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E-Marketing

Marketing Communications
Marketing Communications is the way that marketers communicate information about their product or service to their target audience. Marketing Communications, also called the Marketing Mix is usually described as the 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place and Promotion). David Pickton (2004) describes Marketing Communications as “all the promotional elements of the marketing mix which involve the communications between the organisation and its target audiences on all matters that affect marketing performance.”

Marketing communications is a management process through which an organisation enters into a dialog with its various audiences. To accomplish this, the organisation develops, presents and evaluates a series of messages to identified stakeholder groups. The objective of this process is to position the organisation or its service in the mind of the target audience. This seeks to encourage the target audience to perceive and experience that organisation and its services as solutions to their current and future dilemmas. (Fill, 1999)

Over the last 60 years the process of marketing has developed into a well defined discipline. In the 1950’s the launch of television developed mass marketing techniques. In the last decade organisations saw changes that caused a redefinition of the role and concept of marketing. Customer became more sophisticated and demanding, markets became global and payment and distribution channels became virtualised. (O’Connor, 1998)

In the case of a museum or heritage attraction such as PHD, marketing communications acts as a collection of marketing activities that they combine and put into action in order to produce the desired response from their target audience. Whilst talking about museum marketing Rebecca Leet (2006) explains that “what people want has a great deal to do with what they purchase - with their money, their time, their energy, or their attention. Whether you're selling a commercial product or a...