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MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY
1. Tools in the Marketing Communication Mix
Advertising (any paid form of nonpersonal presentation & promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor).
Sales promotion (short-term incentives to encourage purchase or sale of a product or service).
Publicity (nonpersonal stimulation of demand for a product, service or business unit by planting commercially significant news about it in a published medium or obtaining favourable presentation of it on radio, television or stage that is not paid for by the sponsor.)
Personal selling (oral presentation in a conversation with one or more prospective purchasers for the purpose of making sales).
Within each category are found promotools such as sales presentations, point-of-purchase displays, trade shows, catalogues, contests, premiums, coupons and trading stamps.
2. Communication Model
Sender - The party sending the message to another party (also called the source or communicator).
Encoding - The process of putting thought into symbolic form.
Message - The set of symbols that the sender transmits.
Media - The paths through which the message moves from sender to receiver.
Decoding - The process by which the receiver assigns meaning to the symbols transmitted by the sender.
Receiver - The party receiving the message sent by another party (also called the audience or destination).
Response - The set of reactions that the receiver has after being exposed to the message.
Feedback - The part of the receiver's response that the receiver communicates back to the sender.
3. Clarifying the Response Sought
Awareness (the first state of buyer readiness & refers to how aware the target receiver is of the product or organization.
Knowledge (refers to whether the potential consumer knows about the product or organization.)
Liking (refers to how they feel about it).
Preference (means that the consumer prefers the product or organization over the competition).
Conviction (refers to making a mental commitment to it.)
Purchase
These six states simplify to 3 stages, known as the cognitive (awareness, knowledge), affective (liking, preference, conviction) and behavioural (purchase).
4. Choosing a Message
An ideal message is one that would manage to get Attention, hold Interest, arouse Desire & obtain Action (known as the AIDA model).
Message content means the communicator has to figure out what to say to the target audience to produce the desired response.
(a) Rational appeals aim to serve the audience's self-interest
(b) Emotional appeals are designed to stir up some negative or positive emotion that
will motivate product purchase.
(c) Moral appeals are directed to the receiver's sense of what it is right and proper to do.
Message structure affects a message's effectiveness.
Conclusion drawing is more effective except when communicator is seen as untrustworthy, the issue is very simple or personal & the audience is highly intelligent.
One-sided messages tend to work best with audiences that are favourably disposed to the communicator's position.
Two-sided messages tend to work best with audiences who are opposed to the communicator's position, better educated & likely to be exposed to counter-propaganda.
Order of presentation raises the question of whether communicators should present their strongest arguments first or last.
Message format means that communicators must be able to convey the message in an effective format by using attention-getting devices such as novelty & contrast; arresting pictures & headlines; distinctive formats, message size & position; and colour, shape & movement.
5. Choosing Media
Personal communication can be of three types:
Advocate channels (company representatives directly contacting buyers in a target market).
Expert channels (independent persons with expertise, e.g. consultants, authorities, making statements to target buyers.
Social channels (neighbours, friends, family members & associates who may communicate with target buyers, i.e. word of mouth influence.
Nonpersonal communications carry influence without involving direct contact & are of three types:
Mass & selective media (newspapers, magazines, radio, television & billboards).
Atmospheres (environments that are designed to create or reinforce the buyer's leanings toward purchase or consumption of the product).
Events (occurrences designed to communicate particular messages to target audiences
NOTE: Mass communications affect attitudes & behaviour through a two-step flow-of-communication process which means that information flows first to opinion leaders & then to the general public.
6. Selecting Source Attributes
Three factors underlie source credibility
Expertise (degree to which the communicator is perceived to possess the necessary authority for what is being claimed).
Trustworthiness (related to how objective & honest the source is perceived to be).
Likeability (related to how attractive the source is to the audience).
7. Collecting Feedback
Generally involves surveying the target audience to measure recognition, recall, feelings and attitudes.
8. Establishing the Total Promotional Budget
The most common approach is to set the budget as a percentage of sales, either last year's sales or next year's projected sales or
Base promotional budget on competitors' expenditures, or
By setting communication objectives & tasks.
9. Establishing the Promotional Mix
Choosing the optimal promotional mix
Type of product affects the amount spent on promotion, with advertising being more heavily used in consumer products marketing & personal selling more important in industrial market.
Push strategy calls for using the sales-force & trade promotion to push the product through the channel.
Pull strategy calls for spending a lot of money on advertising & consumer promotion aimed at the final consumer, to build up demand for the product.
Buyer readiness stage affects the use of promotional tools
Product-lifecycle stage also has implications on the effectiveness of promotional elements, with advertising & publicity used more in the earlier stages.
Size of the total promotional budget will affect which promotional tools will be emphasized.
10. Responsibility for Marketing Communications Planning
Members of the marketing organisation have strong & varying feelings about the proper proportions of the company's promotional budget to spend on different promotional tools.
Companies are moving toward the concept of integrated communications, which assigns someone the overall responsibility for the company's persuasive communication efforts.