Definition of Marketing

Marketing is the process that a firm creates value for its target customers by placing
products that satisfy their needs.

Purpose of Communication
to influence consumers to engage in a value exchange with the firm

Four types of intermediary communication goals:

Inform: 告知
1.​ Awareness 让人们意识到产品和你的想法
2.​ Information 传达产品的信息
Persuade:
3.​ Attitude 说服消费者来改变他们对产品的态度和看法
4.​ Call-to-action 说服消费者采取行动，比如购买产品

Decision-making Process (DMP)

Marketers should analyse customers’ DMP before determining a marketing
communication strategy

Types of response (cognitive, affective, behavioural) are required from customers to

move them along the DMP stages

Cognitive:
-​ Customers are thinking about products and its benefits
-​ Communicator should convey messages to make customers be aware and
consider products
Affective:
-​ Customers use emotions and feelings to judge products
 -​ Communicators should change their attitudes and lead them to a intent to buy,
a trial of the product
Behavioural:
-​ Consumers take actions, repeat purchase and develop loyalty

The level of involvement each customer has will change the DMP through addition,
elimination or reversal of stages. Therefore, marketers must understand the order
that customers of the category follow.

Challenge: for specific product categories, the entire segments may take different
steps toward decision making of purchase, or the same person may choose products
differently depending on the context.

Awareness and Consideration are 2 pervasive stages in the front end of DMP.
Awareness:
-​ The product has to be noticed by customers through advertising.
-​ One reason why so many ads are becoming entertainable than informative in
nature is due to growing battle between brands and limiting attention span of
customers
Consideration:
-​ Consideration set is made up of the brands that are considered by customers
before they make decisions. Typically 2-8 brands
-​ Marketers should know what causes people to consider a brand and how to
persuade people to consider their brands
-​ It is important because Consideration is a necessary condition for a brand to
be chosen on the next purchase occasion
Tools of Communication (non-mass - direct selling, is not covered in article)
1.​ Advertising
Def: the paid placement of non-personal messages by an identified sponsor intended
to inform and persuade members of a particular target market about a brand,
product, service, or ideas.

Distinguish ads: type of message and medium

Types of message 广告传达的信息
-​ Brand Building ads
-​ Ads focus on advertiser (brand or firm)
-​ Aim to build or change the image of firms in customer’s mind
-​ Reduce the customer’s sensitivity to price differences compared the firm
with competitors
-​ Product promoting ads
-​ Ads focus on advertised object (product, service, idea)
-​ Aim to persuade customers to buy
In practice, an ad can be a mixture of the 2, such as a corporate brand
showcast its line of product (Apple, iPhone)
Medium 广告传播的媒介
-​ Traditional (TV, print, radio, billboard)
-​ Digital (online, mobile phone)
-​ Social (social networking sites, multiplayer video games, events)
➔​ Directionality is a key way to distinguish between the 3:
-​ Unidirectional - Traditional mass media: firm -> customer
-​ Added impression 印象
-​ # of customers reached
-​ Bi-directional - Digital media: firm <-> customer
-​ Added engagement
-​ # of customer interaction
(Allow customers to communicate back with firms)
-​ Social Media: firm <-> customer + peer interaction among customers
using the advertised content
 -​ Added peer socialisation
Think about… when choosing the media
➔​ Targeting ability: how efficiently the target customers can be reached
➔​ Customising ability: how efficiently the message can be tailor/ customised to
separate segments

2.​ Sales promotion

Customer sales promotion (pull)
-​ Goal: product trial, repeat purchasing, brand switching, upselling,
cross-selling, and neutralising
-​ Form: coupons, free samples, rebates, premium
Trade promotion (push)
-​ Goal: to gain the support for an item, increase its visibility or lower its price
-​ Form: discount, pay the retailer slotting allowance fee, cooperative advertising

3.​ Other forms of communication

Sponsorship (event marketing)
Publicity
Public reaction
Direct marketing (e.g. infomercials 信息商业, catalogs 分类, telemarketing电话推销 )

Pull Approach: forms of communication that induce consumers to seek out specific
products or brands from the retail channels
Push Approach: marketing communication that help the manufacture to “push”
products through the channel to customers
Consumer Response to Communication
2 responses:
-​ Passively exposed to ads and promotions
-​ Actively seeking ads and promotions out

Depend on what stage of purchase process is consumer in, different communication

strategies is chosen:
Outbound marketing (firm initiated)
-​ It is done by using paid media controlled by form
E.g. Ads, promotions
-​ Used for cars, phones, insurance services
-​ Great impact on initial consideration
Inbound marketing (consumer-initiated)
-​ Done by using paid and unpaid media
E.g. Organic search engine results, yellow pages, online recommendation
sites
-​ Impact on comparison of alternatives
Channel-initiated
-​ Final choice stage when choice is made
E.g. Point-of-sale displays and sales force
It is important to choose the most appropriate tool for each stage of DMP

Using communication tools to influence DMP - depends on your objective

Advertising required the selection of the proper type and media
Type - brand building ads/ product promoting ads
Media - traditional/ digital/ social
E.g. Mars candy used product-promoting ads on traditional TV to persuade people to
try peanut butter flavour, then use in-store promotions (displays with smaller
packages near checkout place to persuade consumers to make an unplanned,
impulse purchase). Then, use brand-building ads conveying historical tagline
“Snickers satisfies” to build a positive attitude for brand and encourage repeat
purchasing.
Transformational Effect: ads influence people’s subsequent attitudes and
preferences before they try a new product
Post-experience Effect: ads shape their retrospective evaluations after product trial

Managing the Communication Process (6Ms)

1.​ Mission - goal
2.​ Market - target
3.​ Message - element to be communicated
4.​ Media - vehicles to use
5.​ Money - how much to spend
6.​ Measurement - assessment

Strategic planning: mission, marketing

Rule #1: effectiveness 有效性 first, efficiency 效率 second
Effectiveness: doing the right things, achieving specific mission (goal) in specific
markets (target).

Goal: to inform (awareness, information), or to persuade (attitude, call-to-action)?

Type of message: Build the brand or promote a product?

Rule #2: adhering 遵循 to consistency 连贯性 and alignment 协调

Consistency: maintaining a pattern over time
 -​ It is important to evolve and adapt, but not to change the 6Ms too frequently
or too suddenly
Alignment: maintaining a cohesive pattern across the 6Ms (match type of media to
DMP stages and target consumers)
E.g. Nike’s tagline “Just Do It” - brand building, aligning with all ads messages and
media

Executional: Media, Message

Only after media and message are chosen, budgeting and evaluation should be
made

Financial: Money, Measurement

How much money to budget? Will this spending pay off?
Top-down approach: first determine the budget and then decide what can be done
Bottom-up approach: defining communication goals form and then determine budget

3 principles to follow when measuring results of a campaign:

1.​ Measure what matters, not what is available
-​ Sometimes what matters is hard to measure
-​ Measure customer preference (e.g. brands in consideration set)
-​ Reply on lagging indicators of sales as a proxy measure 代理指标
-​ E.g. manufacturers use channel sales (retailers plan months in
advance) to predict future sales
-​ Surveying consumers about their consideration 能更好的预测未来销量
-​ DMP is a useful tool to determine what to measure
-​ Measure tap into pre-trial stages, not post-trial stage
2.​ Measure what is directly related to the goal/ purpose
-​ 2 dimensions to measure advertising effectiveness: size of audience &
depth of the impact
​ Size of audience
-​ Traditional media ads
-​ One-way directionality
 -​ Cost per-thousand impressions (a common measure used to
summarise the size of the audience reached)
-​ For digital media ads, it is better to determine a customised metric that
taps into the type of engagement desired, and then comparing this on a
cost basis
-​ For social media ads, not only measuring engagement but also
peer-to-peer interactions and its cost, both in size and depth of impact

E.x. Coca-cola uses effective reach to measure size of impact;

engagement 参与度 is assessed by a composite of media-specific
metrics such as page views;
用户参与度是由特定媒体指标(如页面浏览量)的组合来评估的
Coca-cola then classify its brands based on their maturity in the
marketplace

3.​ Measure the full impact (direct, indirect) of the campaign

-​ Measuring the ROI (return on investment) is challenging especially
when multiple media is included, because different media should be
used for different objectives and therefore should be evaluated using
distinct metrics - inhibit the use of common metric
-​ 例外：advertising elasticity: the % change in sales that correspond to a
1% change in ads spending
-​ Marketing communication 广告营销不仅对advertiser, 也对prospective
customer, current customer and other stakeholders有好处
-​ Potential increase in the equity of the brand should also be factored in
when assessing the longer term impact or ROI of marketing
communications
因此，在评估营销传播的长期影响 （ROI）时, 品牌资产的潜在增加也应被
考虑