The Marketing Communications Mix This CTR relates to the material on pp. 422-423. Tools of The Marketing Communications Mix Advertising. Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Advertising often utilizes mass media and may be adapted to take advantages of a given mediums strengths to convey information. Sales Promotion. Sales promotions consist of short-term incentives to encourage purchase of sales of a product or service. Limited time offers or dated coupons are common sales promotions. Public Relations. Public relations is an on-going process of building good relations with the various publics of the company. Key elements in the process are obtaining favorable publicity, building and projecting a good "corporate image," and designing an information support and response team to respond proactively to unfavorable rumors, stories, or events. Personal Selling. Personal selling describes the use of oral presentations in a conversation with one or more prospective buyers for the purposes of making a sale. Personal selling combines product information and benefits with the interpersonal dynamics of the sales person. Good interpersonal relationship skills and effective oral communication skills are needed for personal selling. Direct Marketing. Directed communications with carefully targeted individual consumers to obtain an immediate response.
Setting the Promotion Mix This CTR relates to the material on pp. 433-435. The Nature of Each Promotion Tool Advertising . Advertising’s public nature helps legitimize the product. It also allows marketers to repeat the message to a wide audience. Large-scale campaigns communicate something positive about the seller’s size, popularity, and success. Advertising is also very expressive and can make use of powerful symbols and sensory appeals. Its shortcoming include expense, one-way communication, being impersonal, and lack of control over situational reception. Personal Selling . Personal selling is the most effective promotion tool at certain stages in the buying process, especially in building preferences, convictions, and actions. The personal contact is two-way and allows adaptation to buyer reactions and the establishment of relationships. Personal selling is also the most expensive promotion tool and requires a long-term commitment to build an effective salesforce. Sales Promotion . Sales promotion includes coupons, contests, cents-off deals, premiums, rebates, and other techniques designed to elicit a quick response. Sales promotions usually influence the timing of a purchase rather than the decision to purchase. Public Relations . Public relations includes news stories, features, and reporting on company activities from objective and credible third-party sources. These events are perceived as more believable than company-controlled promotions. Difficulties include the lack of message content, format, and structure control over the public relations event. Further, public relations are generally under used by marketers both strategically and tactically. Direct Marketing. Direct marketing includes such things as direct mail, telemarketing, electronic marketing, online marketing, and others.
Factors in Developing Promotion Mix Strategies This CTR relates to the material on pp. 435-437. Factors in Setting the Promotion Mix Push or Pull Strategy. The promotion mix is also affected by the company's decision on either a push or pull strategy. Push strategies rely on personal selling and sales promotions to encourage intermediaries to take the product and promote, thus "pushing" it through the channel. Pull strategies rely on advertising and consumer promotions to build up demand in the target market of ultimate consumer whose behavior effectively "pulls" the product through the channel. Type of Market. The type market, consumer or industrial, varies the importance of the promotion tools available to marketers. Advertising weighs heavily in consumer markets whereas personal selling plays the greatest role in industrial markets. Buyer Readiness State. The buyer will be more receptive to some promotion tools than others depending upon their particular buyer readiness state. Advertising and public relations help create awareness and increase knowledge. Liking and preference are more affected by personal selling and advertising together. Conviction and purchase come first from advertising and then personal selling to close depending upon the kind of product being considered. Product Life Cycle Stage. The stage in the product life cycle also describes different appropriate promotion mix variations. Introduction utilizes advertising and public relations to build awareness and personal selling to facilitate motivate channel members to carry it. In growth, the need for personal selling diminishes. In maturity, personal selling helps differentiate it again in distribution. In decline, sales promotion may be the most emphasized of the promotion mix tools.