Marketing Communication: Definition

Marketing communication encompasses all the actions undertaken by a company to increase brand awareness or promote its offering to its target audience.

It can serve three main objectives:

  • Increase awareness among the widest possible audience (awareness objective)

  • Build affinity with the target audience (brand image objective)

  • Drive sales for a new or existing product (sales objective)

What’s the difference between marketing and communication?

Marketing and communication are closely related concepts, often confused with one another. However, they are not exactly the same:

  • Marketing comes first. It is based on studying consumer needs and defines the set of actions a company will take to create value and meet those needs. It relies in particular on the marketing mix, or the 4Ps: Product, Price, Place (distribution), and Promotion (communication). Marketing determines what to sell, how to sell it, and to whom.

  • Communication, on the other hand, comes into play to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right audience, using the right channels. Its purpose is to share information across various platforms and media, and reach the audiences identified through the marketing strategy.

This explains why the two terms can be confusing: marketing communication—also called commercial communication—is simply one of the tools used in marketing to attract customers and meet their needs.

How to implement marketing communication?

There are as many marketing communication strategies as there are companies. Broadly speaking, they can be grouped into three categories based on the channels used:

  • Media communication: television, cinema, radio, outdoor advertising…

  • Non-media communication: events, sponsorship, patronage…

  • Digital communication: social media, blogs, newsletters…

A marketing communication strategy generally follows five key steps:

  • Define objectives
    If you don’t know exactly what you want to achieve, you risk not achieving it. Don’t skip this step.
  • Select the target audience
    Through your market research, you will have identified different consumer profiles. Choose the primary audience to target and adapt your campaign accordingly.
  • Choose the channel and the message
    Decide which channels you will use (media, non-media, digital), what you will say, and, most importantly, how you will deliver the message.
  • Execution
    Put your plan into action to roll out the campaign.
  • Measure the impact
    Collect and analyze the data to determine if the campaign was successful. Did you achieve the objectives set in step 1? Continuously adjust your campaigns to maximize return on investment.

Oxygen supports you in building an effective communication strategy

Based on your objectives, we help you design and implement a tailored communication strategy.

Oxygen’s various areas of expertise enable you to combine branding, public relations, corporate communications, social media, and influencer marketing strategies to maximize your campaigns’ impact.

Convinced of the importance of maintaining close relationships with our clients, our agency network has expanded to 11 cities in France and internationally. And if you wish to develop these skills internally, we also offer communication training programs.

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