Advertising And Marketing Communications

© Provided by The Manila Times

Preparing for the next steps of evolution

Given the technological capabilities available, advertising and marketing are part of the transformation of many business processes in an organization. Most customers already use digital behavior in many aspects of their daily lives, and organizations are looking to incorporate digital technologies into their processes and operations to reach their target customers.

Advertising and marketing communications in particular are no exception, and in fact can be considered one of the most important areas in which companies focus their digital efforts. An overarching framework that can be viewed at the macro level is integrated digital marketing, a well-known corporate strategy that complements and complements traditional marketing efforts to adapt to changing times.

But what is digital marketing? To understand digital marketing and its impact on business, it is important to examine the six components involved and where organizations spend time and resources on a comprehensive digital marketing plan:

1. The goals are an attempt to help guide the organization. Has a strategy been formulated? Do we have an executive sponsor who is at a high level in implementing strategies to achieve the goals? What are the main objectives of your campaign? To attract more customers, generate more leads, or increase brand awareness? Knowing your goals helps you focus on reaching them.

2. Hearing. In a nutshell, who are your target customers and what are their demographics? Are you targeting a specific country or a specific age group to promote your product or service? It may seem simple, but there is some work to be done on the back-end, such as personality research, empathic interviewing, customer experience mapping, and even usability, attitude, and image (UAI) research. ).

3. Messaging is an important element of any digital marketing campaign. Messaging treats the value proposition as a key message with a corresponding call to action. What makes your product or service attractive to the target market? What makes you different? Your message must contain this.

4. Channels: how do you get the message and campaign across? What channel are you using? There are two ways to reach your target customers such as installation events, public relations (PR) project, using social media, and promoting or using your website.

5. Content. This is how you work on your messaging to share valuable information to create content that will make your target customers stop, watch, and listen. The content can be in various forms such as images, video, audio, and text. Video is a popular use because it is short and can capture the attention of the audience in a short amount of time.

6. Monitoring – Measure key metrics and what is working well and what is not, and data for replication. This can be done by keeping track of the channels they use, such as social media.

Now that we understand integrated digital marketing, it's important to understand the channels you can use to manage your digital marketing campaign. This is called an integrated marketing communications channel. There are seven channels that an organization should consider:

1. proclamation
2. Private sale
3. digital advertising
4. Direct marketing
5. public relations and public relations
6. events and impressions
7. Sale promotion

Of the seven channels we offer, we cover three main areas: digital marketing, public relations, events and experiences. These are the areas in which most companies in the country pay attention and invest their time and resources.

digital advertising

Especially during the pandemic, the use of digital marketing has increased significantly. While traditional media have always operated in a market like the Philippines, digital marketing is currently gaining a lot of interest due to the digitization of consumers. That's why organizations are turning to digital marketing in their overall marketing efforts: execution is faster and results are quicker because access to information is often at your fingertips.

Digital marketing requires a clear objective and defining the platforms you can use: your website, social networks or search engines. Furthermore, it is equally important to ensure that the results are traceable and reproducible in order to be flexible and responsive to the results of the campaign. A campaign on one platform may work well but not so well on another, and it's important to track this so that businesses can be flexible and adapt accordingly.

Digital marketing for SMEs or micro, small and medium-sized businesses can be intimidating, especially if the business owner is from an older generation. To make things easier, digital marketing uses the power of the Internet to promote products and services. In other words, using Facebook, Instagram or any other website makes digital marketing more practical. This is a good starting point.

public relations and public relations

Being "in the spotlight" has always been the goal of organizations promoting their products and services. One way to do this is to stay in the public eye, and public relations can be helpful. Public relations includes thought leadership, publicity and interviews (digital and print) and more to grow and grow brand awareness. Depending on the target audience, it is important to consider the various social media tools available. It is also important to consider how different generations prefer different platforms, offering new generations of marketing experiences through new channels based on short video content on TikTok and Facebook Reels.

events and impressions

Filipinos are very friendly people. Events like events that bring people together are always welcome and welcome, and digital events are no exception. When running these kinds of events, it's important to be able to (a) organize, (b) invite the audience, (c) speak, (d) control, and (e) the end-to-end lifecycle at the end of the event. . .

During the pandemic, we've seen for some time companies choosing to host virtual events over face-to-face meetings: we've seen product or service launches and webinars hosted on online platforms and streamed online, as well as broader access. I'm stuck. This setup has made virtual events acceptable, or at least an alternative to in-person meetings. But this presents a challenge for marketers, as they must now consider the engagement threshold, the point at which audience engagement persists and below which it dissipates. It is clear that the participation threshold in face-to-face environments is high, while in virtual environments it is low. This means that when working with virtual events, the marketer must use additional engagement tools such as polls, looping slides, and videos. This keeps the audience interested and focused, making the activity successful.

final thoughts

The question is often asked: “What area should I focus on? Traditional or digital? Our answer is to always consider a blended approach and maintain a good balance between offline and online marketing efforts to determine the effectiveness of each approach based on the target audience. For marketers, the only way to find out is to experiment with both options and respond based on the tracking results. Currently, companies and organizations need to take advantage of the technological opportunities available to reach the target audience in a flexible way.

So organizations can consider this as part of their marketing efforts for 2023.

Kei Kalpo Lugtu is the COO of Hungry Workhorse, a digital and cultural transformation company. His passions include food innovation, nation building, and sustainability. The author can be contacted at kay.lugtu@hungryworkhorse.com.

Marketing and Advertising Communications Management: International Student Experience