Marketing Communication: Channels and Promotion

Tools

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"Marketing communications are the means by which firms attempt to inform, persuade, and remind
consumers - directly, or indirectly - about the products and brands that they sell." (Kotler and Keller)

Personal and nonpersonal communication channels can be used for marketing communications.
Within both of them there are many subchannels. The marketing communications mix is presented as
mix of eight major modes or types of communication alternatives by Kotler and Keller in the 13
Edition.
1. Advertising
2. Sales promotion
3. Events and experiences
4. Public relations and publicity
5. Direct marketing
6. Interactive marketing
7. Word-of-mouth marketing
8. Personal selling

Advertisement - Is the only Way?

Personal Communication Channels

Personal communication is communication between two or more

persons with a specific person communication with others. The
message emanates from a specific person. It can be done face to
face, or by a person to audience, over telephone, or through post
or couriers or through emails or through mobile messages.

The personal communications in the case of marketing can also be

categorized as communications from advocate, expert and social
contacts. The company salespersons’ communication to customers
is communication from advocates of the product.
An independent expert communicating to prospective buyers about the merits of the product is
classified as expert communication. A neighbor saying good things about a brand is social channel of
communication.

Companies take various steps to stimulate personal communications about their products and brands.

1. They identify influential individuals and devote extra effort on them.

2. Create opinion leaders by supplying possible opinion leaders with the product on attractive terms.
3. Use influential or believable people in testimonial advertising.
4. Develop word of mouth publicity by requesting satisfied clients to promote their product among
their friends.
5. Establish online discussion groups and communities

Nonpersonal Communication Channels

They include media, atmospheres, and events.

Media channels include print media (newspaper, magazines, souvenirs, proceedings of conferences),
broadcast media (radio, television), display media (billboards, signs, posters) and electronic media
(audiotape, videotape, videodisk, CD-ROM).

Atmosphere is what firms create in their office environment. The office interiors and exteriors have a
meaning to the potential buyers.

Events are occurrences designed to communicate particular messages to target audiences or

audiences. Company arranged news conferences, opening ceremonies of various kinds, and
sponsorships of various events come under event communications channels.

Communication through mass media stimulates personal communication channels.

The Promotional Tools
The characteristics of various promotional tools are as follows:

Advertising
Advertising is a public mode of communication. Because it is communicated simultaneously to large
number of people and people know that the same communication is going to many people, they feel
their motives for buying are understood by the advertiser.

Advertising messages can be repeated number of times. Buyers also can compare advertisements of
various companies selling the same product. The media offers the facility to add color, sound etc. to
the message and dramatize the message. But advertising cannot have dialogue with the people.
People may not see and pay attention to the advertisement.

Advertising is an efficient way to reach geographically dispersed potential buyers at a low cost per
exposure.

Advertising has two recent variants. Advertorials are offer editorial content and while it is paid for by
the advertiser and it will be difficult for the reader to easily make out that it is an advertisement.
Similarly infomercials are TV programs that are meant for promoting the products of the company.
They discuss the working of the product, benefits of the products, and user experience etc. and they
may beam the message to buy the product and the address to be contacted.

Sales promotion
Sales promotion tools like coupons, contests, premiums, and the like act as communication medium
and also promote sales.

They gain attention and provide information that may lead the consumer to the product. They include
a distinct invitation to the consumer to do the transaction in a short period of time.

Public relations and publicity

News stories and feature articles are more authentic and credible than advertisements to readers. The
articles act as testimonials. The message gets through to the potential buyers as news and they may
not turn away from it as they turn away from the advertisements.

Personal selling
Personal selling as a communicative channel involves a live, immediate, and interactive relationship
between persons. Personal selling leads to relationships. The listener feels obligated to respond to the
salesman at least with a polite “thank you.”

Direct Marketing
The alternatives are direct mail, Email, and telemarketing. In these cases the message is addressed to
a specific person. The message can be customized. Even though mailing folders and email are
normally standardized to gain efficiency. The message can be up to date.  In case of telemarketing,
message can be altered depending on the response. In the case of other alternatives subsequent
communication can be altered depending on the response.  

Events and Experiences

They include sponsorships of sports, arts, entertainment and cause events as well as activities that
create novel interactions of consumers with product or brand. An example of experience can be
providing airconditioned bus ride to potential consumers to make them excited about buying an
airconditioner. Another example is internet companies providing internet at airports for free use by
travellers.

Philip Kotler, Marketing Management (Main text for revision and article)

Social Media[edit]
Social commercials market share is rising, thanks to services like YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo.
According to a 2011 study, "88% of all companies that have conducted social media advertising are
satisfied with it." [2] Indeed, social commercials are steadily permeating our everyday lives, in the
forms of billboards, apps, TV, and even print media. There is a large increase of businesses using
video via YouTube for local business pages such as Google Local (formerly known as Google
Places) which was integrated as part of the Google Plus network in 2010.

Email[edit]
Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. In its
broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email
marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or
donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. Email marketing can be done to
either sold lists or a current customer database. Broadly, the term is usually used to refer to sending
email messages with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or
previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers
or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and adding advertisements to
email messages sent by other companies to their customers.

In-Product Communication[edit]
Another channel for direct digital marketing is in-product communication (also: in-product marketing),
which delivers marketing content directly to a user's internet-connected device or software
application. In-product marketing content is often very similar to that of email marketing campaigns,
but the segmentation and delivery is more targeted. Because email has become a standard tool in
the digital marketing toolkit, the email channel often is overloaded and overused, leading to much
lower open rates, lower engagement rates, lower click-through rates (CTR), and lower conversion
rates. The rise of internet-connected (IOT) devices is enabling a growing number of consumer
products manufacturers to take advantage of this channel of marketing communications, to
supplement other digital marketing channels.

Branding[edit]
In branding, every opportunity to impress the organization's (or the individual's) brand upon the
customer is called a brand touch point (or brand contact point.) Such examples include everything
from TV and other media advertisements, event sponsorships, webinars, and personal selling to
even product packaging. Thus, every experiential opportunity that an organization creates for its
stakeholders or customers is a brand touch point. Hence, it is vitally important for brand strategists
and managers to survey all of their organization's brand touch points and control for the
stakeholder's or customer's experience. Marketing communications, as a vehicle of an organization's
brand management, is concerned with the promotion of an organization's brand, product(s) and/or
service(s) to stakeholders and prospective customers through these touch points.

TYPES OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

There are four types of marketing communication, including advertising, public relations, and sales promotions.

Advertising
Being the most powerful device of marketing communication, advertising offers an extended reach to audience
and high frequency of message delivery. Since this type of marketing communication is expensive, you must
consider to make the most of it. Try to use different kinds of advertising media to approach different kinds of
people.

Set adequate budget for advertising; whether you are going to make the advertising idea yourself or rely on the
advertising company. Making your own advertisement—suppose you have a great team for that—will be less
costly yet you risk a poor marketing communication to happen. Advertising companies may charge you a lot of
money but the cost will worth the effect, though.

Public Relations
The second type of marketing communication is public relations. PR will help create brand awareness among
the customers in more subtle way. This aspect is what makes Public Relations different from advertising. While
advertising promotes products in aggressive way, self serving and subjective, PR communicates the product in
much softer way and more objective. In addition, PR mentioning your product is probably the only type of
marketing communication which is free of charge.
Sales Promotion
Discounts are the most favorite type of sales promotion. There are many customers who make spontaneous
buying decision at the time of sale. Seeing this fact you might start to think, how to make use of this situation.

Many marketers decide to put some devices of marketing communication in the place where the discount
program occurs. This will increase the possibility of the customers to see the messages. The devices used in
this strategy may include shelf talkers, overhead signs, window signs, and at cetera.

Online Media
Many companies use online media as their marketing communication device. This could be done by
purchasing attractive advertisement and place it on promising locations such as online newspapers and
magazines. To attract even more audience, they usually place ads with an impressive message on social
media such as Facebook or some personal blogs.

Advertising may work tremendously well since it brings direct message about the product to customers.
Depending on the selected type of media, advertising can reach thousands of future buyers around the world.
However, in case it is too expensive, you may rely on other types of marketing communication.

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