If you are tasked with writing about marketing communications, you have to decide whether you want to focus on a specific type of marketing, or a specific type of communication method to really reach your consumers, or even a type of leadership which is conducive to good communication or good marketing.
Below are some facts to help you along the writing path.
- Figuring out how to manage marketing freelancers can be difficult, especially if your team is compiled of contributors from around the world. Part of the appeal of managing a freelance staff is the flexibility it affords and the cost savings pertaining to costs which would otherwise be incurred housing staff in a physical office. But this is not to say that managing freelancing staff is without its struggles.
- Some people utilize micromanagement, especially when they work with freelancers because the distance causes a fear regarding loss of control. Micro management causes so much attention to detail that it creates direct failure. It also leeches time otherwise devoted to responsibilities. When marketing freelancers make decisions on their own, it can cause irritation.
- A micro managing boss will ask for detailed reports on anything and everything that the marketing freelancers do and this will cloud overall goals and restrict the flow of information. The pathologies associated with this style include denial and narcissism, but perhaps more important is the overall doubt this management style brings. When a boss doubts their freelancers’ abilities and interferes on a regular basis, it stiffens creative abilities and inhibits working relationships. This is perhaps even more prominent in the world of freelance management because in life of a single board meeting or a face to face conversation where all project details are discussed, each detail of a project would otherwise be sent in an individual email or message, clogging up an inbox and appearing overbearing. The creation of this strict and overbearing work atmosphere causes marketing freelancers to leave.
- Not offering any oversight means a boss is failing to fulfill their role. They might be seen as “caring” by the marketing freelancers, someone interested in their daily lives and feelings, but this nice attitude is typically avoidant too and makes it difficult at best to carry on a legitimate conversation. By not assuming the responsibilities and roles of a boss, it threatens the success of the remote staff. This level of poor management causes simple errors, unintentional mistakes, which go unnoticed. When bosses attempt to manage their freelancers in this fashion, they avoid all confrontation or difficult discussions and never properly lead.
- Marketing communications are best done in the way of the transformational business leader who can adequately lead a group of freelance employees. This is a leader who is strict, but not too extreme, and who is also lenient and caring but not to the point that it interferes with productivity. This is a boss who inspires freelancers with the company vision of development and has clear goals established to meet all business ends. This form of management encourages and motivates all remote freelancers without inhibiting them or being overbearing.
- Managing a staff remotely can be made easier with the proper tools. For example: rather than emailing freelancers every hour and requiring detailed reports that amount to micromanagement, project management tools make it easy to add or assign tasks to freelance team members as those tasks arise. These tools convert traditional business settings into virtual ones which allow conversations, documents, and tags to be maintained individually for each project/project heading. This alleviates the need for micromanagement as it offers clear updates as soon as each person logs in. Other beneficial tools for the transformational leader include features that generate progress reports as necessary and alleviate the need for time wasting meetings. They also allow for automatic reminders to be sent to all freelancers.
- Transactional Leadership involves the idea of an exchange between manager and his subordinates: the employee is paid commiserate amounts of money in exchange for his co-operation and compliance. This would mean that communications with marketing staff would empower the manager to discipline his subordinates for failing to comply or underperforming. While at the outset, this style of leadership sounds excessively control oriented, the benefits to this style stem from the fact that it clarifies everyone’s purpose, providing a certain unity of vision. In addition, since it evaluates primarily on the basis of performance, ambitious over performing employees, it can be rewarded extra compensation, thus reinforcing that behavior. Downsides to this leadership are that it can stifle employees leading to low staff retention rates. It is focused on short-term tasks and can stifle creativity. While counter-productive in creative or knowledge-based industries, it may come handy in other situations.
- Bureaucratic Leadership is characterized by managers who work by the book, rigorously following rules, while also encouraging their marketing subordinates to do the same in all professional communication. This style of leadership is effective, even mandatory in high safety risk environments (such as chemical and manufacturing plants) and where financial transactions involving large sums of money may be involved. Its downside however, is that it can be very constrictive in environments that seek to foster creativity and enterprise, since people are rewarded for their conformance rather than their talents or expertise.
- Proponents of the servant leadership marketing communication model suggest that servant leadership is a good way to get ahead, considering how ethics and values play an increasingly important role in businesses. It leads to a healthy corporate culture and highly motivated employees. However, servant leaders may get overshadowed by leaders who employ more aggressive leadership schemes. This form of leadership is also suited to environments that require quick responses to contingencies. This type of leadership is most effective in scenarios that involve elected leadership, such as teams, committees and community organizations.
- Autocratic leadership and communication is effective in low skilled industries, where a large number of unskilled laborers perform an allotted task, supervised by an autocratic management. It is also effective in the military, where the generals have to make a series of complex strategic decisions letting the soldiers focus on carrying out the tasks allotted to them.
We hope that these facts will become a solid foundation for your marketing communications classification essay. Don’t forget to see our 20 varied topics list and sample essay below along with the guide on how to write one. Are you ready to hire an essay writer to have your classification paper written from scratch? Try our writing service now!
References:
Kotler, F. Keller K, L. Framework for Marketing Management 5th Edition by Prentice Hall March 14th 2011
Belch, George E, and Michael A Belch. Advertising And Promotion. Boston, Mass.: Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2001. Print.
Blythe, Jim. Marketing Communications. Harlow, England: Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2000. Print.
Pelsmacker, Patrick de, Maggie Geuens, and Joeri van den Bergh. Marketing Communications. New York: Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2001. Print.
Schultz, Don E, Stanley I Tannenbaum, and Robert F Lauterborn. Integrated Marketing Communications. Lincolnwood, Ill., USA: NTC Business Books, 1993. Print.
Smith, P. R, and Ze Zook. Marketing Communications. London: Kogan Page, 2011. Print.
Wood, Gill. Marketing Communications. Oxford: Elsevier, 2004. Print.