Marketing communications (marcom) includes customer-facing materials such as brochures, press releases, websites, and trade show presentations. The closeness of marcom planning to the customer makes it one of the most important activities that a company undertakes. Carefully written marcom plans:* Have your company speak with one voice across a broad number of products, regions, and customer interactions.* Enable diverse teams of people to create integrated communications vehicles.* Help your messages rise above the noise of the market and consistently resonate with their target audience.* They give you better results in terms of spending time and money. Study first, then decide. The Marcom plans are the confluence of substantial research and thoughtful decision-making. Build effectiveness by deeply understanding:* Target audience profiles Who are your existing and potential customers? What is the best way to communicate with them?* Buying, selling and communication processes How do your customers prefer to buy? How are you set up to sell? Which communications best facilitate buying and selling? Armed with a solid understanding of the terrain, you then need to make a series of decisions:* Objectives What do you want to happen as a result of your marcom activities? What customer behaviors do you hope to inspire?* Messages What do you want customers to know?* Vehicles Which communications vehicles best convey your messages?* Budget and planning How much does it cost to develop these vehicles? What is your budget? When should the vehicles be released? You also need to decide the scope of the plan. Marcom plans can be focused at the product level, product line level, or corporate level (e.g., company or brand image), or any combination of the three. The greater the focus, the less specific the elements of the plan will be. For more details, see the table below. Marcom Plan Objective Target Audience Profiling Knowing your customer applies to virtually every marketing activity and is doubly true for Marcom planning. First, learn about the specific demographics and psychographics of your target audience, then take the time to understand:* How customers prefer to receive information about the type of offers.