Online Marketing and Success

When undertaking any business activity, it is important to have a strategic plan. A strategic plan will offer a guideline on the way specific activity should be approached. It will enable the staff, management, and the stakeholders to assess the level of achievement in the organization. The results obtained will be compared with the projections estimated in the strategic plan. Marketing communication is an important aspect of any organization (Cheung & Thadani, 2012). It involves the language and presentation used when creating product awareness and encouraging customers to buy products and services offered in the organization. In any business, the customer is considered as the main stakeholder, as without them the business will not operate live alone succeeding. However, the language or method of communicating with the customer is valued. In most of the successful business organizations, they allocate more funds for training staff that interacts with customers and the best methods of communicating with the customers.

Marketing communication represents the voice of the organization. Any business organization communicates its level of operations regarding sales, profits, and any other information intended to reach the customers, stakeholders, and any other interested party. Before the investors decide to invest in the business, customers to buy the products, and suppliers to offer various materials, they should receive information about the business through marketing communication. It also helps it attracting talents to the organization (Oh, Ozkaya, & LaRose, 2014). Through it, the organizations will ensure that it has a favorable working environment, adequate remuneration, and factors considered by the employees to motivate them to achieve more. It also helps the company to express its competitive advantage. The company will communicate its strengths and opportunities as compared with other companies to the public through marketing communication. The expression of competitive advantage will influence the customers, investors, and any other interested party to visit the company to be served to their satisfaction. It also plays a major role in creating product awareness. The company will inform its customers about the availability of new product brands as compared with those of the competitors through the marketing communication.

Marketing communication mix is the act portrayed by an organization by mixing various marketing strategies while delivering its message to the customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. It involves the use of direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling, and advertising. Its use has helped organizations to succeed in their operations. It also enables the business to approach their target customers with the use of effective marketing strategies with diverse perspectives. The effectiveness of marketing communication mix has been experienced in various organizations (Yang, Kim, & Yoo, 2013). Due to the nature of the target market, geographical locations, and customer preferences, it is difficult for an organization to use one marketing strategy when communicating to the customers in the market. For example, some of the products and target market require the approach of personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, advertising, and other strategies of marketing. When a company uses one marketing strategy, it will lose the customers, which would have been attracted through other marketing strategies.

For organizations to ensure that effective communication is observed, certain steps should be followed while implementing the communication strategy. The first step is to identify the target audience. The target audience will determine the mode of communication used in reaching the audience in the market or any other field. For example, when the business wants to reach the youths as the target market, it should consider focusing on using the social media platforms as the mode of communication. The next step is determining the communication objectives. Any communication that is adopted by the business when trying to reach the customers in the market should have its objectives. Some of the objectives include increasing sales, product awareness and testing the product. The business should consider such objectives so that it can ensure that the communication strategy chosen is effective in the market (Cheung & Thadani, 2012). Determining the message to be delivered to the audience is another important step. Specific modes of communication are used in delivering specific messages to the audience. When a wrong of communication is chosen to deliver a message to the audience, the communication intended to reach the audience will be ineffective. Budget decision and communication tools should be considered when trying to improve the effectiveness of communication to the audience.

Advertising is aiming at creating product awareness for the customers to understand the availability of the product, its quality, and even the prices. It is difficult for a company to increase performance by producing and storing the product without informing the customers about its availability. Due to this, advertising was established such that the customers can be informed of the product availability (Yang, Kim, & Yoo, 2013). Advertising is practiced through various modes of communication including television, posters and the internet. Sales promotions involve offering the product at a lower price to the customers as a way of testing the market of the product. It is difficult for the customer to buy a product without tasting and understanding its uses as well as benefits, Customers are motivated to buy a product after tasting and understanding its importance. Public relation is a strategic mode of communication adopted by various business organizations through the creation of mutual relationships between the company and the public. Through such close relations, the public, the customer as well as, the organization will be encouraged to buy the products offered by the company in the market.

References

Cheung, C. M., & Thadani, D. R. (2012). The impact of electronic word-of-mouth communication: A literature analysis and integrative model. Decision Support Systems, 54(1), 461 -- 470

Oh, H. J., Ozkaya, E., & LaRose, R. (2014). How does online social networking enhance life satisfaction? The relationships among online supportive interaction, affect perceived social support, sense of community, and life satisfaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, 69 -- 78

Yang, B., Kim, Y., & Yoo, C. (2013). The integrated mobile advertising model: The effects of technology and emotion-based evaluations. Journal of Business Research, 66(9), 1345 -- 1352