Information technology displays integrated marketing communication messages.
Marketing communication coordinates the four "Ps" of the marketing mix: product, price, placement and promotion. A unified communication plan offers a comprehensive message to consumers. When consumers consistently hear similar positive messages about a product, their awareness builds. Awareness building leads to purchase, which often leads to brand loyalty and powerful word-of-mouth advertising. The process of planning and executing unified communication is called integrated marketing communication.
Product and Message
Marketers' first step in developing a communication plan involves considering the nature of the product and the message they'd like to send concerning the product. The nature of the product helps marketers identify their pool of potential customers (called the target market). The message should be short and simple because of dissemination on multiple media fronts. The fundamentals of the message should be intact regardless of media type.
Research
Markets must match the product and message to their intended audience. Part of this includes discovering the best ways to reach people in the product's target market, make them pay attention and ensure the message sticks in their memories. Marketers use research to learn the habits of the target market members, their likes and dislikes and other characteristics. For example, marketers may use research to discover that their target members enjoy humor messages during prime time television shows.
Advertising
Creative marketers craft basic messages into advertisements. These advertisements may appeal to a variety of emotions or rationales. Advertising may include elements of humor, logic, sex or music. Whatever research shows as appealing to the target may become part of the advertisement. However, the basic product message remains intact, encoded in the elements of the advertising appeal.
Integrated Marketing Communication
The goal of message unification goes beyond advertising messages. Integrated marketing communication uses public relations, employee training, corporate management and other collaborations to continually present the base product message. Information technology helps marketing communicators spread the message to both internal and external audiences. Employee training and corporate governance assist employees with speaking in the company voice, further merging the company and the message in public awareness.
Tags: target market, communication plan, Information technology, message should, nature product, product message, product message