BUS465 Study Guide Exam 1

Marketing Communications
What are marketing communications, and why are they important?
 Develop a marketing communications strategy by crafting and communicating the voice
and story of their brands to consumers in a way that will achieve marketing objectives
 Translate the company’s value proposition into compelling narratives that can establish,
maintain, or modify a brand image in consumers minds
 Goal is optimize consumer engagement- make sure that cognitive, emotion and or
behavioral investment consumers make in positively interacting with a brand

What are the 6 Ms of marketing communications?

 Mission
 What are the objectives of the communication?
 Market
 To whom is the communication addressed?
 Define the audience
 Message
 What is the story to be communicated?
 Position
 Method
 Creative
 Media
 Where and how will the story be delivered
 Money
 How much will be spent to communicate?
 Measurement
 How will impact be assessed?

What are objectives of marketing communications (not objectives of marketing)?

 Communicating the differentiating features or benefits of a product aiming to build
knowledge or preference
 Profit
 sales/volume
 Market share
 Build awareness
 Convey knowledge
 Create positive liking
 Persuasion
 Increase awareness: to be known, and memorable. Customers think of you first when
considering the product category
 Change attitudes: address miscommunications that have been developed in the market
directly
 Influence purchase intent: motivate customers to purchase. Emphasize superior
benefits, relative to competitors. Meet underlying need or want that triggers a customer
to act.
 Stimulate trial purchase: take away risk and let consumer experience your product,
resulting in a next purchase
  Drive brand switching: Need is established if customers are buying in that category
already. Persuade them that your product/service is superior.

What’s the relationship, if any, between marketing communications and marketing

strategy?
 Needs to be a clear strategy to deploy the right communication efforts that will deliver to
your consumers
 Multi-faceted issue- multi step and involve a lot of influences

What’s important to know before developing marketing communications?

 What is your message, who are you targeting, what information does your audience
need, how will the message be delivered, how will you measure the success

What are the ways marketing communications can differ in directionality? What are
examples of each direction type?
 Unidirectional
 Marketer → Consumer
 Traditional media
 Bidirectional
 Marketer ←→ Consumer
 Online media, personal sales
 Multidirectional
 Marketer ←→ Consumer, Consumer ←→ Consumer
 Social media

What’s the difference between outbound and inbound marketing communications? What
are examples of each?
Outbound marketing:
 Communication between a firm and consumer that is initiated by the firm
 Companies pay content or space providers for advertising placement that delivers their
stories to a captive audience
Inbound Marketing:
 Communication initiated by a consumer
 A firm sets out to make itself available to consumers when their ready to talk

What are the differences among earned, paid, and owned media? What are examples of
each?
Earned Media:
 Communications that are authored and place through the efforts of others who are not
controlled by the firm
 Earns not purchase

Paid Media:
  TV, print, radio, outdoor, online advertising through which the company maintains
complete control of the content and delivery of its message by contracting for specific
media placement and by managing its creative execution of the message

Owned Media:
 Media vehicles that are under the complete control of the irm such as a website, social
media channels, retail stores and catalogs

What are important characteristics about marketing communications? In other words, for
a communication to be effective, it should be built around which principles?
 Consistency- brand message, design and style, customer service
 Community- campaigns and newsletters, benefits/events, surveys/reconnections
 Cooperation- department meetings, task delegation, reviews and follow ups
 Communication- company resource database, connecting everything in the strategy

What are segmentation, targeting, and positioning, and why are they important?
 Segmentation: identifying meaningful different groups of customers
 Targeting: selecting which segments to serve
 Positioning: implementing chosen image and appeal to chosen segment
 Important to align with the right customers

What are challenges in marketing communications development?

 Precipitous decline in consumer attention due to outbound communications
 Complex, dynamic environment
 Resource constraints
 Uncertain results
 Securing the budget, generating traffic and leads, make a profit from the money put into
marketing and what you get out of it, identify right technology/correct outlets to succeed,
correct training, international markets and correct info, etc
Branding
What is branding, and why is it important?
 What the marketer wants the customers and potential customers to know
 Customer take away
 The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the
consumers' mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme.
 Clearly, delivers the message, Confirms your credibility, Emotionally connects your
target prospects with your product and or service, Motivates the buyer to buy, Creates
User Loyalty
 Overall objective is to tell a story

What is (are) the difference(s), if any, between positioning and branding?

Positioning:
 Marketing strategy
 Positioning comes before branding
 Differentiations (competitive advantage)
 How one describes something
Branding:
 Makes the promise of good user experience

Which elements underlie branding, and why are they important?

 Identity: visual expression
 Slogan
 Logo
 Symbol
 4 P’s
 Product
 Place
 Price
 Promotion
 Reputation
 Culture- system of values
 Personality
 Essence
 Is what we are changing worth it?

What is brand equity, and what is its relationship to other branding elements?
 Lower prices are available but because these brands are these brands people are more
willing to pay more
 Nike, Apple, Starbucks

What are the implications of having brand equity?

 Consumer perception, negative or positive effect and the resulting value
 Name
 A market opportunity
 Enough people out there with similar needs
 Relevant appeal
 Certain compelling needs and desires to shape the brand
 Different
 Make a different impression
 Asirational
 A proposition that is emotional, full of hope and trust

Implications for developing relevant and distinct brands:

 Advertising
 Competition
 Product distinction
 Regulation
 Credibility

What are some important ways to build a strong brand?

 Benefit or value proposition
 Competitive advantage
  Consistency and sustainability
 Focus
 Name and logo/symbol
 Business potential

What’s the relationship among branding, marketing communications, and promises?

 Consistency, all promote something and must follow through. Can’t over promise

Under which circumstances would branding translate into loyalty?

 The more memorable the name and the better the fit
 If the experience is equal to the promise

What is a “sticky hook,” and how, if at all, is it related to “content that inspires?”
 Tells a story, breaks through clutter
 Relevant, compelling focused brand message
 Define a corporation, product, or service brand in a way that leads to distinctive,
meaningful content that will break through the clutter, become viral and eventually result
in a purchasing action
 Simple, concrete, credible, emotional
 Content that inspires is also relevant and focused and people want to relate to a core
idea or brand, become emotionally attached, and feel comfortable to act on it

What are challenges to building brands? (from google)

1. Treating brands as assets
2. Possessing a compelling vision
3. Creating new subcategories
4. Generating breakthrough brand building
5. Achieving integrated marketing communication
6. Building a digital strategy
7. Building your brand internally
8. Maintaining brand relevance
9. Creating a brand portfolio strategy that yields synergy and clarity
10. Leveraging brand assets to enable growth

(Notes from class)

 Expensive to build, maintain, and change
 High initial investment
 Continual investment
 Innovation, marketing research
 Short term decision bias
 Digital media, sales promotion
 Marketers voice no longer unique
 Multiscreening has decimated customers attention
Getting their brand to stand out in an overcrowded world

 Brand image
 Brand reputation
 Brand personality
 Expensive to build, maintain and change
 Short term decision bias- digital media, sales promotions
 Marketers voice no longer unique

In the three interviews we saw in class with a CMO, CCO, and CBO, what are some
overall lessons in terms of what branding is all about?
 Be ready to help in anyway possible
 Ask questions

What is a “focused identity” and why is it particularly important now in the present media
environment

Important in the present media environment because strong, consistent and focused brand
identities are positioned to work with current trends in visual attention and media perception.
For strong brand identities just placing a logo in the center of the screen can automatically
activate complex identity constructs that in turn impact consumer behavior and cognition.
 More exposure even at subconscious level to branding elements helps strengthen brand
in memory

Is memory important in understanding branding and communications effectiveness?

Why or why not?
Memory is important in understanding branding and communications effectiveness because
people's memories and attention spans have significantly increased so the communications
needs to be quick and to the point enough for the viewer to absorb it

What’s the relationship between focused identities and memory?

 Brands cannot rely on the memory to dig deep into the person's memory they have to
soly base their brands on the unconscious efforts
 Brands retain potential power and can alter how consumers think feel and act
 Frequent brand exposure can increase its memorability and relevance in decision
making
 Any exposure, even at subconscious level, to branding elements helps strengthen brand
in memory

What types of media may be more effective given the challenges expressed in the
article?
 Media multitasking
o 2 seconds at a time
o 30 second narrative are risky now
  unified messages across media and strategy
 A single vision
 Brand linkage: a brands identity is instantly identifiable as belonging to the brand
example: apple
Is branding still important in the present media environment? Have examples to support
your answer?
Communications Agencies
What are the primary positions in agencies?