Expert insights: How can marketing communication help organizations succeed?

5 industry experts share insights for businesses and organizations

Your business could have the best products or services in the world, but if no one knows about them, you’ll struggle to survive, much less thrive.

In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive landscape, organizations need more than great products and services to succeed—they need strategic marketing communications that connect them with their target audiences. Whether through digital platforms, traditional media, or other channels, marketing communication has the power to build brand awareness, cultivate customer affinity, and drive business growth.

I asked five industry experts to share their insights on how organizations can leverage marketing communication to achieve success. Here’s what they had to say.

Meet the experts

"Marketing communications empower organizations to succeed by crafting and delivering messages that resonate with their target audience, thereby increasing brand awareness and customer engagement. By strategically utilizing various channels—such as digital media, public relations, and advertising—organizations can effectively promote their offerings and value propositions. An effective communication strategy ensures that messaging is consistent, targeted, and impactful, which is crucial for driving growth, building customer loyalty, and achieving long-term success." 

— Claudio Urrea Tortolero, General Manager, North America at MGC Global Group 

"Marketing communication is a central element of any successful marketing campaign. In the case of higher education—or any other industry where creating affinity is important—content marketing, where a brand disseminates useful and interesting information rather than just placing traditional advertising, is an important form of marketing communication. It's a powerful way to educate stakeholders, such as customers, donors, elected officials and others, about the value of the brand through storytelling and make them more likely to interact with the brand, support it, and recommend it.  At FIU, most of our marketing efforts go into creating quality content that our different target audiences can interact with in person, online, and through earned media." 

— Maydel Santana, Associate Vice President for Communication, Florida International University 

"An effective marketing communications strategy is imperative to business success. Without it, an organization won't be able to grow and scale. Marketing communications help businesses build credibility and trust with their target audiences, create emotional connections to their brand through storytelling, increase visibility for their products and services, and control the message around their positioning in the marketplace."  

— Dr. Ligia Trejo, Vice President, Content and Programming, NBCUniversal Telemundo, and marketing educator 

“Marketing communications helps organizations succeed by giving them the ability and roadmap to align their messaging, target the right audiences, and drive engagement with their customers/clients. In today's world where attention spans are low and people receive information from such a wide variety of sources, a marketing communications plan is essential to helping organizations break through the clutter. Without a cohesive plan, organizations will often waste money and time and be dissatisfied with the results while not recognizing the value that comes with a unified effort that is comprehensive, measurable and goal-oriented.” 

— Josh Merkin, Vice President and Partner at rbb Communications 

"From the external communications perspective, marketing communications can help convey the story of an organization and the value it adds to its target audience. It can also humanize the organization by making it more relatable and appealing to their desired audience."  

— Ana Marquez-Mendoza, Director of Media Relations, American Cancer Society 

Succeeding with marketing communications

An effective marketing communication strategy can be the key to success for organizations and brands. As Tortolero mentioned, it can drive business growth, foster customer loyalty, and help an organization achieve its long-term goals. Without an effective strategy, Dr. Trejo said, business leaders may not be able to scale the business for sustainable growth.

That strategy also needs to be supported by a plan that is comprehensive, measurable, and goal-oriented, Merkin noted. The marketing communication plan can serve as a roadmap to align messaging, audiences and channels.

Guided by an effective strategy and plan, marketing communication, and particularly content marketing, gets the right message in front of the right audience at the right time. It increases visibility. It builds credibility, trust and affinity. And it helps brands connect with their customers and prospects through quality content and storytelling, further increasing engagement, Santana said. This can also help to humanize the organization by making it more relatable, Marquez added.

And in today’s marketing environment, with countless information sources competing for consumers’ attention, as Merkin noted, well-executed, differentiated marketing communication is crucial for helping organizations break through the clutter.