The 4C’s of Effective Marketing Communications

Effective marketing communications has four characteristics: it is concise, clear, credible and compelling.

Concise (to the point), clear (understandable) and credible (believable) are essential characteristics of persuasive communications. And if your only purpose is to inform or convince, these three characteristics may be sufficient. However, marketing communications presupposes that you want your audience to act predictably in response to information. To achieve this goal, communications also must be compelling.

Furthermore, these four characteristics are interdependent, hierarchical and cumulative in effect.

Simply put, it is impossible for information to be:

1. Understandable if it is not direct and to the point,
2. Believable if it is not understandable, and
3. Compelling if it is not believable.

Comments

[F. Beafore]

Bruce....very professional. Nice job and usefull articles.........FB