CHAPTER SEVEN

INTEGRATED MARKETING
COMMUNICATION/PROMOTION
STRATEGIES
 7.0.Learning Goals
Up on the completion of this unit a student will
able to
 Define the roles of marketing mix elements
 Describe the types of promotion mix elements
 Discuss the objectives of marketing mix
elements
 7.1. Introduction
 Modern marketing calls for more than just developing a
good product, pricing it attractively, and making it
available to target customers.
 Companies must also communicate with current and
prospective customers.
 For most companies, the question is not whether to
communicate, but how much to spend and in what ways.
 Successful companies are asking not only ―How can we
reach our customers?‖ but, in a break from the past, are
also asking ―How can our customers reach us?‖
 7.2.Definition

 Marketing Communications are the means by

which a firm attempts to inform, persuade, and
remind consumer – directly or indirectly –
about the products and brands they sell.
 Overall role of promotion is to stimulate
demand by building and enhancing customer
relationships.
 7.3.Objectives of Marketing
Communication
 Establishing a company or product / service image
 Creating awareness for new products
 Keeping existing products popular
 Repositioning the images or uses of faltering products
 Locating where products can be purchased
 Justifying prices
 Providing after sales service for consumers
 Placing the company and its products or services in a
favorable light relative to competitors.
7.4.Elements of Marketing
Communication
 Cont’d
 Sender: The party sending the message to another party.
 Encoding: The process of putting thought into symbolic
form.
 Message: The set of symbols that the sender transmits
 Media: The communication channels the message moves
 Decoding: The process by which the receiver assigns
meaning to the symbols encoded by the sender.
 Receiver: The party receiving the message
 Response: The reactions of the receiver after being
exposed to the message
 Cont’d

 Feedback: The part of the receiver's response

communicated back to the sender.
 Noise: The unplanned static or distortion
during the communication process, which
results in the receiver's getting a different
message than the one the sender sent.
7.5.Changing Communications
Environment
 Two major factors are changing the face of
today's marketing communications.
1. Marketers are shifting away from mass
marketing. More and more, they are
developing focused marketing programs
designed to build closer relationships with
customers.
2. Vast improvements in information technology
are speeding the movement toward segmented
marketing.
 7.6.Types of communication
 Personal Communication Channels: two or
more people communicate directly with each
other either face to face, over the telephone, or
through the mail.
 Non personal Communication Channels: are
media that carry messages without personal
contact or feedback. They include major media,
atmospheres (designed environments), and
events.
 7.7.Steps in Developing
Effective Communication
1. Identify the target audience;
2. Determine the communication objectives;
3. Design a message;
4. Choose the media through which to send
the message;
5. Select the message source; and
6. Collect feedback.
 Advertising

Direct Public
Marketing Relation
Objectives
Inform
Persuade
Remind

Personal Sales
Selling Promotion
7.8.The Promotion Mix

Advertising

Direct Public
Marketing Relation
Objectives
Inform
Persuade
Remind

Personal Sales
Selling Promotion
 7.8.1.ADVERTISING
 Any paid form of non-personal presentation and
promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified
sponsor is termed as advertising.
 The distinguishing features of advertising are
 the firm pays for its message,
 a set format is delivered to the entire audience through
mass media,
 the name of the sponsor is clearly presented,
 the company controls the message and
 It is non personal because it is a form of mass
communication
a)The Five Ms of Advertising
 b)setting the Advertising
Objectives
 Informative advertising figures heavily in the pioneering
stage of a product category, where the objective is to
build primary demand.
 Persuasive advertising becomes important in the
competitive stage, where the objective is to build
selective demand for a particular brand.
 Some persuasive advertising is comparative advertising,
which explicitly compares two or more brands.
 Reminder advertising is important with mature products.
Coca-Cola ads are primarily intended to remind people to
purchase Coca-Cola.
 Cont’d
 A related form of advertising is reinforcement
advertising, which seeks to assure current purchasers
that they have made the right choice.
 It helps to reduce cognitive dissonance (after sell
discomfort).
c)Deciding on the Advertising
Budget
 Stage in the product life cycle: New products typically
receive large advertising budgets to build awareness
and to gain consumer trial.
 Market share and consumer base: High-market-share
brands usually require less advertising expenditure as
a percentage of sales to maintain their share.
 Competition and clutter: In a market with a large
number of competitors and high advertising spending,
a brand must advertise more heavily to be heard.
 Cont’d
 Advertising frequency: The number of
repetitions needed to put across the brand's
message to consumers has an important
impact on the advertising budget.
 Product substitutability: Brands in a
commodity class (cigarette, beer, soft drinks)
require heavy advertising to establish a
differential image.
 Advertising is also important when a brand can
offer unique physical benefits or features.
d)Setting Advertisement Budget

1. Affordable Method: set the promotion budget at the level

the company can afford.
 Small businesses often use this method, reasoning that
the company cannot spend more on advertising than it
has.
2. Percentage-of-Sales Method: setting promotion budget at
a certain percentage of current or forecasted sales. Or
they budget a percentage of the unit sales price.
 Advantages: simple to use and helps management
think about the relationships between promotion
spending, selling price, and profit per unit.
 Cont’d
3. Competitive-Parity Method: setting their promotion
budgets to match competitors' outlays by monitoring
competitors' advertising or get industry estimates.
4. Objective-and-Task Method: is the most logical budget-
setting method whereby the company sets its
promotion budget based on what it wants to
accomplish with promotion.
 This budgeting method entails (1) defining specific
promotion objectives, (2) determining the tasks needed
to achieve these objectives, and (3) estimating the
costs of performing these tasks.
e)Creating advertising messages
 Advertising campaigns vary in their creativity.
 No matter how big the budget, advertising can
succeed only if commercials gain attention and
communicate well.
1. Message Generation: The product's "benefit"
message should be decided as part of
developing the product concept.
2. Message Evaluation and Selection: messages
be rated on desirability, exclusiveness, and
believability.
 Cont’d
3. Message Execution: The message's impact depends
not only upon what is said but also on how it is said.
 It Can be:
 Rational appeals: these relate to the audience's self
interest. They show that the product will produced
desire benefits.
 Emotional appeal: these attempts to stir up negative
or positive emotions that will motivate purchase.
 Moral appeals: attempt to direct the audience's sense
of what is right and wrong.
 Cont’d

4. Social Responsibility Review: Advertisers and

their agencies must be sure their "creative"
advertising doesn't overstep social and legal
norms.
f)Developing Media Strategies
 After choosing the message, the next task is to choose
media to carry it.
 The steps here are:
1. Deciding on Reach, Frequency, and Impact
 Reach (R): The number of different persons or
households that are exposed to a particular media
schedule at least once during a specified time period.
 Frequency (F): The number of times within the
specified time period that an average person or
household is exposed to the message.
 Cont’d
 Impact (I): The qualitative value of an exposure
through a given medium (such as a food ad in Addis
Admass magazine would have a higher impact than the
same ad in the Police magazine).
2. Selecting Media and Vehicles
 The media planner has to know the capacity of the
major media types to deliver reach, frequency, and
impact.
3. Deciding on Media Timing
 Cont’d
 Media planners make their choice among media
categories by considering the following
variables:
 Target-audience media habits:
 Product:
 Message:
 Cost: Television is very expensive, whereas
newspaper advertising is relatively inexpensive. What
counts is the cost-per-thousand exposures.
g)Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness

 Advertisers should try to measure the

communication effect of an ad—that is, its
potential effect on awareness, knowledge, or
preference—as well as the ad’s sales effect:
7.8.2.SALES-PROMOTION STRATEGIES

 Sales promotion consists of short-term

incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of
a product or service.
 Whereas advertising offers a reason to buy,
sales promotion offers an incentive to buy.
 Sellers may use consumer promotions to
increase short term sales or to help build long-
term market share.
 Cont’d

 Objectives for trade promotions include getting

retailers to carry new items and more
inventories, getting them to advertise the
product and give it more shelf space, and
getting them to buy ahead.
 For the sales force, objectives include getting
more sales force support for current or new
products or getting salespeople to sign up new
accounts.
 a)Major consumer Sales
Promotion Tools
 Samples are offers of a trial amount of a product.
Sampling is the most effective—but most expensive—
way to introduce a new product.
 Coupons: Certificates offering a stated saving on the
purchase of a specific product.
 Premiums are goods offered either free or at low cost as
an incentive to buy a product.
 Advertising specialties are useful articles imprinted with
an advertiser's name given as gifts to consumers.
 Cont’d
 Patronage rewards are cash or other awards
offered for the regular use of a certain
company's products or services. E.g. Sheba
miles
 Contests, sweepstakes, and games give
consumers the chance to win something, such
as cash, trips, or goods, by luck or through
extra effort.
b)Major Trade Promotion Tools
 Price-Off (off-invoice or off-list): A straight discount off
the list price on each case purchased during a stated
time period.
 Allowance: An amount offered in return for the retailer’s
agreeing to feature the manufacturer’s products in
some way.
 It can be an advertising allowance or display allowance.
 Free Goods: Offers of extra cases of merchandise to
intermediaries who buy a certain quantity or who
feature a certain flavor or size.
 7.8.3.PERSONAL SELLING
 The direct presentation of a product to a
prospective customer by a representative of the
selling organization.
 Personal Selling occurs when a company
representative comes in direct contact with a
customer in order to inform a client about a
good or service to get a sale.
a)The Nature of Personal Selling

1. Brings the human element in to marketing

transaction
2. Makes the buyer to act immediately
3. Increases customer confidence in the
supplier and
4. Simplifies the handling of individual
customer problems
b) Benefits of personal selling

1. Personal confrontation: face to face

interaction
2. Cultivation: permits all kinds of
relationships to spring up,
3. Response: makes the buyer feel under
some obligation for having listened the
sales talk.
 c)Types of Sales Person in
Personal Selling
 Deliverer: A salesperson whose major task is the
delivery of a product (milk, bread, or fuel).
 Order taker: A salesperson who acts predominantly as
an inside order taker (the salesperson standing behind
the counter) or outside order taker (the soap
salesperson calling on the supermarket manager).
 Missionary: A salesperson whose major task is to build
goodwill or to educate the actual or potential user,
rather than to sell (the medical ―detailer‖ representing
an ethical pharmaceutical firm).
 Cont’d
 Order Getter (Demand creator): It is creative
selling and and more time consuming. It is used
for selling products to new prospects (pioneers)
and to sell to continuing customers (account
managers).
 Solution vendor: A salesperson whose expertise
relies on solving a customer’s problem, often
with a system of the firm’s goods and services
(such as computer and communications
systems).
 Types of personal selling
 The customers come to the salespeople. Mostly
involves retail-store selling. Most salespeople
fall into this category.
 The salespeople go to the customers. Usually
represent producers or wholesaling middlemen
and sell to business users.
 d)Personal selling process
1. Preparation
2. Prospecting
3. Initial contact
4. The presentation
5. Handling objections
6. Closing the sale
7. Follow up
 7.8.4.DIRECT MARKETING
 Direct marketing consists of direct communications
with carefully targeted individual consumers to obtain
an immediate response.
 Direct marketers communicate directly with
consumers, often on a one to- one, interactive basis.
Interactivity is essential to this process.
 Characteristics:
 non-public
 Customized
 Interactive
 Up-to-date: a message can prepare quickly
 7.8.5.PUBLICITY & PUBLIC
RELATIONS
7.8.5.1.PUBLIC RELATION
 A public is any group that has an actual or potential
interest in or impact on a company’s ability to achieve
its objectives.
 Public relations (PR) involves a variety of programs
designed to promote or protect a company’s image or
its individual products.
 A public can facilitate or impede a company’s ability to
achieve its objectives
 a)Function of PR
 They perform the following five functions:
1. Press relations: Presenting news and information about the
organization in the most positive light.
2. Product publicity: Sponsoring efforts to publicize specific
products.
3. Corporate communication: Promoting understanding of the
organization through internal and external communications.
4. Lobbying: Dealing with legislators and government officials to
promote or defeat legislation and regulation.
5. Counseling: Advising management about public issues and
company positions and image. This includes advising in the event
of a product mishap
 b)Major PR tools
 News.
 Speeches.
 Special events (mobile marketing).
 Written materials (such as annual reports, brochures,
articles, and company newsletters).
 Audiovisual materials (such as films, slide-and-sound
programs, video and audio cassettes).
 Corporate identity materials (such as logos, stationery,
brochures, signs, business forms, business cards,
buildings, uniforms, and company cars and trucks).
7.8.5.2.Publicity
 It is an important element in public relations.
 It is the communication about a product or organization
by the placing of news about it in the media without
paying for the time or space directly.
 It is any promotional communication regarding an
organization and/or its products where the message is
not paid for by the organization benefiting from it.
 Usually, publicity promotion is a non-personal news
story appearing in a mass medium.
 Publicity is more credible to consumers than any other
promotional mix element.
45
THE END