Chapter 14: Engaging Consumers and Communicating Customer Value

Promotion mix (or marketing communications mix)

The specific blend of promotion tools that the company uses to persuasively communicate customer value and build customer relationships.

Advertising

Any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.

Sales promotion

Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or a service.

Personal selling

Personal presentations by the firm's sales force for the purpose of engaging customers, making sales, and building customer relationships.

Public relations (PR)

Activities designed to engage the company's various publics and build good relations with them.

Content marketing

Creating, inspiring, and sharing brand messages and conversations with and among consumers across a fluid mix of paid, owned, earned, and shared communications channels and media.

Integrated marketing communications (IMC)

Carefully integrating and coordinating the company's communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling brand and company message.

Five As

The five customer journey stages on the path from awareness of a brand to advocating it to others: awareness, appeal, ask, act, and advocacy.

Personal communication channels

Media that carry messages with minimal personal contact or feedback, including major media, atmospheres, and events.

Word-of-mouth influence

The impact of the personal words and recommendations of trusted friends, family, associates, and other consumers on buying behavior.

Buzz marketing

Cultivating opinion leaders and getting them to spread information about a product or a service to others in their communities.

Nonpersonal communication channels

Media that carry messages with minimal personal contact or feedback, including major media, atmospheres, and events.

Affordable method

Setting the promotion budget at the level management thinks the company can afford.

Percentage-of-sales method

Setting the promotion budget at a certain percentage of current or forecasted sales.

Competitive-parity method

Setting the promotion budget to match competitors' outlays.

Objective-and-task method

Developing the promotion budget by (1) defining specific promotion objectives, (2) determining the tasks needed to achieve these objectives, and (3) estimating the costs of performing these tasks. The sum of these costs is the proposed promotion budget.

Push strategy

A promotion strategy that calls for using the sales force and trade promotion to push the product through channels.

Pull strategy

A promotion strategy that calls for targeting consumer advertising, promotion, and other content at final consumers to induce them to engage with and buy the product, creating a demand vacuum that "pulls" the product through the channel.