it is what they should buy. The
communicator's job is to build conviction that the product is the best one for the potential buyer.
Infiniti used a combination of the promotion-mix tools to create preference and conviction. Advertising extolled
the Infinity's advantages over rival brands. Press releases and public relations activities stressed the car's
innovative features and performance. Dealer salespeople told buyers about options, value for the price and after-
sales service.
• Purchase
Finally, some members of the target audience might have awareness, but not quite get around to making the
purchase. Potential Infiniti buyers might have decided to wait for more information or for the economy to
improve. The communicator must lead these consumers to take the final step. Actions might include offering
special promotional prices, discounts or premiums. Salespeople might call or write to selected customers,
inviting them to visit the dealership for a special showing or test drive.

Figure 3 Buyer readiness stages

3. Designing a Message
Having defined the desired audience response, the communicator goes to developing an effective message.
Ideally, the message should get Attention, hold interest, arouse Desire and obtain Action (a framework known as
the AIDA model).
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In practice, few messages take the consumer all die way from awareness to purchase, but the AIDA framework
suggests the desirable qualities of a good message.
In putting the message together, the marketing communicator must decide what to say (message content) and
how to say it (message structure and format).
Message Content
The communicator has to figure out an appeal or theme that will produce the desired response. There are three
types of appeal: rational, emotional and moral
Rational appeals relate to the audience's self-interest.
 They emphasize the functional benefits — better performance, higher quality, outstanding economy or
value - of the product.
 Thus, in its ads, Mercedes offers automobiles that are 'engineered like no other car in the world',
stressing engineering design, performance and safety.
 One Volvo ad gives 'a whole stack of reasons' for buying the car - it has a rigid passenger safety cage,
front and rear absorbing crumple zones, a catalytic converter that always works at peak efficiency, and
many more reasons stressing design, safety and economy.
 When pitching computer systems to business users, IBM salespeople talk about quality, performance,
reliability and improved productivity.
Rational appeals are particularly appropriate in industrial buying situations and for the purchase of
expensive consumer durable products.
Emotional appeals attempt to stir up either negative or positive emotions that can motivate purchase. These
include fear, guilt and shame appeals that get people to do things they should (brush their teeth, buy new tires)
or to stop doing things they shouldn't (smoke, drink too much, and eat fatty foods).
Advertisers also use positive emotional appeals such as love, humor, pride, promise of success and joy.
Moral appeals are directed to the audience's sense of what is 'right' and 'proper'. They are often used to urge
people to support social causes such as a cleaner environment, better race relations, and equal rights for women
and aid to the disadvantaged.

Message Structure
The communicator must decide /how to say it. This requires the communicator to handle three message-
structure issues.
 The first is whether to draw a conclusion or to leave it to the audience.

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 The second message structure issue is whether to present a one-sided argument (mentioning only the
product's strengths), or a two-sided argument (touting the product's strengths while also admitting its
shortcomings).
 The third message-structure issue is whether to present the strongest arguments first or last. Presenting
them first gets strong attention, but may lead to an anti-climactic ending."
Message Format
 The communicator also needs a strong format for the message. In a print ad, the communicator has to
decide on the headline, copy, diagram and color. To attract attention, advertisers can use: novelty and
contrast; eye-catching pictures and headlines; distinctive formats; message size and position, Shape and
movement. If the message is to be carried over the radio, the communicator has to choose words, sounds
and voices.
 If the message is to be transmitted on television or conveyed in person, then all these elements plus body
language have to be planned. Presenters plan their facial expressions, gestures, dress, posture and even
hairstyle.
4. Choosing Media
The communicator must now select channels of communication. There are two broad types of communication
channel: personal and non-personal.
Personal Communication Channels
In personal communication channels, two or more people communicate directly with each other.
They might communicate face to face, over the telephone, through the mail or even through an internet 'chat'.
Personal communication channels are effective because they allow for personal addressing and feedback.
Some personal communication channels are controlled directly by the communicator, as in the case of company
salespeople who contact buyers in the target market. Other personal communications about the product may
recall
Buyers through channels not directly controlled by the company. These might include independent experts -
consumer advocates, consumer buying guides and others - making statements to target buyers. Or, they might
be neighbors, friends, family members and associates talking to target buyers. This last channel, known as
word-of-mouth influence, has considerable effect in many product areas.
Non-Personal Communication Channels
These are Medias that carry messages without personal contact or feedback. Include
 Major media, atmospheres and events. Important media consist of print media (newspapers, magazines,
direct mail); broadcast media (radio, television); and display media (billboards, signs, posters).

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Atmospheres are designed environments that create or reinforce the buyer's learning’s towards buying a
product. Thus lawyers' offices and banks are designed to communicate confidence and other factors that might
be valued by their clients. Events are occurrences staged to communicate messages to target audiences. For
example, public relations departments arrange press conferences, grand openings, shows and exhibits, public
tours and other events to communicate with specific audiences.

Media selection factors

Reach: is a measure of the number of different audience member exposed at least once to a media vehicle in a
given period of time.
Coverage: refers to the potential audience that might receive the message through a vehicle. Coverage refers to
the potential audience and reach refers to the actual audience.

Frequency: refers to the number of times the receiver is exposed to the media vehicle in a specified period.

5. Setting the Total Promotion Budget

One of the hardest marketing decisions facing a company is how much to spend on promotion.
How does a company decide on its promotion budget? There are four common methods used to set the total
budget for Promotion: the affordable method, the percentage-of-sales method, the competitive-parity method
and the objective and- task method.''
A. Affordable Method
A common 'rule-of-thumb' used by many companies is the affordable method: they set the promotion budget at
the level they think the company can afford.
They start with total revenues; deduct operating expenses and capital outlays. And then devote some portion of
the remaining funds to advertising.
B. Percentage-of-Sales Method
In the percentage-of-sales method,
 Marketers set their promotion budget at a certain percentage of current or forecast sales.
 Or they budget a percentage of the sales price.
 The percentage-of-sales method has advantages.
 It is simple to use and helps managers think about the relationship between promotion spending, selling
price and profit per unit.

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 It create competitive stability because competing firms tend to spend about the same percentage of their
sales on promotion.
 However, there is little disadvantage of method.
 It wrongly views sales as the cause of promotion rather than as the result.
 The budget is based on availability of funds rather than on opportunities.
 It may prevent the increased spending sometimes needed to turn around falling sales.
 It fails to consider whether a higher or lower level of spending would be more profitable. Because the
budget varies with year-to-year sales, long-range planning is difficult.
 Finally, the method does not provide any basis for choosing a specific percentage, except what has been
done in the past or what competitors are doing.
C. Competitive-Parity Method
 Other companies use the competitive-parity- method, setting their promotion budgets to match competitors'
outlays. They watch competitors' advertising or get industry promotion-spending estimates from
publications or trade associations, and then set their budgets based on the industry average.
 Two arguments support this method. First, competitors' budgets represent the collective wisdom of the
industry. Second, spending what competitors spend helps prevent promotion wars. Unfortunately, neither
argument is valid. There are no grounds for believing that the competition has a better idea of what a
company should be spending on promotion than does the company itself,
 Companies differ greatly, in terms of market opportunities and profit margins, and each has its own special
promotion needs. Finally, there is no evidence' that budgets based on competitive parity prevent promotion
wars.
D. Objective-and-Task Method
The most logical budget-setting method is the objective-and-task method, whereby the company sets its
promotion budget based on what it wants to accomplish with promotion. The method entails:
1. Defining specific objectives;
2. Determining the tasks needed to achieve these objectives; and
3. Estimating the costs of performing these tasks. The sum of these costs is the proposed promotion
budget.
The main advantage of this method is that
 It forces managers to define their communication objectives,
 To determine the extent to which each objective will be met using selected promotion tools and

The financial implications of alternative communication programs.

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7. Selecting the message sources

The message’s impact on the target audience is affected by how the audience views the communicator.
 Celebrities
• Athletes
• Entertainers
Professionals
Characteristics
 Expertise
 Trustworthiness
 Likeability

8. Collecting Feedback and Measure IMC

After sending the message, the communicator must research its effect on the target audience. This involves:
 Asking the target audience members whether they remember the message,
 How many times they saw it,
 What points they recall,
 How they felt about the message,
 And their past and present attitudes towards the product and company.
The communicator would also like to measure behavior resulting in the message - how many people bought a
product, talked to others about it or visited the store.

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