Mar 6336-Weekly Application Post - Week 1

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The Many Purposes of Marketing Communication

Anthony Miyazaki (2019)

It’s clear to anyone in business that marketing communications are critical to the survival

and success of businesses, regardless of whether those communications come in the form of paid

mass media advertising, direct marketing pieces, sales promotion, publicity, social media posts,

salesperson scripting, or other types of marketing messaging. As a result, marketers constantly

are seeking the “best” marketing messages to achieve their goals.

The catch, however, is that there is no generic best message, because it all depends on the

particular marketing goal, the audience, the message sender and how the sender is perceived, the

environment, the communication channel, the level and type of noise in the channel, and the

specific situation. Thus, marketers most often are relegated to finding merely “good enough” or

“better” rather than “best” when it comes to developing marketing messages.

What is marketing communication supposed to do?

To move toward the creation of better marketing messaging, we first need to understand

what marketing communication is supposed to do. Although most marketers understand that,

ultimately, it should facilitate a perceived mutually beneficial exchange relationship between the

marketer and the target audience(s), there are several more specific goals that marketing

communication can achieve.

One typical approach to a categorization of marketing communication goals suggests that

marketing communications should inform, remind, persuade, and connect. Let’s consider each

of these below.

Inform. When we speak of marketing as informing audiences, we need to consider two

questions: What information will they receive? And why should they receive it? Technically,

any communication contains information of some type, regardless as to whether it’s data-heavy,

image-based, abstract, emotional, etc. Normally, however, when we desire to inform, we have

specific facts or opinions that we want to share, for example, about product attributes or features,

service quality, process improvements, value functions, brand reputation, etc. The key is to

inform in a manner that provides sufficient information, but not so much that information

overload is a concern. We also need to consider how information is presented so that (1) it is

easily understandable by our target audience and (2) it will be more likely to persuade the

recipient to adhere to our request (whether it’s to purchase a product, stop a destructive behavior,

attend an event, etc.).

Remind. Some marketing communication is designed to merely keep a brand or concept

or solution easily accessible in the minds of the target audience members. In these cases (and if

the target audience primarily consists of people who already know about the brand), there is no

need to discuss attributes, features, benefits, etc. These types of communication may consist

primarily of brand display, or perhaps simply allude to (rather than specifically state) benefits

and advantages of the product offering that the target audience is already expected to know.

Persuade. Most marketers attempt to design their marketing communications to be

persuasive in nature. Whether the agenda is to convince a potential buyer to make a purchase,

influence a voting decision, motivate someone to avoid unhealthy activities, enhance their

education, or countless other reasons for prompting a change of attitude or action, the hope is

that the marketing communication will have the desired effect on the intended audiences.

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Connect. Marketers have learned, long before the digital age, that connecting with

audiences is extremely helpful to the success of their marketing efforts. Thus, much marketing

communication is designed for the purpose of engaging target audiences with the brand and

product, as well as with each other. Connections often develop into familiarity and comfort.

Building communities around brands or products or events can help create new low-cost

communication channels, aid in answering customer inquiries, and build loyalty that moves

beyond loyalty to the brand and toward loyalty to the brand community.

Other purposes of marketing communication.

There are a number of additional goals for marketing communications. Often, these

goals overlap so that more than one goal is achieved by a particular communication piece or

campaign.

Attract. Attracting the attention of the people who will ultimately be interested in

acquiring your product offering is critical to not only the effectiveness of your later marketing

communications, but to the efficiency of your communication process as well. It’s easy to attract

attention, but often hard to maintain it, particularly if you’ve attracted the wrong audience.

Entertain. Often, as a way to maintain attention and interest in a communication,

marketers work to entertain their audiences during their messaging. Whether it’s tricks of the

trade at the elemental level or elaborate productions, marketers hope to keep audience members

engaged in the communication piece long enough to receive (and hopefully embrace) the

intended message. Unfortunately, some marketers are so good at entertaining that the messaging

is overlooked due to it being overly subtle or the entertainment factor being overly dominant.

Evoke Emotion. Facts, opinions, comparisons, etc. about attributes, features, and benefits

are all important for marketing communication. Emotion, however, is often the most effective

way to build strong brand connections that go beyond product quality and brand reliability.

When marketers can evoke emotion in an audience member, they can dictate to a large degree

the experiential factors surrounding the reception of the marketing message. As such, they can

then influence the degree of acceptance, retention, and likelihood of recall of their intended

message.

Suppress Emotion. There are times when marketers attempt to suppress, rather than

evoke, emotion. This occurs particularly for highly emotional topics or situations when target

audience members are unlikely to listen to and entertain new information. By moving the

communication from emotional to “merely” informational, the marketer may be able to provide

facts that will assist the audience member in understanding the message in a more

comprehensive manner.

Motivate. Much marketing messaging is designed to motivate its recipients to do

something, whether it’s to “stay tuned,” change one’s beliefs, act on a purchase decision, or

various other thoughts, tasks, and actions. The messaging may try to invoke immediate action or

perhaps a long-term series of actions. Either way, the messaging needs to be clearly targeted to

the audience, the environment, and the specific situation in which it’s received.

Other purposes. There are numerous other marketing communication purposes to

consider. Marketers can attempt to excite, frighten, appease, calm, please, provoke, amuse,

thrill, etc. The list is as long as there are human states of mind and states of being, whether

emotional, intellectual, or physical.

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Conclusion.

There are few marketers who view their craft as only a tool of information provision.

Most understand that, if they have a brand or product that is worth providing, their task is to

provide messaging that persuades, convinces, sways, induces, converts, influences, etc. Others

will attempt to use coercive, controlling, or deceptive messaging, even when their product

offerings are harmful to their target audiences.

In all cases, marketing communication is powerful tool that can change attitudes, desires,

and behaviors. It changes individual purchase decisions as well as the trajectory of entire

industries, regions, and countries. It’s ubiquitous and never-ending, and is found in every

industry imaginable. It can help create value and help destroy it as well, regardless of the

intentions of its conceptualizers, designers, or creators. As such, marketers need to understand

the connections between communication purposes and the conceptualization, design, and

creation of their marketing messages. Doing so will help them be successful in achieving their

overall marketing goals.

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