Guide 7: Marketing Communications
Guide 7: Marketing Communications
Objectives and Deliverables
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Understand and develop the 4 components to your marketing brand
Understand the buying process and relate it to the MarCom Strategy
Develop target personas for your business
Evaluate proper mediums to reach your target personas
Craft a brand positioning statement for your target personas
Marketing Communications can be described as all messages, activities, and media you deploy to
communicate with your target market. This can include advertising, social media, print materials, sales
presentations, sponsorships, etc. The 2 major objectives of marketing communications are: 1. To create
& sustain demand and 2. To shorten the sales cycle.
The overall image and interpretation of your company is called your Brand. Your brand marketing
communications strategy has 4 major factors: audience, credibility, medium, and messaging. These 4
factors have sequential objectives. Below is the MarCom strategy and objectives that relate to the
buying process:
Domain
Leadership
Product
Positioning
Value
DIfferentiation
Sales
Promotion
Post-purcahse
satisfaction
The Buying Process is related to the Marcom Objectives:
The last section highlighted the process of the Marketing Communications strategy. How a typical
consumer internalizes and thinks before they buy something is referred to as the buying process or
journey. Put another way, before a purchase is made, the customer goes through a process to decide
whether to buy or not. The 5 major steps of the buying process is outlined below:
Problem
Recognition
Information
Search
Evaluate
Alternatives
Decision
making
Postpurchase
review
Notice how ‘domain leadership’ is related to problem recognition? For example: The need for coffee in
Canada – Tim Horton’s brand may be what you thought about when I mentioned coffee. When “Canada
Coffee” is typed in Google images: Tim Horton’s images are predominant (this is the information
Author: Darren Lum
© University of Toronto Mississauga
Not for distribution or replication
Guide 7: Marketing Communications
search). Tim Horton’s has a differentiation from other coffee stores such as Starbucks – which is what a
consumer will weigh when deciding what kind of coffee to buy. Perhaps Tim’s has a sale going on (sales
promotion) that affects the consumers’ decision. The key here is to acknowledge that the Marcom
objectives are relevant and related to the buying process of a typical consumer.
Activity 1: Understand the buying process
1. What is a hobby of yours?
2. List the 5 key sources of information for your hobby that you use ie. Newspaper, blog, friends…
3. Rank the sources from most important to least important
4. What makes the sources ranked higher better? Are they more credible or trustworthy? Do theyffer
more information, or are they free?
Activity 2: What was your last major purchase (>$100 )
1.
2.
3.
4.
Where did you look for information about possible options?
Did you ask for advice or discuss your purchase with anyone? Who was it?
What was the role of the Internet in that particular transaction?
What specific reasons did you have for choosing that particular item and not the competitor’s
offering?
5. Where/who did that particular information come from?
6. Have you seen any advertising for the product you bought either before or after your purchase?
The next sections will take you through the 4 cores of brand marketing communications strategy:
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Target audience
Credibility
Medium
Messaging
Author: Darren Lum
© University of Toronto Mississauga
Not for distribution or replication
Guide 7: Marketing Communications
Target Audience:
In order to develop the proper materials, messaging and selection of the correct medium, you need to
understand who your target audience is and develop a persona of them. Here are 4 characteristics to
develop a persona:
Demographics: Age, Gender, Weight, Height
Psychographic: Interests, Lifestyle, Beliefs, Fears
Geographic: Regional/Local, National, International
Contextual: Place, Task, Group
Overall, you want to be able to be able to describe in as much detail who is your target audience so that
you can develop communications material that specifically resonates with them. What is important to
note is that a persona is not the same as a market segment.
From: Osterwalder, Alexander, Business Model Generation, 2009
Author: Darren Lum
© University of Toronto Mississauga
Not for distribution or replication
Guide 7: Marketing Communications
Activity: Develop a target audience persona (many of you have more than 1 using the information
above. Some questions you may want to answer are:
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What do they see?
What does the customer gain?
What do they hear?
What do they say and do?
behaviour?
What is the customer’s pain?
● What is their age or generation?
● What do they really think and feel?
● What is their online/offline purchasing
●
Credibility- Building trust and establishing credibility:
Trust and credibility are potentially the most important things to a business. Without it, you lose
partners, customers, and your business. Trust is earned by consistently demonstrating credibility during
all online and offline customer interactions. Credibility is established by ensuring your marketing
activities, messages and channels are appropriate for your target market.
Example: Establishing credibility with target audience
Male Pharmacist, looking for retirement financial advisor: How will he choose a financial advisor?
✔Proven/prevoius portfolio success
✔Recommendations from colleagues
✗On-line reviews
✗Cold-calls
✗PR firms, Google ads
Activity: Building trust with your target audience & your credibility strategy
Using your Target Audience Persona:
• What activities are credible to our customers?
• How do we build trust with our target audience?
• What media channels are credible to them?
Author: Darren Lum
© University of Toronto Mississauga
Not for distribution or replication
Guide 7: Marketing Communications
How to establish domain leadership
Domain leadership is the ability to be recognized as an authority in your field. What are the key ways to
get leadership?
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Write a White Paper
Present at a conference or trade show
Get quoted in a magazine or newspaper article
Establish an industry blog
Work with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs)
A key opinion leader is someone who is already respected in their field and has the ability to influence
others. These people already have followers as well as trust and credibility. A more relatable example
would be athlete endorsements. They are paid to wear specific branded clothing in hopes that the
public who like them/follow them see their brand. But a startup can’t afford to pay professional
athletes. Many KOLs have backed startups before because they believe in what the startup was doing.
Perhaps, you can convince a KOL that your technology is going to be game changing and you want them
as an advisor? There are many ways to attract a KOL to your team without money. The first step is to
identify who is a potential KOL that you want representing your startup?
Activity: Prospective KOLs
Make a list of 3-5 Key Opinion Leaders who you might want to be a part of your startup. Why are they
important? What can you offer them? Why should they join you? Do they have any other interests that
align with your business? How can you align your message with their brand?
Medium
Once you’ve discovered who your target audience is, you need to figure out how they like to receive
their information. Providing the right evidence and message through the wrong media simply results in
the wrong person getting the correct information. A wide range of media must be considered for each
target customer.
The medium must be considered for both marketing and media channels. Marketing channels are the
routes you will take to effectively and efficiently reach your target market. Different types of marketing
channels include: direct selling (E-commerce), selling through intermediaries (wholesale distributors),
dual distribution (franchise), and reverse channels (resale, recycling). Media channels are the specific
and credible activities to communicate, engage and persuade your target market. Examples of media
channels include direct (email, point of purchase), advertising (magazine, newspaper), relationship
Author: Darren Lum
© University of Toronto Mississauga
Not for distribution or replication
Guide 7: Marketing Communications
(word of mouth, testimonials), digital (social media, business networking), event (live seminars, flash
mob), and database (market research, data capture).
When brainstorming your media channels, make sure you can answer these questions:
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What activities and media channels are appropriate for different industries and target
audiences?
Which online and offline activities work well for your target market and which would not?
What media/marketing channels are relevant to your target audience and which ones are not?
Evaluating Media Channels:
When trying to evaluate your media channels, you can evaluate them using the REAN Approach. This
method is a simple, yet powerful approach to plan ahead and/or analyze the complex sequence of interrelated, multichannel marketing activities that are needed to build and nurture a customer relationship.
Reach: The set of activities needed to raise prospects’ attention for your brand, product or service
Engage: The gradual, typically multi-channel, often recursive set of activities needed to engage the
prospects you just won
Activate: The activities needed for your prospects to take, and eventually, the actions you want them to
take
Nurture: The activities needed to nurture the customer relationship you have created.
Activity: Brainstorming your medium – Make a list of 10 different media channels that you think would
be effective and efficient in helping market your company product/service. For each one, evaluate it
using the REAN approach and the additional factors in the sample chart below:
Type
R/E/A/N
Cost
Reach
Specialist
Complexity
Credibility
ROI
Print material
R
High
High
Y
N
Y
Med
Social Media
E/A
Low
Low
N
N
N
Low
Ad words
R/A
Low
Low
N
N
N
Med
Video
E/A
Med
Med
Y
Y
Y
High
Press Release
R
Med
Med
N
Y
Y
Med
Author: Darren Lum
© University of Toronto Mississauga
Not for distribution or replication
Guide 7: Marketing Communications
For this sample chart, the first column describes the media channels that you’ve brainstormed, and all
the other columns are variables to be analyzed whether it would be effective to pursue or not.
Definitions of the variables and columns are below:
R/E/A/N: Which part of REAN does it involve?
Cost: is the cost of this project high, medium, or low
Reach: How many people will this reach/affect? Is it mass market or targeted?
Specialist required: Do you need to hire a specialist, or can you do this yourself?
Complexity of Message: Does this medium allow for a complex message?
Credibility: Does your target find this media credible?
ROI: What is the Return on initial investment?
The Marketing Message
The buying process in many industries can be up to 18 months in Business-to-Business. It can vary for a
consumer product/service – but either way, your messaging can speed up the buying process to deliver
most of the relevant information so that the customer does not have to look for it. Have you noticed
when you purchase something online, the company already has a chart that compares their product to a
competitor? Do you take into consideration the reviews and stars a product has before you purchase it?
These companies are taking advantage of this buying process by speeding it up. Instead of making you
do the work to find relevant information, they are giving it to you.
It is important to note that your messages are not targeted in the way that you get to choose who
sees/hears what you do/say. Some of the people who hear your messaging will be skeptics.
The market can be broken down into 3 major groups of people: Early adopters, mass market, and the
skeptics. The early adopters will be the first to buy a new product (and line up for it!) and get their
information from blogs, track product development via techcrunch.com, your website, and be
persuaded by key opinion leaders (because they know who they are). The mass market will be slow to
buy the new product. They will get one because their friends got one. They were reached through TV
ads, mass media coverage, or an early adopters’ recommendation. The skeptics will just not care about
your product, use the old fashion way of solving the problem, or do not see the problem as urgent.
The purpose of your message is to convert skeptics into supporters, and reinforce the position of
existing supporters. It is important to understand what a potential customer looks for in your messaging
and communication. Your target customer will always ask the question- “what’s in it for me?” – so make
sure your messaging demonstrates how you solve your target customers’ problem.
When developing your website or messaging, take into consideration how a customer will first find you
(problem recognition) and then interact with your website or platform (information search). Make sure
you position your messaging to answer these questions.
Author: Darren Lum
© University of Toronto Mississauga
Not for distribution or replication
Guide 7: Marketing Communications
A brand positioning statement is an expanded version of your value proposition. It is used to guide the
content of your message for a consumer. The positioning statement is your reference document for any
branding activity you do. You can always go back and ask ‘does what I’m doing reflect well on our brand
positioning statement?’ – if the answer was no – either: stop what you are doing or craft a new brand
positioning statement. Since marketing is the communication of your brand positioning with the goal of
enticing your potential customers to trust your offer, the positioning statement will be the foundation of
any marketing activity.
Activity: Craft a brand positioning statement
An example template is below:
For ____________________________. Who ___________________________. Our product
is_____________________________, that provides
. Unlike
____________, we have assembled
.
Product Maturity
Are you in an existing or new market? If you are in a new market, you will have to provide an education
component in your messaging because you may be solving a problem that many customers do not even
know exists. If you are in an existing market – you will need to position yourself against the market
leaders to demonstrate differentiation.
Additional Resources:
Marketing communications: Reaching early adopters of technology products
Marketing communications for new technology and products
Personas and target audiences
Brand positioning statement tips
Author: Darren Lum
© University of Toronto Mississauga
Not for distribution or replication