One of the essential factors of a business is now the widely understood communication. The flow of information is carried out in many directions: both in a vertical manner – between the company and its potential or existing customers, as well as horizontally – in an environment of workers, their families, and trade unions.
It is worth noting that both forms have a direct impact on one another, as good relations and the smooth flow of messages among employees transfer into a proper relationship with consumers and vice versa.
Read also our previous article: The Intricacies of Digital Marketing!
Introduction To Content Marketing
Marketing communication is a particular kind of information flow between the sender and the recipient. We can understand it as an “action during which a company delivers to different groups of recipient’s information about itself and its market offer.” It has a strong character, and its desired effect is, in fact, to draw certain attitudes from people to whom the message is directed. In contrast to promoting, it is a two-way process.
The use of marketing communication is to not only share the information about company’s products – but it also helps to keep and to maintain a dialogue with consumers and to track their opinion.
Planning marketing communication is an extremely complex process. This process is based on meticulously conducted market research, combined with the analysis of the behavior and needs of consumers. It is also important to determine the current position of the company and the products and services it offers, especially about actions carried out by the competition.
In the plan we should take into account measures such as:
- Identifying target groups;
- Setting targets (quantitative, referring to the effectiveness of the sales, or qualitative determining the relationship between the consumers and the company);
- Constructing the message expressing specific values referring to the philosophy of the company;
- Choosing the appropriate communication channel (in the form of personal contact with the trader, advisor, expert or impersonal, realized, for example, through traditional media and the Internet);
- Setting the financial framework of the project;
- Appointing people responsible for the implementation of the plan;
- Evaluating the results
Personalize your communication
Interactive media, thanks to the presence of feedback, enable marketing communication on a completely different level.
The Internet’s multimedia nature creates a separate environment in which the information not only goes in one direction but both the sender and recipient of the message take an active part in its transmission.
The network lets businesses offer goods and services in a fast and direct way, which often generates much lower costs than placing ads in newspapers, radio or television.
It also allows for a more accurate personalization of communication by better defining the target group (even through the information provided by Internet users in online forums and social networking sites or via keyword placing the website as high as possible in Google search results). On the other side, there is a web user who sees the network resources in a selective manner, choosing only what is most important for him. He or she uses only those form of Internet activity that meets their immediate or steady needs, eliminating unsuitable content (including worthless advertising messages). One could not afford such selectivity while receiving messages broadcasted on traditional media.
Reach the target
Determining the target group of the marketing communications conducted online is easy also because of the fact that the Internet does not have so rigid boundaries as exist in the real world. Among the users of social networking sites we may find representatives of different races, the citizens of many countries, people belonging to diverse religious groups and representatives of other spheres of economy.
The restrictions related to time and place are not in force here, because the whole communication process from start to finish, can take place in virtual reality.
Also, new forms of communication are much more attractive for the recipient. This is mainly for the reason that they contain different types of content that are being transmitted separately by the regular media. The Internet user can thus use a single device to read information about the product, see photos, and watch the instructional video with a commentary – all within a single web page.
Find your niche
The Internet facilitates the appearance of companies on the niche markets. Through them, we can successfully offer and promote these goods and services for which the demand on real markets is too low to invest in direct sales. E-commerce model is becoming more widespread primarily due to its low costs, as well as the simplicity and the individualization of contact with a customer.
A consumer who wants to buy a product unavailable at the real market is looking for solutions on the network by typing in the relevant search phrases that lead him to an online store that has the desired thing. The process of buying and paying is entirely virtual. Thanks to Cookies, we can change pages without losing data (e.g., From the cart we can go to the site offering online payment).
Outbound marketing
Electronic commerce is also popular among companies operating in the real world. They use it to reach this group of consumers that does not visit the shop due to the long distance (for example Tesco which offers online shopping with free delivery).
The universality of the Internet and abilities it offers to reach potential customers has changed the way marketers understand marketing communications. The network’s popularity is the main reason behind the end of the dominance of traditional media.
They had to begin the process of adjusting to the new reality, in which the hipermediality reigns.
The old media has developed a specific way of marketing communications that based on the direct transmission of advertisements meant for the wide audience. This model, called the outbound marketing, their replies on presenting the company’s offer to potential customers in a clear and direct way, for example, through the advertisements in newspapers, radio, television or billboards. This form of promotion is seen as pushy and very aggressive, and its effect is counterproductive – instead of interesting recipients in the offer, encouraging them to purchase the product, advertising is ignored and negatively commented.
Telemarketing is another form that has an extremely bad opinion – study report conducted by the Polish MilwardBrown Marketing Association in 2014 showed that 62% of the surveyed, who heard the telemarketer to the very end, still declined the offer. Benefits that come from outbound marketing are often disproportionate compared to the costs incurred, which can be seen especially in the case of leaflets, which are usually thrown away without reading them the content.
This is the first part of the post on the topic of content marketing. Tomorrow you can expect the continuation explaining the differences between the inbound and outbound marketing. Stay tuned!