week 13

Integrated Marketing Communication

• Refers to the coordination of promotion and other marketing efforts to ensure maximum informational and persuasive impact on customers.

• Marketers can now use targeted tools like TV, direct mail, the Internet, special interest magazines, smartphones, mobile apps, social media, and outdoor boards. Database marketing and analytics help them precisely target individual customers.

• Integrated marketing communications are more effective today as mass media advertising, once popular, is now less used due to high costs and lower
  effectiveness in reaching target markets.

Communication Process

• Communication is the transmission of information.

• Communication is a sharing of meaning.

• Communication begins with a source. A source is a person, group, or organization with a meaning it attempts to share with an audience.

Receiver

• the individual, group, or organization that decodes a coded message, and an audience is two or more receivers.

Coding Process or Encoding

• To transmit meaning, a source must convert the meaning into a series of signs or symbols representing ideas or concepts. This is called the

• When coding meaning into a message, the source must consider certain characteristics of the receiver or audience

Decoding Process

• signs or symbols are converted into concepts and ideas.

• Seldom does a receiver decode exactly the same meaning the source intended.

• When the result of decoding differs from what was coded, noise exists.

Noise

• is anything that reduces the clarity and accuracy of the communication; it has many sources and may affect any or all parts of the communication process.

Transmission Media

• include printed words (newspaper and magazines), broadcast media (TV and radio), and digital communication.

Communication Process2

• The receiver's response to a decoded message is feedback.

• The source usually expects and normally receives feedback, although perhaps not immediately.

• During feedback, the receiver or audience provides the original source with a response to the message.

• Feedback is coded, sent through a communications channel, and decoded by the receiver

Promotion

is communication that builds and maintains favorable relationships by informing and persuading one or more audiences to view an organization positively and accept its products.

Create Awareness

• A considerable amount of promotion efforts focus on creating awareness.

Stimulate Demand

• When an organization introduces an innovative product, it aims to stimulate primary demand for the product category, not just a specific brand, through pioneer promotion.

• Pioneer promotion informs potential customers about the product: what it is, what it does, now it can be used, and where it can be purchased.

Encourage Product Trial

• A marketer may create awareness and interest, but customers often stall at the evaluation stage of product adoption.

• In this case, certain types of promotion - such as free samples, coupons, test drives, or limited free-use offers, contests, and games - are employed to BLANK

Identify Prospects

• Certain types of promotional efforts aim to identify customers who are interested in the firm's products and are likely potential buyers.

• A marketer may run a TV ad urging viewers to visit the company's website and share personal info to receive something valuable.

• Customers who respond to such a message usually have a higher interest in the product, which makes them likely sales prospects.

• The organization can respond with phone calls, e-mail, or personal contact by salespeople.

Retain Loyal Customers

• Clearly, maintaining long-term customer relationships is a major goal of most marketers.

• Such relationships are quite valuable.

• Promotional efforts directed at customer retention can help an organization control its costs because the costs of retaining customers are usually considerably lower than those of acquiring new ones

Facilitate Reseller Support

• Reseller support is a two-way street: producers generally want to provide support to resellers to assist in selling their products, and in turn, they expect resellers to support their products.

• When a manufacturer advertises a product to consumers, resellers should view this promotion as a form of strong manufacturer support.

Combat Competitive Promotional Efforts

• At times, a marketer's objective in using promotion is to offset or lessen the effect of a competitor's promotional or marketing programs.

• This type of promotional activity does not necessarily increase the organization's sales and market share, but it may prevent a sales or market share loss.

Reduce Sales Fluctuations

• Demand for many products varies from one month to another because of such factors as climate, holidays, and seasons.

• A business, however, cannot operate at peak efficiency when sales fluctuate rapidly.

• Changes in sales volume translate into changes in production, inventory levels, personnel needs, and financial resources.

Promotion Mix

• Several promotional methods can be used to communicate with individuals, groups, and organizations.

• When organizations combine specific methods to manage the integrated marketing
  communications for a particular product, that combination constitutes the promotion mix for that product.

• The four possible elements of a promotion mix are advertising, personal selling, public relations, and sales promotion.

Advertising

is a paid non-personal communication about an organization and its products transmitted to a target audience through mass media, including television, radio, the Internet, newspapers, magazines, video games, direct mail, outdoor displays, and signs on mass transit vehicles.

Advertising Offers Several Benefits

• Extremely cost-efficient when it reaches a vast number of people at a low cost per person

• Let the source repeat the message several times

• Advertising can add to the product's value, and visibility of the organization; and enhance its image

Advertising has its advantages as well

• High costs can limit and sometimes oreclude, the use of advertising ir he promotion mix

• Advertising rarely provides feedback

Personal Selling

is a paid personal communication that seeks to inform customers and persuade them to purchase in an exchange situation.

(BLANK) has advantages

• Involves more specific communication directed at one or
  several individuals

• It may be more costly to reach one person, but it has a greater impact
  on customers

• Provides immediate feedback

Public Relations

• Promotional activities towards the firm's other stakeholders - suppliers, employees, stockholders, the media, educators, potential investors, government officials, and society in general - are also important to an organization as well.

• (BLANK) - is a broad set of communication efforts used to create and maintain favorable relationships between an organization and its stakeholders.

• Maintaining positive relationships with one or more stakeholders can affect a firm's current sales and profits, as well as its long-term survival.

• The goal of (BLANK) is to create and enhance a positive image of the organization.

Sales Promotion

an activity or material that acts as a direct inducement, offering added value or incentive for the product to resellers, salespeople, or consumers.