Week 8 – Marketing Principles

PROMOTION – INTEGRATED MARKETING

COMMUNICATIONS AND THE PROMOTION MIX
(Part A)
Promotion Mix
●The Promotion Mix

Communication is strongest through Promotion. Product, price, place, and promotion, must be
coordinated for greatest communication impact.

A company’s total promotion mix – also called its Marketing communications mix (Marcom) consists of
the specific blend of: Advertising, Sales Promotion, Public Relations, Personal Selling, and Direct
Marketing tools that the company uses to pursue its communication and marketing objectives.

●The Promotion Mix Tools

1.Advertising

Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified
sponsor: Broadcast, Print, Internet, Outdoor.

2.Public Relations

Involves building good relations with the company’s various publics by obtaining favorable publicity,
building up a good corporate image, and handling or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories, and events
-> Press releases, sponsorships, special events, web pages.

3.Sales Promotion

The short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service. ->Discounts,
coupons, displays and demonstration of items

4.Personal Selling

The personal presentation by the firm’s sales force for the purpose of making sales and building
customer relationships. -> Sales presentations, trade shows, telemarketing.

5.Direct Marketing

Direct connections with carefully targeted individual consumers to both obtain an immediate response
and cultivate lasting customer relationships – the use of direct mail, the telephone, direct-response
television, email, the Internet, and other tools to communicate directly with specific consumers. ->
Catalog, telemarketing, kiosk, internet, mobile phone, etc.

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●Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is the integration by the company of its communication
channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its brands.

What should companies do in the current landscape?

-Companies must communicate their value propositions to customers, and what they communicate
should not be left to chance. All communications must be planned and blended into carefully integrated
programs.

-Companies now are doing less broadcasting and more narrowcasting that “reach – and have a
conversation with – small clusters of consumers who are consuming not what is force-fed to them, but
exactly what they want”.

-However, the mix of both traditional mass media and new, more-targeted personalized media (digital
tools) should be used.

Marketing Communication Decisions

●Promotion Mix Strategies

Marketers can choose two basic promotion mix strategies:

Push Strategy Pull Strategy

-A push strategy involves “pushing” the product -Using a pull strategy, the producer directs its
through distribution channels to final consumers marketing activities (primarily advertising and
-The producer directs its marketing activities consumer promotions) toward final consumers to

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 (primarily personal selling & trade promotion) induce them to buy the product.
toward channel members to induce them to carry
the product and promote to final consumers

●Factors affecting the promotions mix strategy decision

Companies consider many factors when designing their promotion mix strategies, including: type of
product/ category/ market and the PLC stage.

Business-to-consumer (B-to-C) companies usually “pull” more, putting more of their funds into
advertising, followed by sales promotion, personal selling, and then public relations.

In contrast, business-to-business (B-to-B) marketers tend to “push” more, putting more of their funds
into personal selling, followed by sales promotion, advertising, and public relations.

●Steps in developing Marketing Communication

1. Identify the target audience

2. Determine the communication objectives
3. Design the message
4. Choose the media
5. Select the message source
6. Collecting feedback

1.Identify the target audience

A marketing communicator starts with a clear target audience in mind.

The audience may be potential buyers or current users, those who make the buying decision or those
who influence it. The audience may be individuals, groups, special publics, or the general public.

The target audience will heavily affect the communicator's decisions on what will be said, how it will be
said, when it will be said, where it will be said, and who will say it.

2.Determining the communication objectives

Once the target audience has been defined, the marketers must decide what response they seek.

The marketing communicator needs to know where the target audience now stands and to what stage it
needs to be moved. The target audience maybe in any of six buyer-readiness stages, the stages
consumers normally pass through on their way to purchase, including awareness, knowledge, liking,
preference, conviction, and purchase.

3.Designing a message

Including 3 key considerations:

-Message Content: Rational appeals, Emotional appeals, Moral appeals -> Message Structure:
Conclusion and argument -> Message Format: Headline, color, sounds, etc.

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“Message Content”: An appeal or theme that will produce the desired response. It includes 3 main
appeals:

+Rational appeal relates to the audience’s self-interest. Messages could show a product’s
quality, economy, value or performance.

+Emotional appeal is an attempt to stir up positive or negative emotions to motivate a purchase.

Emotional appeal ranges from love, joy and humor to sexual, fear and guilt.

+Moral appeal is directed at the audience’s sense of right and proper. It is often used to urge
people to support social causes such as environmental care.

-> Advertising appeals should have three characteristics:

They should be meaningful

Appeals should be believable

Appeals should be distinctive

“Message Structure”

3 structure issues:

+Whether to draw conclusion or leave it to audience

+Whether to present the strongest argument first or last

+Whether to present a one-sided argument or a two-sided argument. One-sided argument is

more popularly used.

“Message Format”: a strong format is needed for any message. It includes headline, copy, illustration
and color (print ad). It includes words, sounds and voices (radio ad). TVC includes all of these factors plus
body languages.

4.Choosing Media

a) Personal Communication Channels

Channels through which two or more people communicate directly with each other, including face to
face, on the phone, through mail or email, or even through an Internet “chat”

Is suitable for products that are expensive, risky or has high-involvement purchase decision. High-
involvement purchase occurs when the consumers spend a lot of time, efforts and/or finance to buy or
make decision to buy the product.

Is effective because it allows personal addressing and feedback.

Channels of personal communication:

-Company’s control (salespeople, opinion leaders, buzz marketing): Opinion leaders are people within a
reference group who, because of their special skills, knowledge, personality, or other characteristics;

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exerts social influence on others; Buzz marketing involves cultivating opinion leaders and getting them
to spread information about a product or service to others in their communities

-Independent experts

-Word-of-mouth: is very crucial because “90% of customers trust “recommendations from consumers”.

b) Non-personal Communication channels

Media that carry messages without personal contact or feedback, including major media, atmospheres,
and events

Major media include:

-Print media (newspaper, magazines, direct-mail)

-Broadcast media (radio, television)

-Display media (billboards, signs, posters)

-Online media (Internet, website, social networks)

-Electronic devices & digital (mobile phone, tablet)

5.Selecting the message source

The message’s impact on the target audience is affected by how the audience views the communicator.
Message delivered by highly credible sources are more persuasive. (Professionals & experts, Celebrities)

6.Collecting feedback

Involves the communicator understanding the effect on the target audience by measuring behavior
resulting from the message they sent.

This involves asking the target audience members whether they remember the message, how many
times they saw it, what points they recall, how they felt about the message, and their past and present
attitudes toward the product and company.

Promotion Mix Tools in details

●Advertising

Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by
an identified sponsor.

Advertising involves communicating the company’s or brand’s value proposition by using paid media to
inform, persuade, and remind consumers about the brand.

●Major advertising Decisions

Step 1: Setting Advertising Objectives

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An advertising objective is a specific communication task to be accomplished with a specific target
audience during a specific period of time.

Advertising objectives should be based on past decisions about the target market, positioning, and the
marketing mix, which define the job that advertising must do in the total marketing program.

Advertising’s goal is to move consumers through the buyer-readiness stages. Advertising objectives can
be classified by primary purpose: Inform, Persuade or Remind.

+Informative advertising is used heavily when introducing a new product category

+Persuasive advertising becomes more important as competition increases. Some persuasive

advertising has become comparative advertising, in which a company directly or indirectly
compares its brand with one or more other brands.

+Reminder advertising is important for mature products - it helps to maintain customer

relationships and keep consumers thinking about the product.

Step 2: Setting the advertising budget

Factors to consider when setting the budget for advertising:

-Product life-cycle stage

+New products require larger budgets

+Mature brands require lower budgets

-Market share

+Building or taking market share requires larger budgets

+Markets with heavy competition or high advertising clutter require larger budgets

+Undifferentiated brands require larger budgets

Step 3: Developing advertising strategy

The strategy by which the company accomplishes its advertising objectives. It consists of two major
elements: creating advertising messages and selecting advertising media.

1.Creating advertising messages

-Breaking through the clutter: Today’s consumers can choose what they watch and don’t watch.
Increasingly, they are choosing not to watch ads.

-Message and Content Strategy:

+Plan a message strategy: to decide what general message will be communicated to consumers.
Identifies consumer benefits, experiences or reasons to buy/use our products or services.

+Develop a compelling creative concept or a “big idea”: is the compelling “big idea” that will
bring the advertising message strategy to life in a distinctive and memorable way. The creative
concept will guide the choice of specific appeals to be used in an advertising campaign.

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-Message Execution: is when the advertiser turns the big idea into an actual ad execution that will
capture the target market’s attention and interest. The creative team must find the best approach, style,
tone, words, and format for executing the message.

2. Selecting advertising media

-Deciding on Reach, Frequency, and Impact

+Reach is a measure of the percentage of people in the target market who are exposed to the
ad campaign during a given period of time.

+Frequency is a measure of how many times the average person in the target market is exposed
to the message.

+Media Impact is the qualitative value of a message exposure through a given medium. One
medium may be more or less believable than the other.

-Choosing Among Major Media Types

+Major media types: television, newspapers, direct mail, magazines, radio, outdoor, and the
Internet.

+Each medium has advantages and limitations. Media planners want to choose media that will
effectively and efficiently present the advertising message to target customers. Thus, they must
consider each medium’s impact, message effectiveness, and cost.

-Selecting Specific Media Vehicles Among Major Media Types:

+TV: which channel, which programs, which TV show

+Magazines: Her World, OK, Hello, Vogue, Bazzar, ESPN, Teenagers, etc.

+Radio: which station, which show: FM 99.9, FM 104.5 Xone FM

+Instagram/Facebook: of which celebrities or Fan page?

-Deciding on Media Timing

+Seasonality

+Pattern of the advertising: Continuity (scheduling within a given period), Pulsing (scheduling
unevenly within a given period)

Step 4: Evaluating advertising effectiveness and return on advertising investment

Communication effects indicate whether the ad and media are communicating the ad message well and
should be tested before or after the ad runs.

Sales and profit effects compare past sales and profits with past expenditures or through experiments

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