Marketing communications is an important aspect in the field of marketing. The overall concept of marketing is a combination of planning, pricing, promotions, and products that involve people, physical evidence, and processes, which are known as the seven P’s . Marketing communications integrates elements of communication and marketing into a coherent whole. The integration of marketing and communication helps to convey a single message instead of sending mixed messages which can confuse and damage brands. For instance, the Coca-Cola brand has the red and white logo to perpetuate the image and message of the Coca-Cola brand. The consistency of the logo provides the consumer with an expectation of the product. The purpose of this research is to examine trends in marketing communications and evaluate the trend in respect to the company.
Marketing Trends
Marketing trends change every year. According to Newman (2017), there are ten marketing trends to look for in the field of marketing: more focus on customer experience; effective measuring of data related to the company; depend on top marketing technologist and data scientists; make the marketing promotion personal; increase video content; increase social media marketing; embrace the internet of things; utilize chatbots; focusing on right-time marketing; market to own digital transformation campaigns. The trends that this research will focus on are the importance of creating the perfect customer experience, personalization of the company, and the Internet of Things.
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Evaluating Marketing Trends
Prior to evaluating marketing communication trends, it is important to know some strategies that will make the assessment be completed more easily. When assessing the performance of marketing strategies, imperative internal and external influences should be considered . Marketing strategies can serve an effective method in assessing company performance and sustainable performance for future predictions. The impact of an effective marketing strategy can be significant for monitoring the impact of marketing communication trends on companies. Some tools to consider when assessing the impact of marketing trends on companies is to assess the use of resources. A cost-benefit analysis can be used to assess the marketing resources and the rises and falls in performance. This assessment will consider if goals of the company can be met by expending lesser resources or using an external resource. The environment of the company is important to assess the marketing strategy. The environment can hone in on the concerns of the market and competitors. The market strategy should acknowledge how quickly to strategy can respond to threats. When assessing the performance of a marketing strategy, the indicators of the actual results of sales and profitability should be compared to strategic goals. Factors that are deemed to have a lot of influence on performance of the company should be isolated to focus on improving strategic initiatives of the company.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Customer experience is the focal point of marketing in all industries . Customer experience can be defined as the interaction between consumers and the organization concerning the business relationship . Companies that have embraced customer based philosophies for effective marketing strategies and digital transformations. The relationship between the customer and the company extends beyond improving ratings of products or improving wait times (McKinsey & Company, 2017). It is a clear advantage when companies understand the journey of the customer experience from considering the purchase of a product and actually buying the product. When customers have a positive experience, they are more likely to become loyal customers to the business and submit referrals to other potential customers. Customer experience strategies can be created by companies that have a clear customer vision, understanding the customer base, creating an emotional relationship with customers, retrieve customer feedback on performance and products, have regular employee feedback, and measuring the return on investment (ROI) from the customer experience.
A company that is employing a high quality standard of customer experience is Jordan’s Furniture Store. Since the establishment of the company in 1918, Jordan’s Furniture has striven to make a positive customer experience. The customers’ expectations are based on the innovative advertisements through television commercials and zany radio ads (Morgan & Rao, 2003). The company not only uses the media as a marketing tool to promote customer experience, but also the actual shopping experience is made to enjoy. To ensure an enjoyable experience, the employees of the company are to have an attitude in alignment with the organizational culture to reach the customer expectations.
Personalization Marketing
Personalization in marketing is basically targeted marketing that is designed for an individual or specified group of customers . Personalization is an automated process from computer software to help craft individualized messages and customer-centric recommendations from search engines that appeals to the customer. Personalization is not only for the customer, but also for specifications of products and services. Internet software is a major influence on personalization in marketing. It helps companies identify consumer needs by physical location, transaction records, and tracking cookies to learn of shopping interests. The various ways personalization can occur is with direct mail, B2B communication, website interactions, and mobile advertising.
Amazon is a company that embraces personalization by the product search. It recommends similar products that have been recently searched, and advertisement of other searches from different sites. Personalization on the Amazon site is helpful for customers to save time and money when searching for products . Amazon generates personalized marketing emails based on individualized social media, browsing history, recent purchase history, areas of interests, website activity, etc. The company is successful at personalization marketing because of the attention paid on big data, on time hyper-personalized communications, and by initiating small extras for the customers. Paying attention to big data refers to the site monitoring customers’ web browsing activities to relate similar products for the customer. Amazon also uses multiple modes of obtaining the individualized personalization of the customers such as the social information, site history, and traditional personalization data. Personalization has been very beneficial to Amazon, but what about customers who do not have a social media outlet or have chosen not to disclose personal information? Items on the site from other patrons can be grouped together to still ensure that customers can monitor frequently grouped items to help maximize the search.
Internet of Things Marketing
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the interconnection of wireless communication technology to animals, objects, location, people, etc to directly transmit and share data . The information is shared by a network on the devices, and it also helps collect data such as traffic, weather, pollution, etc. The IoT will help to outsource services such as locking a door or turning on a sprinkler system by a device. Companies that are embracing IoT are Nike Fuelband, Fitbit, and Apple’s iWatch. IoT can help improve marketing return on investment in numerous ways. For instance, sales data can be easily exchanged, customer relationship management can be strengthened, and predictive social media.
The senior executives at Apple decided to utilize the Internet of Things (IoT) to advance technology available for smart homes in the homekit software platform. IoT is representative of an opportunity to monetize the controlling, reporting services, and monitoring services from the Apple devices. The software on this device will allow customers to control home appliances using an iPad or iPhone. A device that controls multiple devices in smart homes is the new, popular commodity, and many consumers are looking to purchase. It will be beneficial for Apple to create a single application to house all of the smart appliances in the home instead of having a different application for each appliance. The company should mention that the software only works for Apple devices, but should branch out to other smart devices.
In conclusion, trends of marketing communications are very valuable to increasing profitability for companies. Enhancing the customer experience, personalization, and the utilization of the Internet of Things are very helpful marketing communication tools to solidify loyal customers. Each of these trends focuses on improving customer accessibility for different products and services. The marketing outlets can be evaluated using cost-benefit analysis to determine if the marketing tool is beneficial or detrimental to the company to continue using the marketing trend. The usefulness of trends varies for each company, and with each year, the companies should add or eliminate marketing trends to ensure a productive return on investment.
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