Advertising, promotion, personal selling and PR are the most visible activities of a marketing departments. This type of communication need to be intentional and have a nature of a transaction. It need to be also symboling, we we understand the meaning of it.
It is prescribed, that a message need to be send via multiple channels to be received successfully. By sending a message via different channels of communication it is more likely to be received and not be distracted by the noice or interruptions.
Communications often follow AIDA approach: Attention, Interest, Desire,Action. This suggests, that first we need to get the customers attention, than we must make the message interesting. If the message is good, it will lead to desire and finally action will be taken. This is a very useful guide in promotion planning.
The approach is generally divided further between advertising, sales promotion, personal selling and PR. The activities need to be added together in the right time and the right way to be effective. Generally businesses will communicate information about the company itself and the products and services. The information go through the different transmitters: advertising, sales promotion, personal selling and PR to different types of receivers. These are customers, employees, pressure groups or other publics.
Lets look at the different types of the transmitters and their role in successful marketing communications.
Advertising
Advertising is described as "a paid message in a medium". It suggests that a message is not an advertising if its not paid for and appear is a medium, for example radio, newspaper or billboard. Advertising generally speaks to a larger number of people so the message has to be clear in order to ensure everyone can understand it. It is believed that the advertising costs will be higher if its standardised, there are many end users and sales are made by channel of intermediaries.
There are different types of ad campaigns:
* Teaser campaign - here the first advert (generally quite meaningless) is running for a few weeks and than a second add is related which explains the first one. The first add is intentionally mysterious.
* Lifestyle campaigns - these efforts will associate a product with lifestyle that is desirable by the consumers. These campaigns position a product in the customers mind.
* Rational campaigns - these campaigns are heavy on facts and want to persuade the audience based on rational information. In these ads often a figure of authority will appear to support the argument.
Advertising campaigns will be set to catch peoples attention and interest. But to stimulate desire and action, marketing teams will often add promotion to an ad.
A very interesting phenomenon about advertising is that they are generally culturally aimed. This means, that what works in one country will not work in another. Therefore very few businesses use the standardisation approach. Depends on the audience characteristics, there are always some modifications. Marketers want to fit the culture of the people they are targeting.
Very often however, the advertisement activities are largely overdue. Therefore, before spending a large sums of money on heavy advertising lets us ourselves some basis questions:
* Does the product possess unique and important characteristics? Perhaps products with unique features needs less advertising than commodity products.
* Which product qualities are most important to buyers and are we able to put the message across effectively?
* What is the market demand for the product currently?
* Can we beat competitors with our advertising?
* Can we afford the advertising campaign?
* Do we have enough knowledge and resources to manage the campaign?
* Do we have sound evaluation and monitoring tools for checking its effectiveness?
Advertising however can be an useful tool to help sales department to open sales. It also helps to promote brands, counterpart competitors campaigns, suggests new ways to use the product, remain customers about the product and support maintenance of the market share. It can also be used on providing information and awareness of the company itself and its almost part of the public relations activities, but generally advertising focuses on products itself.
As we know, advertising is paid for, therefore there are budgetary and managerial considerations. These can involve ensuring that knowledge and skills are available for effective advertising campaigns. Often, therefore, companies are using specialised agencies which supports both the budgetary and creative needs.
Generally, advertisements consist of the brand logo, visual and pectoral element and text. The visual element is most important to capture the attention. Advertisements are generally short and simple. People will not read lengthy advertisements.
So how to plan an advertising campaign? Lets look at some fundamental steps:
1) Set the budget. This can be done in many different ways. One which will develop from the overall business strategy and objectives that need to be met, and if promotion os one of them, than a relevant amount of money and investment is allocated for advertising activities. However, it is often very difficult to determine exactly how much money need to be allocated to achieve these objectives. The second method is the percentage of sales approach. However this may be created on a false idea that advertising is created by sales. Often, when sales fall, the advertising reduces as well causing even greater fall in sales. Thirdly, we can match the competition spent on advertising. And finally, the approach where a financial management will set a certain budget for marketing activities and its generally not connected with meeting business strategic objectives.
2) Identify the target audience. Here the suggestion is to approach different segments for it to be more effective.
3) Plan your media. Here we are making the decision on where the ads will be shown. We need to take into considerations here who are our potential target customers as well as how frequently they will be exposed to the media.
4) Define your goals. Identify what the ads need to achieve and try to make as measurable as possible setting SMART objectives.
5) Create an advertising platform. Decide what would be your best selling points and what the focus is.
There is no need to tell the potential customers everything about the product on the advertisement. We need to ensure that people will read it first and it can catch their attention. Therefore the pictures and visuals should be eye-catching and relevant, often companies use the picture of the product as it can than be recognised on the shelve at supermarket.
Memory is stimulated by the emotions. It also appears, that woman are more affected by this phenomenon.
So, how do we assess whether the advertising is bringing the expected results and its effective? How do we know, that it has captured the attention and interest, stimulated the emotions and created enjoyment? If we have achieved those, we can probably take it as it was fairly successful. If people like the experience it is likely that it will bring the success. Interest clearly is linked to likability. Peoples responses can be monitored, either positive or negative.
This effectiveness can be measured through the market research or by increased sales.
Promotion
Sales promotions are generally short activities aiming to boost sales. These can be product discounts, coupons of freebies.
Promotions are often attractive to the customers. However if it is not related to the product itself, generally is less effective. People also like promotions to be received immediately, so id there is a delay in getting it, the interest may be lower. And finally, if the value of the promotion is very low, these may be considered not worth the effort by the customers and potential purchasers.
Free tester samples are enjoying the customer interests these days. It allows the customer to experience the product and plays customer with a minimal obligation to purchase it.
Money off vouchers, 2-for-1, piggy backing with another product or free gists with a purchase are often also successful.
It has to be however noted, that promotions are quick activities to increase sales personally. They would not work long term and these are generally more cost effective for low-value items. Advertising and PR built the sales longer term. Wheras personal selling and promotions are used for short-term reactions.
Additionally, sales promotions which appear too often may become a "standard" for customer which may increase dissatisfaction of fluctuations in sale when the promotion is not executed.
Promotions should also be considered carefully with sales when customer would buy the product anyway. At times, targeting would be a better strategy, but caution must be taken for other customers feelings of being treated unfairly.
Personal selling
Out of all the promotional activities, selling is one which many organisations rely on the most. It is proven to be one of the strongest marketing tools. A sales person, talkie to the customer, interacting, addressing and understanding their needs and finding solutions bring most of the businesses the sale they desire. Personal selling is more likely to bring more customers than advertising, promotion or PR. Selling is also the most expensive tool. A good sales representative would cost approx. £50-70000 per annum and bring around 1600 prospects sting that time. Sales are generally used for products which are technically advanced and need a longer time for customer to make a decision about the purchase. Therefore, it has been increasingly noticed that sales training is of high use within those type of businesses. Considerable amount of time and effort is often spent on sales training within organisations where sales skills are essential to bring new customers and prospects.
It is also worth mentioning, that selling can be learned and there is no such thing as a born sales person.
Organisations expect from sales teams to persuade customers to buy products and take the attention from competitors products. The sales person need to be able to understand and explain the product features, characteristics and benefits.
Very often sales people are categorised as being pushy and manipulative. But a good sales person will understand that they are there to help their customers and resolve their problems. Good salesperson will start from finding out the customers needs and help to make the decision which product offered will meet those needs. A successful sale will end with customer order.
as opposed to promotions or advertising, sales people deal with customer on a one-to-one basis, therefore it is considered as macro-marketing. Sales department understand that they need to combine the knowledge of the product with the knowledge of what customer needs as well as use sales techniques to help customer to make the decisions.
Out of all marketing activities, the personal sale is probably the hardest to control. Every person has their own idea how the sale should done. Therefore businesses often hire sales managers who will be responsible for recruitment, training, motivation, controlling and monitoring activities and managing sales targets.
Public relations (PR)
Public relations activities will focus on creating positive image of the business or organisation. PR will consider number of different audiences: customers, employees, stake holders, trade and government authorities, suppliers, to mention a few. They activities will generally involve organising conferences, training seminars, organising events or even handling complaints and setting the organisational culture. And the main aim is to put the positive image about the organisation in peoples mind. They want to encourage their audience to have a positive opinion about the business and make the employees being proud of it. They want to bring respect and responsibility, therefore it is often said that everybody in the organisation is responsible for its PR.
Internal PR could include activities of creating newsletters, staff social events or training.
Externally, PR would communicate through news media. Press releases, for example can be one great way of improving and enhancing the organisations image. Journalists however, can also create stories which could be damaging, because there is a greater level of credibility with press releases. Therefore PR's aim will be to cultivate a good relationship with the media. Before contacting press we have to ensure that there is no negative connotations with the information we would like to release. Often also, adequate public speaking training is organised for those who represent the company.
Sometimes, PR would need to respond to attacks from different sources. These could be pressure groups, reporters or competitors noise. The best way to attack however is to understand the enemy and determine whether their accusations can be justified. Determining what facts are being held, who they are trying to influence and howler they trying to do it. Good PR people will always respond in some way. It is also a good approach to be prepared for crisis, have a crisis team who is able to respond appropriately to a problem at hand.
PR need to be proactive. The PR managers would be looking at controlling the processes so defensive activities are minimised. This is done by careful planning of the ways of influencing others before they are being exposed to criticism. The planning involves determining who need to be influences, how, and when.
Summarising a good PR will help the company to built a positive image. They will be able to counter bad opinions and publicity. They also work on improving the employee motivation and increase sales.
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