Chapter 9: Engaging Consumers and Communicating Customer Value: Integrated

Marketing Communication Strategy

The Promotional Mix

The promotion mix (also called its marketing communications mix-) is the specific blend of promotion tools (
advertising, public relations, personal selling, sales promotion, and direct marketing) that the company uses to
persuasively communicate customer value and build customer relationships.

Any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an
identified sponsor.

Advertising involves specific media channels that are used to communicate with customers.
Advertising ● Broadcast ( TV or radio)
● Print
● Online
● Mobile
● Outdoor

A short-term incentive to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or

service.
● Discounts
Sales promotion
● Coupons
● Displays
● Demonstrations

The personal interaction by the firm’s sales force for the purpose of engaging customers, making
sales, and building customer relationships.

Personal selling Personal selling includes:

● Sales presentations
● Trade shows
● Incentive programs

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,
Public Relations stories, and events.
Examples of public relations include :
press releases, sponsorships, events and Web pages.

Involves engaging directly with carefully targeted individual consumers and customer
Direct and communities to both obtain an immediate response and build lasting customer relationships
digital ● It includes : Direct mail
marketing ● Online and social media
● Mobile marketing
 Integrated Marketing Communications

-Consumers are changing : consumers are better informed and more communications
empowered
-Marketing strategies are changing: As mass markets have fragmented, marketers are
shifting away from mass marketing to build closer relationships with customers in more
The New Marketing
narrowly defined micromarkets.
Communications
-Advances in digital technology : The digital age has brought about remarkable changes in
Model
the ways companies and customers communicate with each other. There are a host of new
information and communication tools—from smartphones and tablets to satellite and cable
television systems to the many faces of the Internet like brand web sites, e-mail, blogs,
social media and online communities, the mobile Web, and so much more..

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) involves carefully integrating and

The Need For
coordinating the company’s many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent,
Integrated
and compelling message about the organization and its products.
Marketing
The concept of integrated marketing communications suggests that the company must
Communications
blend the promotion tools carefully into a coordinated promotion mix.

Shaping the Overall Promotional Mix

-Advertising can reach masses of geographically dispersed buyers at a low cost per exposure,
and it enables the seller to repeat a message many times.

-Personal selling involves personal interaction between two or more people, so each person
The Nature of Each
can observe the other’s needs and characteristics and make quick adjustments. it is the most
Promotional Tool
effective method at certain stages of the buying process, particularly in building buyers’
preferences, convictions, actions, and developing customer relationships. However. Personal
selling is the company’s most expensive promotion tool.
Sales promotion. invite and reward quick response. Whereas advertising says, “Buy our
 product,” sales promotion says, “Buy it now.” Sales promotion effects can be short lived,
however, and often are not as effective as advertising or personal selling in building long-run
brand preference and customer relationships.

Public relations seems more real and believable to readers than ads do that includes news
stories, features, sponsorships, and events.

Direct and digital marketing is an immediate, customized, and interactive promotional tool
that includes direct mail, catalogs, telephone marketing, online, mobile, and social media.

The company must take steps to see that each promotion mix element is smoothly integrated.
Integrating The
The various promotion elements should work together to carry the firm’s unique brand
Promotional Mix
messages and selling points.

A View of the Communication Process

-The sender is the party sending the message to another party. McDonald’s
Encoding is the process of putting thought into symbolic form. For example, McDonald’s ad agency assembles
words, sounds, and illustrations into a TV advertisement that will convey the intended message.
-The message is the set of symbols the sender transmits. The actual McDonald’s ad.
-Media refers to the communications channels through which the message moves from sender to receiver. in this
case, television and the specific television programs that McDonald’s selects.
-Decoding is the process by which the receiver assigns meaning to the symbols. a consumer watches the
McDonald’s commercial and interprets the words and images it contains
-The receiver is the party receiving the message sent by another party. The customer who watches McDonald’s ad.
-A response is the reaction of the receiver after being exposed to the message. The consumer likes McDonald’s
better, is more likely to eat at McDonald’s next time Feedback is the part of the receiver’s response communicated
back to the sender.
-Noise is the unplanned static or distortion during the communication
 Steps in Developing Effective Marketing Communication

Identifying the Determine the Design the Choose the media to Select message source
Target Audience → communication objectives → message → send the message → and collect feedback

The audience may be current users or potential buyers, those who make the buying decision or
those who influence it. The audience may be individuals, groups, special publics, or the
Identifying the
general public.
Target Audience
The target audience will heavily affect the communicator’s decisions on the questions - what
will be said?, how it will be said?, when it will be said?, where it will be said?and who will say it?

These stages include knowledge ( be aware of the product); liking (feeling favorable about the
Determine the
product), preference (preferring the product), and conviction (believing that the product is
communication
the best). A combination of promotion mix tools are used to create positive feelings and
objectives →
conviction

Ideally, the message should use the AIDA model framework : Get Attention Hold Interest;
Arouse Desire; Obtain Action. BUT the AIDA framework suggests the desirable qualities of a
good message
1. Message content is “what to say.”
● Rational appeal relates to the audience’s self-interest.
● Emotional appeal is an attempt to stir up positive or negative emotions to motivate a
Design the message purchase.
● Moral appeal is directed to an audience’s sense of what is right and proper.

2. Message structure and format is “how to say it.”

● Rational appeal
● Emotional appeal
● Moral appeal

The communicator must now select the channels of communication:

1- Personal communication involves two or more people communicating directly with each
other. They might communicate : Face to face, Phone, Mail or e-mail, Texting or Internet chat
Some personal communication channels are :
Choose the media to -Controlled directly by the company. For example, company salespeople contact business
send the message buyers
-Not directly controlled by the company like
● Opinion leaders are people whose opinions are sought by others.
● Buzz marketing involves cultivating opinion leaders and getting them to spread
information about a product or service to others in their communities.
 2-Nonpersonal communication channels are media that carry messages without personal
contact or feedback, including major media ( TV, Radio, Magazines), atmospheres (ex:
lawyers’ offices and banks ), and events (shows and exhibits, public tours).
Nonpersonal communication affects buyers :
● directly.
● indirectly by causing more personal communication. For example, communications
might first flow from television, magazines, and other mass media to opinion leaders
and then from these opinion leaders to others.

The message’s impact depends on how the target audience views the communicator.
● Celebrities
Select message ● Athletes
source ● Entertainers
● Professionals
● Health care providers

Collecting feedback involves the communicator understanding the effect on the target
audience and by measuring behavior resulting from the content.
(example : This involves asking target audience members whether they remember the
collect feedback 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.
The communicator would also like to measure behavior resulting from the message—how
many people bought the product, talked to others about it, or visited the store.)

-The affordable method sets the promotion budget at the level management thinks the
company can afford.
Setting the -The percentage-of-sales method sets the promotion budget at a certain percentage of current
Promotional or forecasted sales or as a percentage of the unit sales price.
Budget -The competitive-parity method sets the promotion budget to match competitors’ outlays.
-The objective-and-task method develops the promotion budget by specific promotion
objectives and the costs of tasks needed to achieve these objectives.

Two basic promotion mix strategies: push promotion or pull promotion:

-A push strategy involves “pushing” the product through marketing channels to final
consumers. The producer directs its marketing activities (primarily personal selling and trade
promotion) toward channel members to induce them to carry the product and promote it to
Shaping the Overall final consumers.
Promotional Mix
-Using a pull strategy, the producer directs its marketing activities (primarily advertising and
consumer promotion) toward final consumers to induce them to buy the product. If the pull
strategy is effective, consumers will then demand the brand from retailers, who will in turn
demand it from the producer. Thus, under a pull strategy, consumer demand “pulls” the
product through the channels.
 Advertising and Sales Promotion:
● Avoid deceptive or false advertising
● Avoid bait-and-switch advertising
Socially ● Conform to all federal, state, and local regulations
Responsible
Marketing Personal selling:
Communication ● Follow rules of “fair competition”
● Do not offer bribes
● Do not attempt to obtain competitors’ trade secrets
● Do not disparage competitors or their products