Marketing Communication and its Importance

Marketing communication is the medium through which a company exchanges the information about goods and services to the customers. The company uses this communication medium to spread the brand awareness among the customers. Marketing communication helps in the creation of the brand image in the mind of the consumers with the help of various techniques such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, publicity, interactive marketing, events and experiences (Belch, et al., 2014). The essay begins with the discussion of the role of marketing communication in the organisation. The introduction is followed by the highlighting the concept of the communication budget and its importance in an organisation. The essay concludes with the discussion on the relevance of the marketing communication strategy in the marketing communication budget.

Marketing communication plays a significant role in the organisation. It helps the company in the overall reduction of the marketing cost. The organisations promote their product and services in the market through various techniques (Hänninen, and Karjaluoto, 2017). One of the techniques of communication opted by the companies for the promotion of the product is advertising. Creative advertisements are a big aid to the marketing efforts of a company and the same play a critical role in the generation and the improvement of the sales of the product of the company. The information with respect to the features of the newly introduced products and the services can be communicated by the entities with the help of the press releases. The company can also opt for advertising using the email marketing technique through which the message is directly communicated to the targeted customers. There are numerous examples of the entities that are consistently engaged in the creative marketing efforts in the form of designing interactive advertisements. For example- Wesfarmers is one of the leading companies in Australia that promotes its product through various forms of the advertisements (Wesfarmers, 2018).

Creative campaigns can be used as an effective medium of external communication as well, as it helps the organisations to cut on the cost of the marketing efforts in the form of agency fees, which in turn saves the overall product or services promotion cost. The content once designed can be used on the different media as well and thus saves the cost of copywriting and photographs.

The external marketing communications of the company are mainly done keeping in mind the suppliers and customers of the company. The same aids in building the desired reputation with the suppliers to avail the discounts and other facilities and loyal base of customers (Luxton, Reid, and Mavondo, 2015). For example- The companies like Wesfarmers interact with the suppliers and customers through their own website. The website comprises of the events and updates about the products and services along with the creative images.

As mentioned earlier, the marketing communication aids in brand awareness. It is used as a medium to provide information about the upcoming products and schemes to the customers using emails, telephone calls and text messages. It is also a channel through which feedback and the first-hand responses of the customers can be obtained. Customer feedback is a critical element of brand awareness (Lovelock, and Patterson, 2015). Customer relations play a significant part in a company’s success and marketing communication plays an important role here as well. The companies engage in opening its customer care branches to address the queries and solve problems of the customer, which is also a form of marketing communication. The practice like above, enhance the brand loyalty and familiarity with the products and enables the customers to provide suggestions or advice, leading to overall improvement in the terms and conditions. Hence, it can be said that the role of marketing communication is not just limited to brand awareness but also the resolution of the queries and thus the overall enhancement of the customer experience.

Strategies of Marketing Communication

The marketing communication also aids in enhancing the profit levels. Effective communication strategy helps the entities to increase the productivity and aids in market expansion and targeting the new customers. The role of the marketing communication can be analysed with the help of the example of Wesfarmers. The company earned a whopping total revenue of $ 68444 million in 2017 (Wesfarmers, 2018). Wesfarmers has expanded its business at the global scale and has opened several branches at various locations to interact with the customers worldwide. The global communication strategy of the company has helped it in earning more and more revenues (Wesfarmers, 2018).

The following segment is based on the role of the communication budget in the organisation. To analyse the significant role of the communication budget in the organisation, it is necessary to first understand the communication budget. Communication budget is a process of planning, tracking and measuring the expenses of marketing communication activities of the company such as advertisements, direct marketing, and events. Communication budget helps the entities to achieve the communication objective by managing the expenses in relation to the communication activities. The communication objective of an organisation can be referred to engaging in optimum investment in the communication activities and getting the high return on the said investment. There have been numerous example of the companies that have expended considerably in the advertisement activities and have incurred losses. An organisation can invest the optimum amount by preparing the budget, which would prevent it from the losses. The communication budget can be prepared on the basis of the time period and it aids in the smooth running of the organisation (Kitchen, and Burgmann, 2015). Most of the time communication budget is prepared by the companies on the quarterly basis to expend less on the communication activities such as direct marketing, events, advertisements and others. Communication budget is prepared by making the forecasts as per the previous budget of the company.  It covers all the future expenses which are planned by the company to achieve its objectives. Communication budget helps the company to cover the cost of the new business opportunities. It is useful for the company to make the provision of the other expenses. Communication budget is an essential part especially for the large organisations because it helps to make the communication decisions and promotes the company and its products (Finne, and Grönroos, 2017).    

The communication budget helps in attainment of various benefits such as maintain control over various activities of the company. While expanding the business in the new market communication budget is essential. Communication aids in the promotion of the products in new markets. Promotion in turn aids in increasing the sale. Thus, it is important for the marketing and communication managers of the company to perform their effectively and efficiently (Petersen, Kushwaha, and Kumar, 2015). The management makes the strategies to promote the product in the market at the minimum cost. Communication budget also helps the company to manage and delegate the authority and resources to the various departments. Communication budget of an entity also helps in stating the business position in the market. The entity can compare the previous year budget and evaluate the deviations and the reasons thereof. Thus, the communication budget helps to achieve the communication goals of the company by making the marketing communication strategy (Valos, et al., 2016).

External Marketing Communication

Marketing communication budget is a part of the marketing planning which is prepared to achieve the communication objectives of the company. Marketing communication strategy includes the advertisements, direct marketing, and others. Marketing communication strategy is a technique to achieve the communication objective. This is done by making the plan to deliver the key message of the company to the target customers (Huang, and Sarigöllü, 2014). At the time of designing the marketing communication strategy, the entity has to prepare the communication budget simultaneously. Marketing communication strategy of the company attracts the customer by using the creative content. Marketing communication strategy is prepared according to the marketing communication budget of the company (Khan, 2014).

The communication budget is a guide to the management of the marketing communication activities. The head of the department of the marketing communication prepares the budget to allocate the amount of expenditure to the different communication activities. The communication department allocates the resources to social marketing, email advertising, text message advertising and more. An amount is also kept aside for the development of the white paper towards the identification of the activities that help in promoting the organisation and its goals. The organisation also allocates the amount in from the budget to be expended on the press releases and freelance writers to write the new and interesting content, which attracts the customer or investors towards the organisation (Ashley and Tuten, 2015).

The large organisations like Wesfarmers have their own corporate communications department, which helps the company to communicate with the internal staff. For example, the company Wesfarmers has a large number of employees scattered around the globe to share the information with, thus the company delivers the messages to the different groups within the organisation. The companies like Wesfarmers also indulge in preparation of the crisis communication plan to handle the critical situations (Wesfarmers, 2018).

Hence, from the discussions conducted in the previous parts, it can be concluded that the marketing communication plays a significant role in an organisation. Marketing communication helps the company to interact with the customer and the investors, and analyse the behaviour, preference and the feedback provided by them. An organisation can communicate with the customer through various channels such as advertisement and by customer care branches. Communication budget is prepared by the organisation with the aim to check expenses on the communication, indulge in effective marketing activities and thus earn higher revenues and customer loyalty. Hence, it can be said that the communication budget is necessary for the development and enhancement of the brand image, the promotion of the products and services and to reduce the losses. The communication budget of organisation guides in the preparation of the marketing communication budget. The essay highlighted the various scenarios where the company Wesfarmers engaged in the various kinds of communication and marketing activities and were benefited from the same. Thus, to conclude it can be said that marketing and communication are an integral part of the success of an organisation.

References

Ashley, C., and Tuten, T. (2015) Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), pp. 15-27.

Belch, G. E., Belch, M. A., Kerr, G. F. and Powell, I. (2014) Advertising: An integrated marketing communication perspective. US: McGraw-Hill Education.

Finne, Å., and Grönroos, C. (2017) Communication-in-use: customer-integrated marketing communication. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), pp. 445-463.

Hänninen, N. and Karjaluoto, H. (2017) The effect of marketing communication on business relationship loyalty. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 35(4), pp. 458-472.

Hanssens, D. M., and Pauwels, K. H. (2016) Demonstrating the value of marketing. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), pp. 173-190.

Huang, R. and Sarigöllü, E. (2014) How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors. New York: Springer.

Khan, M. T. (2014) The concept of’marketing mix’and its elements (a conceptual review paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p. 95.

Kitchen, P. J. and Burgmann, I. (2015) Integrated marketing communication: making it work at a strategic level. Journal of Business Strategy, 36(4), pp. 34-39.

Lovelock, C. and Patterson, P. (2015) Services marketing. US: Pearson.

Luxton, S., Reid, M. and Mavondo, F. (2015) Integrated marketing communication capability and brand performance. Journal of Advertising, 44(1), pp. 37-46.

Petersen, J. A., Kushwaha, T. and Kumar, V. (2015) Marketing communication strategies and consumer financial decision making: The role of national culture. Journal of Marketing, 79(1), pp. 44-63.

Valos, M. J., Haji Habibi, F., Casidy, R., Driesener, C. B. and Maplestone, V. L. (2016) Exploring the integration of social media within integrated marketing communication frameworks: Perspectives of services marketers. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 34(1), pp. 19-40.

Wesfarmers. (2018) Who we are. [online] Available from: https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/who-we-are/who-we-are [Accessed 18/08/18].

Marketing Communication and its Importance

Marketing communication is the medium through which a company exchanges the information about goods and services to the customers. The company uses this communication medium to spread the brand awareness among the customers. Marketing communication helps in the creation of the brand image in the mind of the consumers with the help of various techniques such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, publicity, interactive marketing, events and experiences (Belch, et al., 2014). The essay begins with the discussion of the role of marketing communication in the organisation. The introduction is followed by the highlighting the concept of the communication budget and its importance in an organisation. The essay concludes with the discussion on the relevance of the marketing communication strategy in the marketing communication budget.

Marketing communication plays a significant role in the organisation. It helps the company in the overall reduction of the marketing cost. The organisations promote their product and services in the market through various techniques (Hänninen, and Karjaluoto, 2017). One of the techniques of communication opted by the companies for the promotion of the product is advertising. Creative advertisements are a big aid to the marketing efforts of a company and the same play a critical role in the generation and the improvement of the sales of the product of the company. The information with respect to the features of the newly introduced products and the services can be communicated by the entities with the help of the press releases. The company can also opt for advertising using the email marketing technique through which the message is directly communicated to the targeted customers. There are numerous examples of the entities that are consistently engaged in the creative marketing efforts in the form of designing interactive advertisements. For example- Wesfarmers is one of the leading companies in Australia that promotes its product through various forms of the advertisements (Wesfarmers, 2018).

Creative campaigns can be used as an effective medium of external communication as well, as it helps the organisations to cut on the cost of the marketing efforts in the form of agency fees, which in turn saves the overall product or services promotion cost. The content once designed can be used on the different media as well and thus saves the cost of copywriting and photographs.

The external marketing communications of the company are mainly done keeping in mind the suppliers and customers of the company. The same aids in building the desired reputation with the suppliers to avail the discounts and other facilities and loyal base of customers (Luxton, Reid, and Mavondo, 2015). For example- The companies like Wesfarmers interact with the suppliers and customers through their own website. The website comprises of the events and updates about the products and services along with the creative images.

As mentioned earlier, the marketing communication aids in brand awareness. It is used as a medium to provide information about the upcoming products and schemes to the customers using emails, telephone calls and text messages. It is also a channel through which feedback and the first-hand responses of the customers can be obtained. Customer feedback is a critical element of brand awareness (Lovelock, and Patterson, 2015). Customer relations play a significant part in a company’s success and marketing communication plays an important role here as well. The companies engage in opening its customer care branches to address the queries and solve problems of the customer, which is also a form of marketing communication. The practice like above, enhance the brand loyalty and familiarity with the products and enables the customers to provide suggestions or advice, leading to overall improvement in the terms and conditions. Hence, it can be said that the role of marketing communication is not just limited to brand awareness but also the resolution of the queries and thus the overall enhancement of the customer experience.

Strategies of Marketing Communication

The marketing communication also aids in enhancing the profit levels. Effective communication strategy helps the entities to increase the productivity and aids in market expansion and targeting the new customers. The role of the marketing communication can be analysed with the help of the example of Wesfarmers. The company earned a whopping total revenue of $ 68444 million in 2017 (Wesfarmers, 2018). Wesfarmers has expanded its business at the global scale and has opened several branches at various locations to interact with the customers worldwide. The global communication strategy of the company has helped it in earning more and more revenues (Wesfarmers, 2018).

The following segment is based on the role of the communication budget in the organisation. To analyse the significant role of the communication budget in the organisation, it is necessary to first understand the communication budget. Communication budget is a process of planning, tracking and measuring the expenses of marketing communication activities of the company such as advertisements, direct marketing, and events. Communication budget helps the entities to achieve the communication objective by managing the expenses in relation to the communication activities. The communication objective of an organisation can be referred to engaging in optimum investment in the communication activities and getting the high return on the said investment. There have been numerous example of the companies that have expended considerably in the advertisement activities and have incurred losses. An organisation can invest the optimum amount by preparing the budget, which would prevent it from the losses. The communication budget can be prepared on the basis of the time period and it aids in the smooth running of the organisation (Kitchen, and Burgmann, 2015). Most of the time communication budget is prepared by the companies on the quarterly basis to expend less on the communication activities such as direct marketing, events, advertisements and others. Communication budget is prepared by making the forecasts as per the previous budget of the company.  It covers all the future expenses which are planned by the company to achieve its objectives. Communication budget helps the company to cover the cost of the new business opportunities. It is useful for the company to make the provision of the other expenses. Communication budget is an essential part especially for the large organisations because it helps to make the communication decisions and promotes the company and its products (Finne, and Grönroos, 2017).    

The communication budget helps in attainment of various benefits such as maintain control over various activities of the company. While expanding the business in the new market communication budget is essential. Communication aids in the promotion of the products in new markets. Promotion in turn aids in increasing the sale. Thus, it is important for the marketing and communication managers of the company to perform their effectively and efficiently (Petersen, Kushwaha, and Kumar, 2015). The management makes the strategies to promote the product in the market at the minimum cost. Communication budget also helps the company to manage and delegate the authority and resources to the various departments. Communication budget of an entity also helps in stating the business position in the market. The entity can compare the previous year budget and evaluate the deviations and the reasons thereof. Thus, the communication budget helps to achieve the communication goals of the company by making the marketing communication strategy (Valos, et al., 2016).

External Marketing Communication

Marketing communication budget is a part of the marketing planning which is prepared to achieve the communication objectives of the company. Marketing communication strategy includes the advertisements, direct marketing, and others. Marketing communication strategy is a technique to achieve the communication objective. This is done by making the plan to deliver the key message of the company to the target customers (Huang, and Sarigöllü, 2014). At the time of designing the marketing communication strategy, the entity has to prepare the communication budget simultaneously. Marketing communication strategy of the company attracts the customer by using the creative content. Marketing communication strategy is prepared according to the marketing communication budget of the company (Khan, 2014).

The communication budget is a guide to the management of the marketing communication activities. The head of the department of the marketing communication prepares the budget to allocate the amount of expenditure to the different communication activities. The communication department allocates the resources to social marketing, email advertising, text message advertising and more. An amount is also kept aside for the development of the white paper towards the identification of the activities that help in promoting the organisation and its goals. The organisation also allocates the amount in from the budget to be expended on the press releases and freelance writers to write the new and interesting content, which attracts the customer or investors towards the organisation (Ashley and Tuten, 2015).

The large organisations like Wesfarmers have their own corporate communications department, which helps the company to communicate with the internal staff. For example, the company Wesfarmers has a large number of employees scattered around the globe to share the information with, thus the company delivers the messages to the different groups within the organisation. The companies like Wesfarmers also indulge in preparation of the crisis communication plan to handle the critical situations (Wesfarmers, 2018).

Hence, from the discussions conducted in the previous parts, it can be concluded that the marketing communication plays a significant role in an organisation. Marketing communication helps the company to interact with the customer and the investors, and analyse the behaviour, preference and the feedback provided by them. An organisation can communicate with the customer through various channels such as advertisement and by customer care branches. Communication budget is prepared by the organisation with the aim to check expenses on the communication, indulge in effective marketing activities and thus earn higher revenues and customer loyalty. Hence, it can be said that the communication budget is necessary for the development and enhancement of the brand image, the promotion of the products and services and to reduce the losses. The communication budget of organisation guides in the preparation of the marketing communication budget. The essay highlighted the various scenarios where the company Wesfarmers engaged in the various kinds of communication and marketing activities and were benefited from the same. Thus, to conclude it can be said that marketing and communication are an integral part of the success of an organisation.

References

Ashley, C., and Tuten, T. (2015) Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), pp. 15-27.

Belch, G. E., Belch, M. A., Kerr, G. F. and Powell, I. (2014) Advertising: An integrated marketing communication perspective. US: McGraw-Hill Education.

Finne, Å., and Grönroos, C. (2017) Communication-in-use: customer-integrated marketing communication. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), pp. 445-463.

Hänninen, N. and Karjaluoto, H. (2017) The effect of marketing communication on business relationship loyalty. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 35(4), pp. 458-472.

Hanssens, D. M., and Pauwels, K. H. (2016) Demonstrating the value of marketing. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), pp. 173-190.

Huang, R. and Sarigöllü, E. (2014) How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors. New York: Springer.

Khan, M. T. (2014) The concept of’marketing mix’and its elements (a conceptual review paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p. 95.

Kitchen, P. J. and Burgmann, I. (2015) Integrated marketing communication: making it work at a strategic level. Journal of Business Strategy, 36(4), pp. 34-39.

Lovelock, C. and Patterson, P. (2015) Services marketing. US: Pearson.

Luxton, S., Reid, M. and Mavondo, F. (2015) Integrated marketing communication capability and brand performance. Journal of Advertising, 44(1), pp. 37-46.

Petersen, J. A., Kushwaha, T. and Kumar, V. (2015) Marketing communication strategies and consumer financial decision making: The role of national culture. Journal of Marketing, 79(1), pp. 44-63.

Valos, M. J., Haji Habibi, F., Casidy, R., Driesener, C. B. and Maplestone, V. L. (2016) Exploring the integration of social media within integrated marketing communication frameworks: Perspectives of services marketers. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 34(1), pp. 19-40.

Wesfarmers. (2018) Who we are. [online] Available from: https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/who-we-are/who-we-are [Accessed 18/08/18].