Introduction
Marketing and advertising have been more technical and complex as many advertising companies compete to attract consumers to the products they are advertising.
Although MATS is large company operating in three continents, it aims to reach the levels of other international marketing and advertising companies such as Hale! Marketing Communications Inc. based in Vancouver, Canada, Morton Marketing based in Michigan and Virtual Sales Limited in the UK. All the companies offer several marketing and advertising services and have helped many companies to successfully position their products in the market.
Reasons for being role models
Hale!Marketing Communications Inc. acquired the most modern technologies from Convedia which according to Infonetics Research, is the market leader in media server products. It also has robotic software for re-messaging as well as webinars for integrated marketing.
It helps companies develop websites, search engine optimization for customers, develops advertising programs and also has advanced direct mail programs (Marketing Communications Inc., 2010). Morton Marketing on the other hand helps companies develop websites and improve their web strategies and even enabling customers to use the search engines on the websites to learn more about the company and its products.
It also has a more established email-marketing, social marketing; and also manages web hosting among other services (Morton Marketing, 2011). Virtual Sales Limited offers several key services which include email marketing services, telemarketing, telesales, channel sales and development, presentation skills as well as business pitching coaching among others. It has helped many companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
One factor that may make MATS emulate Virtual Sales Limited is the high profile companies which have been able to acquire its services. The company has been retained by Microsoft, Red Hat Europe, Kogo, Meridio as well as Express Metrix among many others (Virtual Sales Limited, 2007). This shows the company’s quality service and diversity in marketing and advertising.
Communication Channels for the marketing and advertising companies
The internet and the websites have become the most popular communication channels for media companies. Hale! Marketing Communications Inc., Morton Marketing and Virtual limited all use the internet for email marketing and communication to customers and employees.
They also use websites to advertise and market companies and their products and services. The websites have provided a platform for international audience. They update the websites to inform their customers of the latest products they are advertising as well as the employees on the new programs and the activities of the company and the projects they are involved in. This keeps them in line or ahead of their international competitors.
Hale! Marketing Communications Inc. uses direct mail to customers and employees, advertisements through the websites and other forms of media, face-to-face meetings with customers, direct phone calls and trade shows. It also uses robot application software to enhance its advertisements and communication to its audience.
Morton Marketing being an expert in iPhone, iPad and Droid mobile phone developer uses various communication channels which include direct phone calls, the website as well as both social marketing and email marketing to reach employees.
Morton Marketing has a wall in twitter. It also uses emails to communicate to employees. Virtual Sales Limited also uses the above communication channels as well as teleconferencing and telemarketing, focus groups and face to face meetings and seminars. They set appointments to ensure that they meet their targeted customers face-to-face.
Strategies for effective communication with employees
Email marketing which is employed by all these companies including MATS should be advanced in MATS to enhance better communication between the company and its employees as well as among the employees. Email communication could be used to keep constant contact with the employees. Virtual Sales Limited for example, uses email marketing to communicate e-newsletter or to let both the customers and employees know what is knew in terms of products and services.
The company could also use this service to source email data, design email templates before sending them to employees. Other very important forms of communication that could be applied by MATS are videoconferencing, teleconferencing, seminars as well as face-to-face meetings.
Videoconferencing and teleconferencing would provide the fastest communication considering that the employees work from different places, however, MATS has to make the communications language specific to the employees. Vision robotics technique applied by Hale! Marketing Communications Inc. should be adopted to improve communications as you only need to click to communicate a different message.
Face-to-face communication could be improved by involving employees in seminars, focus groups as well as training them through videoconferencing so that they really know how to go about their face-to-face communication with the customers. These would provide them with chance to learn better presentation skills (Chaney & Martin, 2000).
The employees at MATS should be educated on the need to mind culture and language while communicating with customers and even other employees. Technical accuracy as well as perfect translation is not enough to ensure excellent communication. It is essential that the company and the employees understand how the people in the target market use their language so as to avoid the marketing blunders that some multinational corporations have always made.
For example, the slogan; “Finger-licking good usually used by the Kentucky Fried Chicken, means eat your fingers off in Chinese. MATS should therefore translate the information on their website in most major languages in the regions it operates in which includes English, French, Spanish, German, Latino so as to avoid misunderstanding and to enhance the use of the search engine in different languages.
Language translation problems
Meanings of words or phrases can be lost during translation especially when the words in one language present different meaning in another language. It is also possible to change meanings of words through pronunciation. Individuals not familiar with the language are likely to pronounce words differently, thereby giving a different meaning to the intended meaning.
It would therefore be wise for MATS to ensure that they understand how languages are used by people from different regions. Besides, it is important to assign employees to market and advertise in languages they best understand. This will reduce problems of misunderstanding created by inaccurate translations through emails.
Conclusion
Advertising and marketing is very complex especially in the information age where online marketing and communication have become the most popular means of communication.
It is therefore essential that MATS employ more established companies that apply the same technologies as well as companies providing reknown media server services to improve its system as well as the efficiency of its employees. Employees should be deployed to work and relate with customers they better understand their language and they can communicate just like the locals.
Reference List
Chaney, L. & Martin, J. (2000) Intercultural Business Communications. New York: Prentice-Hall.
Marketing Communications Inc. (2010). We are a technology company. Retrieved from https://www.halemarketing.com/
Morton Marketing, 2011.Client success. Retrieved from http://www.mortonmarketing.com/
Virtual Sales Limited. (2007). Sales driven. Retrieved from https://www.virtual-sales.com/