Marketing communication tools are a complex and perplexing process that uses several tools to help you generate brand awareness and serves as the fulcrum for your sales efforts. These tools are avenues and diversified programs that help reach out to the desired audience most effectively. However, you need not be proficient in all of them as you can consult marketing and communication firms for this endeavor.

Here are the different marketing communications tools that you should know.

Advertising

Among the most effective communication tools of marketing is advertising. It can be paid and unpaid. Now, in the context of digital and intern0et marketing, it includes SEO and PPC. What is unique about advertising is that it is wide-reaching and is excellent for propelling the revenue streams for startups and small-scale businesses. It is especially effective for those dry on funding. Advertising caters to above-the-line marketing, making it ideal for brands with less exposure or small target audiences.

Sales Promotion

It caters to promoting your products, services, and solutions. The idea encourages direct interactions with your customers. Hence, sales promotion is all about making your audiences feel cared for and heard. Using this tool, you can endorse your products and services directly to consumers. It is essential for garnering brand loyalty and generating lifetime value from customers. Free samples, testers and tasters, gift vouchers, discounts, and deals such as cashback offers are some of the profound examples of sales promotions.

Email Marketing

Another great tactic to interact with prospects and generate leads is email marketing. It helps build a direct customer base to who you can reach out with relevant messaging. By tapping on their inbox, a company can create a direct relationship, which can be leveraged for future sales. Therefore, it is an excellent way to fuel traffic to your company website and raise brand awareness.

Newsletter subscription

An ancillary of email marketing, newsletters help you send personalized (or gated) content right into their inboxes. It works as an excellent cue for redirecting the prospects towards the sales funnel pages and acts as an effective option for driving brand engagement.

Public Relations (PR)

PR is a brilliant way for improving or revamping your brand image and reputation in the market. The term Public Relations involves maintaining relationships with influential people for attaining business growth. Now, with that said, affiliate and influencer marketing are excellent public relations tools to communicate with the target audience.

However, the trick is to use the avenue at the right time and with the appropriate people. Your sales numbers will grow exponentially from here on. What is unique about this one is that you need not spend highly on public PR campaigns. It is a reliable tool to use when you are short on funds since publicity is not the only portion of PR.

Social Media

The standout aspect of social media is that everyone is on it. So, it already opens your business to an extensive base of prospects and target audience members. Also, it allows you to get creative, use humor and wit, and change the narrative. It is especially effective when your brand faces negative publicity or a catastrophe. A standout aspect of social media is that you can promote your products and services using videos (including UGC or User-Generated Content), ads (SEO and PPC), photos, and other types of content. So get innovative and make it count.

Mobile applications

Mobile phones are practically indispensable today. They give the competitive edge to communicate with the target audience from anywhere and at any time. Therefore, an excellent way to get mobile marketing right is to create a mobile application for your brand. However, if your audiences are to make purchases through their mobile phones, you need to integrate the application with payment gateways. Nonetheless, the tool aids in reaching out to an extensive customer base.

Podcasts

Podcasts are another way of driving engagement with the target audience. The nature of the medium is that it is interactively and informatively visual. Podcasts are compelling when shot in video format. Secondly, it involves discussions and debates about new topics and trends, informing and educating the public about any new development or innovation in the field. Podcasts essentially keep your viewers (and listeners) engaged for a prolonged period, thus increasing brand exposure.

Meme marketing

Humour and wit diffuse things and garner tremendous attention. That is the power of memes today. Having emerged as the only content form as permanent over the years, over 60 percent of the 3 billion social media users communicate using memes. If you want to get the word out instantly, memes to the rescue.

Memes are unique as they create instant relatability and recall. They typically apply across contexts and situations. One meme has many meanings as it involves a lot of subtexts. From a marketing perspective, memes are cheap, shareable, and are a take on the current trends. While regular marketing graphics offer 5 percent traction on social media platforms, memes provide around 60 percent.

Conclusion

Each of these marketing communications tools is powerful and effective. However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. To make the most of your marketing communications, you should integrate multiple avenues and subscribe to an omnichannel communications strategy.