Marketing communication is an effective way of conveying a company’s message to its customers about its brand, products and services. The basic marketing communication process involves the following constituents: Sender, Encoding, Transfer Mechanism, Feedback, Response and Decoding.
• The SENDER is usually the company/firm that produces the product.
• ENCODING is communicating the message in comprehensible terms for the customer.
• TRANSFER MECHANISM is the medium used to “transfer the message”.
• DECODING is the way a customer interprets the message.
• RESPONSE is the reaction of the customer on the message.
• FEEDBACK is a measure of how successful the advertising campaign was.
Basic Model of Communication
1. Sender – A sender is also referred to as a source and is the one who has a message to convey. For example, a company or a brand manager can be considered as a Sender. In a marketing process, it is important to ensure that the source or the sender is realistic and trustworthy. Also, source can be direct or indirect.
2. Encode – The sender encodes ideas into a message. A brand manager, for example, decides to advertise a new product.
3. Message – Based on the ideas given by the sender, the marketer creates an effective message that is clear and effective enough to achieve the communication objectives.
4. Receiver – The receiver is the person or group of people with whom the sender tries to communicate and share the message. For example, customers are the receivers for a company.
5. Decode – On receiving the message from the sender, the receiver decodes it. It I important here that the sender and the receiver have common experiences in order to decode the message at the receiver’s end as it was intended to be.
6. Feedback – Feedback is considered as examining and evaluating how precisely the intended message is being received by the receiver. Marketing research can be a way to collect feedback from the receivers.
Essentially, it involves asking receivers if they have seen the message, whether they remember the message, and their attitude towards the message (product).
