THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATION IN CONTEMPORARY MARKETING

The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably." A different concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this context, marketing is defined as "the management process that seeks to maximize returns to shareholders b developing y relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage. Thus, marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Marketing is a product or service selling related overall activities. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves. Marketing is used to identify the customer, satisfy the customer, and keep the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, it can be concluded that marketing management is one of the major components of business management. Marketing evolved to meet the stasis in developing new markets caused by mature markets and overcapacities in the last 2-3 centuries. The adoption of marketing strategies requires businesses to shift their focus from production to the perceived needs and wants of their customers as the means of staying profitable. The term marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on knowing the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions. It proposes that in order to satisfy its organizational objectives, an organization should anticipate the needs and wants of consumers and satisfy these more effectively than competitors (Rogers Media Inc, 2009) Communication on the other hand is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space. Communication requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative

commonality. The communication process is complete once the receiver has received and understood the sender.

The Impact and role of Communication in Marketing Marketing Communications are messages and related media used to communicate with a market. Marketing communications is the "promotion" part of the "Marketing Mix" or the "four Ps": price, place, promotion, and product. The communication process is sender-encoding-transmission device-decoding-receiver, which is part of any advertising or marketing program. Encoding the message is the second step in communication process, which takes a creative idea and transforms it into attentiongetting advertisements designed for various media (television, radio, magazines, and others). Messages travel to audiences through various transmission devices. The third stage of the marketing communication process occurs when a channel or medium delivers the message. Decoding occurs when the message reaches one or more of the receiver's senses. Consumers both hear and see television advertisements. Others consumers handle (touch) and read (see) a coupon offer. Traditionally, marketing communications practitioners focused on the creation and execution of printed marketing collateral; however, academic and professional research developed the practice to use strategic elements of branding and marketing in order to ensure consistency of message delivery throughout an organization - a consistent "look & feel". Many trends in business can be attributed to marketing communications; for example: the transition from customer service to customer relations, and the transition from human resources to human solutions and the trends to blogs, email, and other online communication derived from an elevator pitch. In branding, every opportunity to impress the organization's (or the individual's) brand upon the customer is called a brand touch point (or brand contact point.) Examples include everything from Television and other media advertisements, event sponsorships. Thus, every experiential opportunity that an organization creates for its stakeholders or customers is a brand touch point. Hence, it is vitally important for brand strategists and managers to survey

all of their organization's brand touch points and control for the stakeholder's or customer's experience. Marketing communications, as a vehicle of an organization's brand management, is concerned with the promotion of an organization's brand, product(s) and/or service(s) to stakeholders and prospective customers through these touch points. Marketing communications is focused on the product/service as opposed to corporate communications where the focus of communications work is the company/enterprise itself. Marketing communications is primarily concerned with demand generation and product/service positioning while corporate communications deal with issue management, mergers and acquisitions, litigation, etc. Marketing communications educates a market about a company's products or services, including how they are different from the competition. One example is the need to differentiate Tigo, since there about five mobile communication networks. Another educational example is promoting the value of a company's internal culture so that employees can be retained longer. A primary role for marketing communications is persuasion. For effective communications, you must first decide on your objective. Decide if you are focused on building brand identity or on selling your company's products or services. Also determine your audience. Your communications may centre on persuading potential employees to join you or they may be intended to attract new customers; in either case, the persuasion tactics will be different. Decide on your call to action and what specifically you want your audience to do. If you want the news media to report positively on your company and provide opportunities for you to get media exposure, marketing communications should be targeted to that audience. In this role, media kits can be distributed to educate news media about your company and encourage them to distribute press releases and special interest stories about you. If you are a public company, the value of your stock can be influenced by how you are perceived by news media. Conclusion Marketing communication has become an integral part of the social and economic system worldwide. Consumers rely on the information from marketing communication to make wise purchase decisions. Businesses, ranging from multinational corporations to small retailers, depend on marketing communication to sell their goods and services. Marketing communication has also become an important player in the life of a business. Marketing communication helps move products, services, and ideas from manufacturers to end users and builds and maintains relationships with customers, prospects, and other important stakeholders in the company. Advertising and sales promotion will continue to play important roles in marketing communication mix. However, marketing strategies that stress relationship building in addition to producing sales will force marketers to consider all the elements in the marketing communication mix. In the future new information gathering techniques will help

marketers target more precisely customers and prospects using direct marketing strategies. New media technologies will provide businesses and consumers new ways to establish and reinforce relationships that are important for the success of the firm and important for consumers as they make purchase decisions. The Internet will become a major force in how organizations communicate with a variety of constituents, customers, clients, and other interested parties.

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