Writing Marketing Communications that Works
Marketing Communications is important to the success of your company or your products. Success grows out of customer perception and marketing communications has the power to create the precise perceptions that make your company prosper and grow.
Marketing communications refers to all the means of communication that, taken together, deliver the marketing messages that you want your prospects, customers and employees to hear.
Marketing Communications encompasses communications for sales, marketing, public relations and includes your brochures, website, advertisements, logo, letterhead, public relations, flyers, presentations, sales promotion and more.
Good marketing communications makes your prospects want to become customers and your customers want to do business with you. Bad or inattentive marketing communications can do just the opposite.
So how can you make sure that your Marketing Communications works?
The Bottom Line about Marketing Communications:
You must take control!
If you want your marketing to be as strong as it can be, it is important that you take control of your marketing communications. Taking control requires two steps. 1. First you have to formulate your messages. You must decide what you want to say. Look at your customers; analyze your market and decide what you want to say about yourself. Do you want to be the company with the lowest prices, or the company with the best service? Do you want to position yourself as a specialist or a generalist? You have to bite the bullet and establish a marketing position for your company or product. 2. The next step is to present the messages in the media you choose: (website, brochure, ads, press releases.
Marketing Communications offers many choices
Here is a list of ways to send your marketing messages:
* Advertisements (Print / Internet / TV / Radio)
* Brochures (sales and capability)
* Case Studies
* Sales Support
* Training Manuals
* Corporate or product video
* Direct Mail or Email
* Presentations
* Sell Sheet
* Fact Sheet
* Flyer
* Catalog
* Statement (or Invoice) Stuffer
* Annual Reports
* Booklets (pamphlets)
* Web Site
* Public Relations (Press releases, articles for publication)
What kind of Marketing Communications do you need?
The answer to this question varies widely depending upon the nature of your business. If you are a computer consultant, you probably will have a website, a brochure and possibly an informational booklet. If you sell computer systems, you will need a brochure but you will probably also find it valuable to have case studies of installations showing how your system helped the customer be more productive. If you sell hot sauce over the Internet, you will need some kind of a catalog. If you operate a restaurant, you may find it worthwhile to run local ads. If you are in charge of fund raising for a museum or cultural institution you will likely be using direct mail. It all depends. The first step is to plan your marketing campaign and to determine the marketing materials you need.
Marketing Communications MUST be consistent
Good marketing communications demand consistency. Whether the message is on your website, brochure or in your sales pitch, it need to conform with all your other marketing messages.
A strategy for consistent marketing messages
To assure message consistency: start with a touchstone
The simplest and most effective way is to: write a description of your company in which you describe the business you are in and profile your customers. Tell why customers should do business with you and describe your edge over your competition. Keep re-writing until your description is as short and as clear as you can make it.
This document then becomes the “official description” of your company. It is the touchstone that you will use to create your marketing materials. Committing your company description to writing and conforming all future writing is an efficient way to assure uniformity of message across all your sales and marketing literature.