4 Steps to Make Effective Marketing Communications Strategy

Planning a marketing communication strategy can really be tricky. It’s not easy to convey the same level of ideas, values, and hype to customers. But It’s really easy to trigger your customers and accidentally rub them the wrong way, which then leads to a damaged brand reputation and disappointed customers.

Take an example of Apple’s latest iPad Pro ad that’s marked as insensitive, despite the intention to showcase the selling point of the new iOS device. This kind of backlash and controversy over “offensive and inappropriate” advertisements has happened so many times over the decades.

This happens because there are lots of aspects and factors to consider in planning an appropriate marketing communication strategy. That’s why we’ll uncover this tricky area by looking back on the past to learn how to set up effective, clear, and engaging marketing communication strategies for your business.

What is a Marketing Communication Strategy

Marketing communication strategies are an essential step in a business’s overall selling efforts. These strategies involve planning and executing various tactics to convey a specific message to the target audience through different mediums. The primary goal is to build connections, drive sales, and generate loyalty through effective communication with the target audience.

The key Components of Marketing and Communication Strategy

Essentially, the key components in mapping out a marketing communication strategy can be separated into:

• Medium
  The channels used to deliver the message, such as advertising, social media, personal selling, etc.
• Message
  What the business wants to tell or convey to its target audience.
• Target
  The specific group of target audience the message is intended for.

Failure Stories of Marketing Communication Strategy

As we mentioned above, there have been tons of flopped marketing communication strategies that resulted in controversial ads. Instead of being well-received and achieving the target results, these advertisements negatively triggered the audience and received massive backlash instead.

Some of them were done by multinational companies with a large group of loyal customers and stellar reputations. As soon as the ad received backlash, they were forced to issue an apology to the public. So aside from Apple’s iPad Pro ad, these are other 3 examples of those big companies and their ads:

• Hyundai’s “Pipe Job”
  Hyundai ran a commercial in the UK in 2013 that showcased the incredible safety features of their cars. Ironically, the ad joked by implying that they were so safe that even suicide attempts would fail.
• H&M’s “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle”
  In 2018, the Swedish fashion brand faced backlash for using a black child in a hoodie with the caption “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle.” Many saw this ad as racist and culturally insensitive.
• Bloomingdale’s “Christmas Eggnog”
  The department store’s Christmas catalogue ad in 2015 was considered as creepy and insensitive as the copy says “Spike your best friend’s eggnog when they’re not looking.” This copy is seen as a metaphor for a man forcing a woman into a forced non-consensual relationship.

How To Make an Effective Marketing Communication Strategy

Learning from other businesses’ failures, we can conclude that while planning a marketing communication strategy can be difficult, it can still be anticipated and prepared to be not only just effective but also appropriate and welcome by the audience.

Being quick-witted, clear, and creative is a must for marketers or copywriters. A great understanding of the characteristics of each different medium and how to frame messages is also essential in preparing effective marketing communication strategies. 

But beyond them, there’s an extra quality to possess to avoid insulting marketing campaigns, and that is social empathy. Social empathy refers to the ability to perceive and understand the viewpoints of the target audience and the public in general, such as:

• Generational preferences
• Races & nationalities
• Economic situations
• Gender differences
• Political stances
• Religions & morality
• Educational backgrounds

These are only a few notable viewpoints in today’s society. Depending on your products, industry, and niche; all these factors above may be different from other brands and will keep changing over the years.

By understanding and acknowledging these viewpoints, the strategy will have a higher chance of being more appropriate and accepted as a positive message by the audience. 

Ultimately, the steps to making an effective marketing communication strategy are:

• Designing clear & engaging marketing campaigns
• Sticking to your brand identity
• Knowing the characteristics of the market you’re in
• Keeping the social empathy

Marketing Communication Strategy Services in Australia

These entire steps can be overwhelmingly difficult and vague since we’re talking about predicting and analysing hundreds if not thousands of human beings. And before them, let’s not forget to conceptualise the right approaches for conveying the message and choose the best mediums to reach the audience. 

We get that this whole marketing communication strategy planning may be confusing, especially if you have limited experience in marketing and branding, which is why…

Give us a holler now to start mapping out and preparing the most effective and appropriate marketing communication strategy for your business.