How To Reach Consumers Today

Tuck professor Kevin Lane Keller shares his latest research findings on how to use various forms of communication to reach consumers.

At the same time, consumers’ attention is now divided among many channels, and their attention span in each one is short. All of this creates an important question for businesses who want to get their marketing messages out: Which communication channels should they use?

Tuck marketing professor Kevin Lane Keller, the E.B. Osborn Professor of Marketing, has been studying this question with his colleague Rajeev Batra, of the Ross School of Business, and they have recently published a paper in the Journal of Marketing that shares some valuable takeaways. The paper is titled “Integrating Marketing Communications: New Findings, New Lessons, and New Ideas.”

With the goal of crafting a well-integrated marketing communications (IMC) plan, Keller and Batra suggest that marketers employ a set of two communication models. 1. A “bottom-up” communications matching model that identifies the communication options with the greatest ability to satisfy consumers’ brand-related information needs at different stages of the consumer decision journey. 2. A “top-down” communications optimization model that helps marketers evaluate the overall design or make-up of an IMC program.

Read a synopsis of the study and its key findings on The American Marketing Association website.