The Key to Successful Marketing Communications There are a lot of people that do not know the difference between Marketing and Advertising. Many people assume they are the same thing, but they are not. Marketing is deciding what you are going to say; Advertising is saying it. In my corporate life, I worked in Marketing for a long time. One of the things I learned was that Marketing should know the marketplace and understand their customers. Marketing communication should reflect this understanding. Moreover, every campaign, script, web page, and tweet should have a purpose, something that you are hoping the communication will cause people to do. In other words, the marketing communications in your advertising should show that you know who you are saying it to—and why.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses the fundamentals of Marketing communications through advertising and how it affects the Customer Experience. More importantly, we share the three general goals of marketing and how to do them right, as well as how it looks when you get it wrong. One of the reasons these things are essential is because when you advertise, you communicate what a customer can expect. It is your brand promise, your value proposition. If you get it wrong, the Customer Experience will fall short of the expectations you set, which does not do your Customer Experience Strategy any favors. When crafting your Customer Marketing Strategy, you need to have an idea of who you want to talk to and why. You should know what those people want and what they value. You also have to understand the obstacles keeping them from being a customer right now. Then, when you advertise, you address all of these issues. Moreover, you tie it to the overall Customer Marketing Strategy so that you stay on brand and set the proper customer expectations. Furthermore, advertising should have a specific action you want to evoke, as well. All of these things are fundamentals of Marketing, or what I sometimes call, “a blinding flash of the bloody obvious.” That said, you might be surprised how often you learn that an organization does not have a clue about any of that when they choose, launch, and execute a marketing campaign. In this episode, we review the basics of marketing communications. We also discuss how you can avoid having a brilliant campaign that is wildly successful at getting attention but fails to move the needle for your bottom line.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.