Marketing is accomplished with communication. What is the goal of marketing? Is it not ultimately to get people to believe certain things to be true; to evoke certain feelings and desires (or fears); to have them act upon these desires (or fears)? It is arguably true that everything we do (even seemingly selfless acts of altruism) can be boiled down to only two goals: gaining pleasure or avoiding pain. Marketing communications promise to help us achieve one of these two goals.
Philosophical discussions aside, one of the most important and obvious, yet commonly overlooked, techniques we use to influence people is, yes, communication. Branding is crucial, yet branding is an (ongoing) end that we achieve my means of communication. Targeting is great, yet its goal is to help us determine who to communicate with and how to do so. Timing is essential, yet its use is to answer the question, When do we communicate?
Without effective communication marketing cannot succeed. It is at the core of our discipline, which is what makes its application so hard to describe in a short report. From planning, coordination and integration to implementation, communication is everywhere that marketing is. For instance, the concept of Integrated Marketing Communications is crucial to the marketing efforts of any respectable firm. The AIDA concept (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) is based on communicating an interesting message that sparks a desire to act accordingly.
Communication is essential to marketing research and a company’s marketing information system. In fact, it is difficult to find a concept of marketing to which communication does not apply. Another example of the use of communication is the reduction of cognitive dissonance, as well as buyer’s remorse, especially for high-involvement products for which there are substitutes. Communicating with a customer during the post-purchase stage can be helpful in reducing such feelings of anxiety. This in turn may increase perceived brand equity and loyalty.
How can anything be more important to marketing than communication?
I'll give you a hint: Communication's Goal is...
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