Marketing Communications
Once a marketing plan has been established, it's time to take the message to the market. The main objective of marketing communications is to establish a perception of the business or product in the market's mind to enhance the sales process. A good marketing communications program will reduce the time needed to establish the relationships necessary to make a sale; a high value proposition for resource constrained sales teams.
In cases where a relationship between the business and the customer already exist, little in the way of formal marketing is required to begin the sales process. This is the case if a customer is an existing customer or if a relationship exists between an employee and a customer from a previous engagement. Formal marketing communications becomes more essential when no relationship at all exists between the business and the target customer.
The above figure provides a simplified description of the marketing communications processes. In the figure the blue boxes represent actual materials whereas the green boxes represent processes. The Marketing Plan should provide the basis for how the business or product should be branded, i.e. what essential ideas do you want to leave in the minds of your target market. With that high level concept the message, name, logo, artwork, and other components that make up the brand can be articulated on the marketing materials. The types of materials to be used will depend upon the promotional activities that have been chosen.
A successful marketing campaign will result in increased market awareness, increased number of prospects, higher quality of prospects and decreased sales cycles. To gauge the effectiveness of a campaign metrics of these properties should be monitored before and after the campaign. Although marketing metrics are never completely accurate, certain trends should be detectable.
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