i. Sales promotion—A variety of short-term incentives to encourage trial
or purchase of a product or service including consumer promotions
(such as samples, coupons, and premiums), trade promotions (such as
advertising and display allowances), and business and sales force
promotions (contests for sales reps).
ii. Events and experiences—Company-sponsored activities and programs
designed to create daily or special brand-related interactions with
consumers, including sports, arts, entertainment, and cause events as
well as less formal activities.
iii. Public relations and publicity—A variety of programs directed
internally to employees of the company or externally to consumers,
other firms, the government, and media to promote or protect a
company’s image or its individual product communications.
iv. Online and social media marketing—Online activities and programs
designed to engage customers or prospects and directly or indirectly
raise awareness, improve image, or elicit sales of products and
services.
v. Mobile marketing—A special form of online marketing that places
communications on consumer’s cell phones, smart phones, or tablets.
vi. Direct and database marketing—Use of mail, telephone, fax, e-mail, or
Internet to communicate directly with or solicit response or dialogue
from specific customers and prospects.
vii. Personal selling—Face-to-face interaction with one or more
prospective purchasers for the purpose of making presentations,
answering questions, and procuring orders.
viii. The product’s styling and price, the shape and color of the package, the
salesperson’s manner and dress, the store décor, and the company’s
stationery all communicate something to buyers.
II. How Do Marketing Communications Work?
A. Marketing communication activities in every medium contribute to brand
equity and drive sales by creating brand awareness, forging brand image in
consumers’ memories, eliciting positive brand judgments or feelings, and
strengthening consumer loyalty.
i. The way brand associations are formed does not matter.
ii. Marketing communications activities must be integrated to deliver a
consistent message and achieve the strategic positioning
iii. The starting point in planning them is a communication audit that
profiles all interactions customers in the target market may have with
the company and all its products and services.
1. To implement the right communications programs and allocate
dollars efficiently, marketers need to assess which experiences
and impressions will have the most influence at each stage of
the buying process.
2. Armed with these insights, they can judge marketing
communications according to their ability to affect experiences
and impressions, build customer loyalty and brand equity, and
drive sales.
iv. In building brand equity, marketers should be “media neutral” and
evaluate all communication options on effectiveness (how well does it
work?) and efficiency (how much does it cost?)
B. The Communications Process Models
i. Macromodel of the Communications Process
1. Two factors in effective communication represent the major
parties—sender and receiver.
a. Senders must know what audiences they want to reach
and what responses they want to get.
b. They must encode their messages so the target audience
can successfully decode them.
c. They must transmit the message through media that
reach the target audience and develop feedback
channels to monitor the responses.
d. The more the sender’s field of experience overlaps that
of the receiver, the more effective the message is likely
to be.
2. Two factors represent the major tools—message and media.
3. Four factors represent major communication functions—
encoding, decoding, response, and feedback.
4. The last element in the system is noise, random and competing
messages that may interfere with the intended communication.
ii. Micromodel of Consumer Responses concentrate on consumers’
specific responses to communications
1. All these models assume the buyer passes through cognitive,
affective, and behavioral stages in that order.
a. This “learn-feel-do” sequence is appropriate when the
audience has high involvement with a product category
perceived to have high differentiation, such as an
automobile or house.
b. An alternative sequence, “do-feel-learn,” is relevant
when the audience has high involvement but perceives
little or no differentiation within the product category,
such as airline tickets or personal computers.
c. A third sequence, “learn-do-feel,” is relevant when the
audience has low involvement and perceives little
differentiation, such as with salt or batteries.
2. Awareness – Knowledge – Liking – Preference – Conviction –
Purchase may be objectives
a. Probability of each of the six steps being successfully
accomplished is 50 percent
b. Assuming independence, likelihood of all six steps
occurring is 1.5625%
C. To increase the odds of success for a communications
campaign, marketers must attempt to increase the
likelihood that each step occurs.
III. Developing Effective Communications
A. Basics: identifying the target audience, setting the communication objectives,
designing the communications, selecting the communication channels, and
establishing the total marketing communications budget.
B. Identify the Target Audience
I. Start with a clear target audience in mind: potential buyers of the
company’s products, current users, deciders, or influencers, as well as
individuals, groups, particular publics, or the general public.
II. The target audience is a critical influence on the communicator’s
decisions about what to say, how, when, where, and to whom.
C. Set the Communications Objectives
i. Establish need for category
ii. Build brand awareness
iii. Build brand attitude
iv. Influence brand purchase intention
v. The most effective communications can achieve multiple objectives
D. Design the Communications
i. Formulating the communications to achieve the desired response
requires answering three questions: what to say (message strategy),
how to say it (creative strategy), and who should say it (message
source).
ii. In selecting message strategy, management searches for appeals,
themes, or ideas that will tie in to the brand positioning and help
establish points-of-parity or points-of-difference.
1. Some of these appeals or ideas may relate directly to product or
service performance (the quality, economy, or value of the
brand)
2. Others may relate to more extrinsic considerations (the brand
as being contemporary, popular, or traditional).
3. Buyers expect one of four types of reward from a product:
rational, sensory, social, or ego satisfaction.
4. They might visualize these rewards from results-of-use
experience, product-in-use experience, or incidental-to-use
experience.
iii. Communications effectiveness depends on how well a message is
expressed as well as on its content.
1. If a communication is ineffective, it may mean the wrong
message was used or the right one was poorly expressed.
2. We can broadly classify creative strategies as either
informational or transformational appeals.
a. An informational appeal elaborates on product or
service attributes or benefits and assume strictly
rational processing of the communication; logic and
reason rule.
i. Two-sided informational messages may be more
appropriate than one-sided when negative
associations must be overcome
ii. Two-sided messages are more effective with
more educated audiences and those who are
initially opposed
iii. In a one-sided message, presenting the strongest
argument first arouses attention and interest,
important in media where the audience often
does not attend to the whole message.
iv. For a two-sided message, if the audience is
initially opposed, start with the other side’s
argument and conclude with your strongest
argument.
b. A transformational appeal elaborates on a
nonproduct-related benefit or image and often attempts
to stir up emotions that will motivate purchase.
i. Communicators use negative appeals such as
fear, guilt, and shame to get people to do things
or stop doing things
ii. Messages are most persuasive when they
moderately disagree with audience beliefs.
iii. Motivational or “borrowed interest” devices are
often employed to attract attention and raise
involvement with an ad. These techniques are
thought necessary in the tough new media
environment of low-involvement processing and
competing messages.
iv. Attention-getting tactics may also detract from
comprehension, however, or wear out their
welcome fast or overshadow the product.
iv. Research has shown that the source’s credibility is crucial to a
message’s acceptance.
1. The three most often identified sources of credibility are
expertise, trustworthiness, and likability
a. Expertise is the specialized knowledge the
communicator possesses to back the claim.
b. Trustworthiness describes how objective and honest the
source is perceived to be
c. Likability describes the source’s attractiveness,
measured in terms of candor, humor, and naturalness
2. The most credible source will score high on all three
dimensions—expertise, trustworthiness, and likability.
E. Select the Communications Channels
i. Selecting an efficient means to carry the message becomes more
difficult as channels of communication become more fragmented and
cluttered.
ii. Communications channels may be personal and nonpersonal. Within
each are many subchannels.
iii. Personal communications channels let two or more persons
communicate face to face or person to audience through a phone,
surface mail, or e-mail.
1. They derive their effectiveness from individualized
presentation and feedback and include direct marketing,
personal selling, and word of mouth.
2. Advocate channels consist of company salespeople contacting
buyers in the target market.
3. Expert channels consist of independent experts making
statements to target buyers.
4. Social channels consist of neighbors, friends, family members,
and associates talking to target buyers.
5. Personal influence carries especially great weight when
a. Products are expensive, risky, or purchased infrequently
b. Products suggest something about the user’s status or
taste
6. Positive word of mouth sometimes happens organically with
little advertising, but it can also be managed and facilitated.
7. It can be particularly effective for smaller businesses
iv. Nonpersonal channels are communications directed to more than one
person and include advertising, sales promotions, events and
experiences, and public relations.
1. Much recent growth has taken place through events and
experiences.
2. Companies are searching for better ways to quantify the
benefits of sponsorship and demanding greater accountability
from event owners and organizers.
3. Events can create attention, though whether they have a lasting
effect on brand awareness, knowledge, or preference will vary
considerably depending on the quality of the product, the event
itself, and its execution.
v. Although personal communication is often more effective than mass
communication, mass media might be the major means of stimulating
it.
1. Mass communications affect personal attitudes and behavior
through a two-step process.
2. The influence of mass media on public opinion is not as direct,
powerful, and automatic as marketers have supposed; it is
mediated by opinion leaders and media mavens, people who
track new ideas and whose opinions others seek or who carry
their opinions to others.
3. The two-step flow challenges the notion that consumption
styles are primarily influenced by a “trickle-down” or
“trickle-up” effect from mass media.
4. Nass communicators should direct messages specifically to
opinion leaders and others engaged with media if possible and
let them carry the message to others.
F. Establish the Total Marketing Communications Budget
i. Affordable Method—what they think they can
1. Ignores the role of marketing communications as an investment
and their immediate impact on sales volume
2. Uncertain annual budget, which makes long-range planning
difficult
ii. Percentage-of-Sales Method—specified percentage of current or
anticipated sales or of the sales price.
1. Views sales as the determiner of communications rather than as
the result.
2. Leads to a budget set by the availability of funds rather than by
market opportunities.
3. Discourages experimentation with countercyclical
communication or aggressive spending.
4. Dependence on year-to-year sales fluctuations interferes with
long-range planning.
iii. Competitive-Parity Method—achieve share-of-voice parity with
competitors.
1. No grounds for believing competitors know better.
2. Company reputations, resources, opportunities, and objectives
differ so much that communications budgets are hardly a guide.
3. No evidence that budgets based on competitive parity
discourage communication wars.
iv. Objective-and-Task Method—budgets developed by defining specific
objectives, identifying the tasks that must be performed to achieve
these objectives, and estimating the costs of performing them.
V. Communications Budget Trade-offs: How much weight should
marketing communications receive compared to alternatives such as
product improvement, lower prices, or better service?
IV. Selecting the Marketing Communications Mix
A. Companies must allocate their marketing communications budget over the
eight major modes of communication—advertising, sales promotion, events
and experiences, public relations and publicity, online and social media
marketing, mobile marketing, direct and database marketing, and the sales
force.
B. Companies are always searching for ways to gain efficiency by substituting
one communications tool for others.
C. Characteristics of the Marketing Communications Mix
i. Advertising reaches geographically dispersed buyers.
1. It can build up a long-term image for a product (Coca-Cola
ads) or trigger quick sales (a Macy’s ad for a weekend sale).
2. Certain forms of advertising such as TV can require a large
budget, whereas other forms such as newspaper do not.
3. The mere presence of advertising might have an effect on sales:
a. Pervasiveness—Advertising permits the seller to repeat
a message many times.
b. Amplified expressiveness—Advertising provides
opportunities for dramatizing the company and its
brands and products through the artful use of print,
sound, and color.
c. Control—The advertiser can choose the aspects of the
brand and product on which to focus communications.
ii. Companies use sales promotion tools—coupons, contests, premiums,
and the like—to draw a stronger and quicker buyer response, including
short-run effects such as highlighting product offers and boosting
sagging sales
1. Ability to be attention-getting—They draw attention and may
lead the consumer to the product.
2. Incentive—They incorporate some concession, inducement, or
contribution that gives value to the consumer.
3. Invitation—They include a distinct invitation to engage in the
transaction now.
iii. Events and experiences offer many advantages as long as they have
the following characteristics:
1. Relevant—A well-chosen event or experience can be seen as
highly relevant because the consumer is often personally
invested in the outcome.
2. Engaging—Given their live, real-time quality, events and
experiences are more actively engaging for consumers.
3. Implicit—Events are typically an indirect soft sell
iv. Public Relations and Publicity are underused, yet a well-thought-out
program coordinated with the other communications-mix elements can
be extremely effective, especially if a company needs to challenge
consumers’ misconceptions.
1. High credibility—News stories and features are more authentic
and credible to readers than ads.
2. Ability to reach hard-to-find buyers—Public relations can
reach prospects who prefer to avoid mass media and targeted
promotions.
3. Dramatization—Public relations can tell the story behind a
company, brand, or product.
v. Online marketing and messages can take many forms to interact with
consumers when they are in active search mode or just browsing and
surfing online for something to do.
1. Rich—Much information or entertainment can be provided—as
much or as little as a consumer might want.
2. Interactive—Information can be changed or updated depending
on the person’s response.
3. Up to date—A message can be prepared very quickly and
diffused through social media channels.
vi. Mobile marketing has three distinguishing characteristics:
1. Timely—Mobile communications can be very time-sensitive
and reflect when and where a consumer is.
2. Influential—Information received or obtained via a smart
phone can reach and influence consumers as they are making a
purchase decision.
3. Pervasive—Consumers typically carry their smart phones
everywhere, so mobile communications are at their fingertips.
vii. Direct and database marketing have three noteworthy characteristics:
1. Personal—Personal facts, opinions, and experiences can be
stored in massive databases and incorporated into personal
messages.
2. Proactive—A direct marketing piece can create attention,
inform consumers, and include a call to action.
3. Complementary—Product information can be provided that
helps other marketing communications, especially in terms of
e-commerce.
viii. Personal selling is the most effective tool at later stages of the buying
process, particularly in building up buyer preference, conviction, and
action.
1. Customized—The message can be designed to appeal to any
individual.
2. Relationship-oriented—Personal selling relationships can range
from a matter-of-fact selling relationship to a deep personal
friendship.
3. Response-oriented—The buyer is often given personal choices
and encouraged to directly respond.
D. Factors in Setting the Marketing Communications Mix
i. Type of Product Market
ii. An effectively trained company sales force can make four important
contributions:
1. Increase stock position
2. Build enthusiasm
3. Conduct missionary selling
4. Manage key accounts
iii. Buyer-Readiness Stage
iv. Product Life-Cycle Stage
E. Measuring Communication Results
i. Inputs and expenses: press clipping counts, numbers of ads placed, or
media costs.
ii. Reach and frequency (the percentage of target market exposed to a
communication and the number of exposures), recall and recognition
scores, persuasion changes, and cost-per-thousand calculations.
V. Managing the Integrated Marketing Communications Process: “a planning
process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or
prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and
consistent over time.”
A. Media coordination can occur across and within media types, but marketers
should combine personal and nonpersonal communications channels through
multiple-vehicle, multiple-stage campaigns to achieve maximum impact and
increase message reach and impact.
B. Integrated marketing communications can produce stronger message
consistency and help build brand equity and create greater sales impact
C. Six Cs criteria can determine whether communications are truly integrated.
i. Coverage: proportion of the audience reached by each communication
option employed as well as the amount of overlap among those
options.
ii. Contribution: inherent ability of a marketing communication to create
the desired response and communication effects from consumers in the
absence of exposure to any other communication option.
iii. Commonality: the extent to which common associations are reinforced
across communication options
iv. Complementarity: extent to which different associations and linkages
are emphasized across communication options.
v. Conformability: extent to which a marketing communication option
works for such different groups of consumers.
vi. Cost: marketers must evaluate marketing communications on all these
criteria against their cost to arrive at the most effective and most
efficient communications program.