Integrated Marcom

The most important thing that I learned in our marketing class today is to maximize the use of communication to improve business performance. There are actually many benefits of marketing communication, but the major ones are informing (e.g. establishing product image and differentiating it with competitors' products), persuading (e.g. stimulate interest and encourage product trial) and reminding (e.g. developing repeat purchase behavior) the market about the business and the products/ services offered.

There are many different ways that a company may choose in order to communicate its business efficiently to its targeted market such as advertising (above the line or below the line), public relation (for larger companies with its own PR division), sales promotion, personal selling and direct marketing (e-mail or telemarketing).

Our lecturer, Mr. Sandy, even gave us a little tip on how to become a good personal seller. It is by not selling your products to the customer but more on offering solutions for them and be a good consultant whom these people can talk to. By establishing friendship with our customers, trust can be built and long term relationship (along with its benefits) may be earned.

While people argue which communication methods are the best for businesses, I prefer to say that there is no right or wrong or even best method of marketing communication but we have to use the most suitable communication method to use for our own different business types and target market. We even need to suit the communication method with our budget, what we can afford.

To conclude, Marketing Communication is only used to tell people about the business, its information and profile and what the business does. It may help the business inform, persuade and remind people about the business' existence. However, networking is still the most important part of today's business. Without networks, who do you intend to communicate these messages to? So, to be successful in business we need to keep widening our network and improve our business communication with these people.