The Different Elements in the Communication Mix

A marketing communications mix is the same as a promotion mix and is just another term for promotion mix. There are five marketing communications to put into the mix: Advertising, Sales Promotion, Public Relations, Personal Selling, and Direct Marketing. This basically all boils down to a mix of promotional efforts to bring in sales and increase brand equity:

• Advertising – Any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.
• Personal selling – Personal presentation by the firm’s sales force for the purpose of making sales and building customer relationships.
• Sales promotion – Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service.
• Public relations – Building good relationships 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.
• Direct marketing – Direct communications with carefully targeted individual consumers to obtain an immediate response and cultivate lasting customer relationships.

Objectives & Role of Communication Mix

Advertisement

Reaches large, geographically dispersed audiences, often with high frequency; Low cost per exposure, though overall costs are high; Consumers perceive advertised goods as more legitimate; Dramatizes company/brand; Builds brand image; may stimulate short-term sales; Impersonal, one-way communication; Expensive

Personal Selling

Most effective tool for building buyers’ preferences, convictions, and actions; Personal interaction allows for feedback and adjustments; Relationship-oriented; Buyers are more attentive; Sales force represents a long-term commitment; Most expensive of the promotional tools

Sales Promotion

May be targeted at the trade or ultimate consumer; Makes use of a variety of formats: premiums, coupons, contests, etc.; Attracts attention, offers strong purchase incentives, dramatizes offers, boosts sagging sales; Stimulates quick response; Short-lived; Not effective at building long-term brand preferences

Public Relation

Highly credible; Very believable; Many forms: news stories, news features, events and sponsorships, etc.; Reaches many prospects missed via other forms of promotion; Dramatizes company or product; Often the most under used element in the promotional mix; Relatively inexpensive (certainly not ‘free’ as many people think–there are costs involved)

Direct Marketing

Many forms: Telephone marketing, direct mail, online marketing, etc.; Four distinctive characteristics: Nonpublic, Immediate, Customized, Interactive; Well-suited to highly-targeted marketing efforts

Relationship between elements of Communication Mix

All the elements of any mix work in integration. Mix is always series of activities which depend on each other.

P-2: Illustrate how an understanding of buyer behavior can be used in personal selling. Give appropriate examples.

Buyer behavior

Buyer or Consumer behavior is the study of when, why, how, and where people do or do not buy product. It blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology and economics. It attempts to understand the buyer decision making process, both individually and in groups. It studies characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics and behavioral variables in an attempt to understand people’s wants. It also tries to assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference groups, and society in general. It also include study of buyer Demographic Factors. Sex, Race, Age etc. Study of “Who in the family is responsible for the decision making”. Young people purchase things for different reasons than older people.

Personal selling

Personal selling is oral communication with potential buyers of a product with the intention of making a sale. The personal selling may focus initially on developing a relationship with the potential buyer, but will always ultimately end with an attempt to “close the sale”

It is very important to understand the buyer behavior before going to personal selling with out knowing the needs and wants of a person you can sell out the product. If personal sales person is fully aware of target market buyer behavior then it is easy to sale out the product and services. Because seller will present and offer the product or service according to need and wants of buyer if he/she have knowledge. Which will make positive impact.

For example

A person seller go to a shop and give presentation with out knowing that who is decision maker in the shop and at the end of presentation shop keeper says “My father give orders for purchases ” so there will be no chance sale. So the personal seller should know the decision maker.

If a person seller go to stall of university with out knowing the choice youngsters. And bring dress paints to stall where as youngsters want to wear jeans then sale will be not possible.

So understanding of buyer behavior before personal selling is very important. Which help a lot.

P-3: Identify the environmental and managerial forces affecting personal selling.

Environmental Forces

Politics, Legislation Forces, Governmental topics, taxation issues, environmental controls and dependencies, subsidies & quotas regulations, employment and labor laws, consumer legislations and regulations, competition issues, health & safety concerns and issues.

Economic forces

Industry growth potentials, the various investment levels, strategies and positions, costs of raw materials and supply streams, divestments or capacity shifts at the supply base, energy availability and utility cost, transportation, logistics factors, consumer spending and its projected trend, inflation concerns and macro economic indicators, unemployment rates and other labor market indicators, disposable income, borrowing patterns, loan structures, debt signals, future prospects.

Socio-culture Forces

Demographics shifts and changes, wealth distribution, social mobility, institutions, education, schooling, lifestyle trends, use of time, attitudes to work, leisure, relationships, family, fashion, focus and development of interests.

Technology Forces

Innovation rates, development times, technology investments, adoption speed and product life cycles, cost reductions (deflation), return on investments, technology incentives, government investment, cross technological networking and developments.

Managerial forces

• Direct marketing
• direct mail
• telemarketing
• Blending of sales and marketing
• intranet
• Qualifications for sales people
• Qualification sales managers.

Managerial forces can also be defined as Managers can respond to the changes in the environment by developing new strategies and tactics to enhance sales effectiveness.

• Employing direct marketing techniques.
• Improving co-operation between sales and marketing.
• Encouraging salespeople to attend training programs and acquire professional
• Qualifications.

The manager or any person required three basic qualities for best sales which is also called 3 I’s which are mentioned below.

• Intelligence.
• Interfaces.
• Integration.

Reference: Text book

P-4: describe the main types of personal selling.

Types of Personal Selling

Inside order-taker

Is the retail sales assistant. The customer has full freedom to choose products without the presence of a sale person. The sales assistant’s task is purely transactional receiving payment and passing over the goods as another type of order taker is the telemarketing sales team, which supports field sales by taking customers’ orders over the telephone.

Delivery sales people

Their task is primarily concerned with delivering the product. In the UK, milk, newspapers and magazines are delivered to the door. However there is little attempt to persuade the household to increase the milk order or number of newspapers taken- changes in order size are customer driven.

Outside order-takers

They are unlike inside order -takers, these salespeople visit the customer but also primarily respond to customer requests rather than actively seek to persuade. Unlike delivery salespeople, outside order-takers do not deliver. Outside order-takers are a dying breed, and are being replaced by the more cost-effective telemarketing teams.