Strategies for Marketing Communication in Today's Digital Age

This essay explores the evolving landscape of marketing communication in the digital age, emphasizing the challenges posed by ad blockers and the need for marketers to adapt by listening to customers and crafting meaningful brand stories. It highlights the importance of leveraging digital media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to understand customer preferences and integrate communication strategies accordingly. The essay also underscores the significance of emotional marketing and building trust with consumers through relevant narratives that resonate with their values and experiences. Furthermore, it acknowledges the growing influence of bloggers and online portals in shaping consumer opinions, particularly among younger demographics, suggesting that marketers should consider these channels as valuable avenues for conveying their messages and achieving measurable results by influencing potential customers. The study concludes that understanding and adapting to the communication styles of new customer segments, including incorporating emotional connections and building trust, are crucial for developing effective and engaging marketing strategies.

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10 Mar 2019
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The continuous change in the marketing landscape is mainly attributed to the digital technology,
which is developing at faster rate compared to previous decade (Porcu, Del & Kitchen, 2017).
The failure of brand marketers in today's business is primarily because of the fact that they are
not updated according to the customer requirement, not loyal to corresponding brands, and are
resistant to the messages of traditional marketing scheme.
The use of personalized ads through internet is a traditional approach within the scope of
“integrated marketing communication”. However, using improved technological support,
customers are nowadays using ad blockers, which should not be ignored by the marketers. The
installed ad blockers act as barrier for the advertisers, to reach to the target audiences and
communicate the meaningful messages. In order to overcome this problem, marketers must use
alternative ways of communication, which must include (i) improved strategy, (ii) listening to
customers, and (iii) influencing the customers.
Particularly in my opinion marketing communication is successful when the focus is on
“listening”. For example, the digital media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube,
corresponds to the routine reflection of today's customers. This creates a wide opportunity for the
brands to prepare new strategies, for integrating there working standards in conjunction to the
communication style suitable for their clients. The digital media offers wide variety of
information about preferences and interests of clients. If the marketers are not listening to their
clients’ through the social media platform, they are obvious to miss the opportunity to outreach
their customers.
Marketing messages with a suitable brand story is likely to make positive impact on the
purchasing behavior of customers (Reed, Goolsby, & Johnston, 2016). This suggests that
marketers must use relevant stories that can include real life benefits, human relationships,
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moral-based context, and emotional connection to deliver useful and meaningful messages to
their consumers. In a report by Batra & Keller (2016), this approach is referred as emotional
marketing, which always helps the brands to get connected with their consumers, and in turn
helps in retaining market position and achieving competitive advantage.
In conjunction to the concept of influencing customers, it is important for the advertisers, PRs,
and marketers to realize that young consumers are no longer trusting any brands. However,
internet users are more inclined towards their favorite bloggers and information present in social
media. Hence, bloggers and online portals should we considered as powerful influences that can
shape the opinion of young consumers (Bilgihan, 2016). Common form of bloggers can easily be
found on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, which can be identified by number of followers. The
approach to achieve measurable results by influencing potential consumers and the new
marketing communication strategies must adopt provision to convey their messages through this
medium.
In summary, to attract the new customary segments, it is important to understand the way which
suits their communication style. For example, using internet-based approach and collecting
information from social media, is the best way to strategize the messages for corresponding
consumers. In addition to this, it is also important to include emotional connection in these
communication strategies, such that they can develop trust with brand and can become loyal.
References:
Batra, R., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Integrating marketing communications: New findings, new
lessons, and new ideas. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 122-145.
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Assignment Name Student ID
Bilgihan, A. (2016). Gen Y customer loyalty in online shopping: An integrated model of trust,
user experience and branding. Computers in Human Behavior, 61, 103-113.
Porcu, L., Del Barrio-Garcia, S., & Kitchen, P. J. (2017). Measuring integrated marketing
communication by taking a broad organisational approach: The firm-wide IMC
scale. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), 692-718.
Reed, K., Goolsby, J. R., & Johnston, M. K. (2016). Listening in and out: Listening to customers
and employees to strengthen an integrated market-oriented system. Journal of Business
Research, 69(9), 3591-3599.
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