Author: Serena Sorrentino
Publication date: 05.03.2024
Marketing and communication are worlds that work and cooperate to achieve the same goal. Their proximity often creates confusion and can lead to many thinking that Marketing and Communication make the same contribution to a company or that they are the same thing.
These two professions work together because the end result is more advantageous, despite this we must remember that communication has as its goal the promulgation and is not aimed at the sale. The marketing and skills of those who play this role concern the dissemination, sale and enhancement of a product or service to as many people as possible.
After making this difference, let’s better analyze these two areas to avoid more confusion and make clarity.
What is Marketing?
The term marketing comes from the English to market, which means to market. But the clearer and more precise definition of "marketing" was given by the American Marketing Association representing marketing professionals in America.
Marketing was the sector whose sole task was to spread, promote and define the price of a product. Over the years this sector has evolved and this definition no longer represents the present.
Today, those who work in this sector are called to create products that have value, making use of creativity and intuition.
Customers and the objectives
The evolution of Marketing has been long and is still ongoing, but between the 1980s and the 1990s the style and orientation changes because it sees a 360-degree approach with the customer.
Part of the work is in relation to the customer because in creating a sales strategy, the first stage sees a great deal of information gathering and sharing of the customer's needs, goals, and expectations. Being able to find common ground allows both parties to work together for the success and sale of new products.
The key words that sum up the work done in this area are: product, price, place and promotion. Each stage of this work sees sales on the one hand and sales mode on the other, when defining the modes and choosing how to present and how to communicate with hypothetical customers, we are touching the working sphere of "communication."
So far we have only talked about Marketing, its history and task, now we know more about the world of communication.
What is Communication?
Business communication refers to "the way businesses and organizations communicate with various internal and external audiences." What is called "corporate communication" touches so many areas and is fundamental to the development of the company.
What does corporate communication deal with?
It is mainly concerned with making products known to the market and relating to potential customers, but not only. Two other important tasks are:
Taking care of brand reputation.
Dealing with brand awareness, which studies the degree to which consumers are aware of a brand and its products.
So corporate communication is the means by which the company communicates with external audiences.
Since its task is broad and general, there is a difference between corporate communication:
1. External: the relationship occurs between the company an external audience for example, hypothetical customers but also companies that compete with you.
2. Internal: the relationship is always between the company and an audience, but in this case, the audience is internal to the company itself. We are talking about employees or the work team, because it is essential to create a communicative environment in order to foster the development of the whole company.
The arrival of the internet and the transformation of the post-modern market
The post-modern market reflects and represents Western society and the changes attached to it. Some of these new attitudes are:
1. Consumerism
2. The importance of brands in consumer decisions
3. The importance of advertising
In today's Western society, consumption defines who we are and "how much" we consume defines our lifestyle. There is a kind of competition toward consumption and the new, people get tired quickly and why not buy the latest iphone model? Or the latest Dior handbag?
We can never feel totally satisfied with what one has and always need to change and stay at the can with the market.
The Internet has fostered these attitudes and social networks foment these behaviors especially in young people, thanks to the emergence in recent years of professional figures called "influencers." The task of these is precisely to "influence" to purchase by making use of marketing and communication stratefgies.
However, it is important to control and filter all stimuli the communicative influences, because a stimulus can lead to the assumption of behaviors harmful to society.
So, let us use the new media and all strategies to encourage outreach and sales but without fomenting any kind of behavior.
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