All marketing communications or advertising for your small business, whether delivered in person, through promotions, or via traditional media, direct mail, or e-mail, need to accomplish the same tasks:
- Impart information the prospect wants to know.
- Grab attention.
- Present offers that are sensitive to how and when the prospect wants to take action.
- Affirm why the prospect would want to take action.
- Offer a reason to take action.
- Launch a relationship, which increasingly means fostering interaction and two-way communication between you and your customer.
1) Identifying the Target Audience:
Even for the same product, the target audience may be different in different countries. For example, certain consumer durables, which are used even by the low-income groups in the advanced countries, may be used only by high-income groups in the developing countries. In several cases the need satisfaction by the product varies between markets.
- Who marketers target will dictate?
- What is to say or convey?
- How it should be say?
- When it should be say?
- And where it should be say?
2) Determining Communication Objectives:
The communication objectives may also be different in some cases. For example, when the product is in the introduction stages in a market, the emphasis of communication could be on consumer education and creation of primary demand. In a market where the product is at other stages of the life cycle, the communication objectives would be different.
3) Determining the Message:
The decisions regarding the message content, message structure, message format and message source are influenced by certain environmental factors like cultural factors and legal factors. The differences in the environmental factors among the countries may, therefore, call for different messages so as to be appropriate for each market. In this stage companies need to focus on:
- Message Content
- Message Structure and
- Message Format
4) Budget Decisions:
The size of the total promotional expenditure and the apportioning of this amount to the different elements of the promotion mix are very important but difficult decisions.
5) Communication Tools / Mix Decisions:
The promotion decisions faced by export marketing management can be reduced to the following:
i) What messages?
ii) What communications media?
iii) How much effort or money to spend?
6) Feedback of communication Strategy
After all, above steps and implementing the communication strategy then companies need to get feedback and response from targeted audience. Monitoring and feedback provide a continuous improvement process. So marketers should regularly measure and monitor the effectiveness of marketing communication strategy and make changes as needed.