Chapter 10Marketing Communication Management

Learning objectives:• Discuss the nature and scope of the marketing communication mix• Discuss the following marketing communications tools: advertising, sales promotion, direct response marketing, sponsorship, personal selling, public relations and digital media marketing• Outline how the marketing communication campaign is planned• Discuss certain social, ethical and regulatory issues in marketing communication

• The process of communicating with consumers and customers is called: • Marketing communication (MC); or • Integrated brand promotion (IBP)

• IBP is defined as the process of using a wide range of promotional tools working together to create widespread brand exposure

• The MC mix consists of a blend of the following seven tools: • Advertising• Personal selling• Sales promotion• Direct response marketing• Public relations (PR)• Sponsorship• Digital media marketing

The marketing communication mix

• Advertising is any paid form of mass presentation of ideas, products or services by an advertiser, addressed to selected target audiences with the objective of creating awareness, informing, reminding, influencing or persuading them to buy the product or service or to be favourably inclined towards these ideas, products or services.

• Types of advertising – see table

• The role of advertising in brand equity:• Build brand awareness• Build brand association• Create perceived trust in quality of

the brand• Build brand reputation• Build brand loyalty

• Advertising media can be divided into:• Above-the-line media: print media (newspapers, magazines, etc.), electronic or broadcast media

(television and radio), cinema and out-of-home media (buses, hoardings, street poles, etc.)• Digital media: the World Wide Web, Internet, e-mail, mobile media, social media, viral and affiliate

marketing, etc.

The Marketing Communication tools: advertising

Advertising may be classified according to:

Purpose Target Audience

•Primary and selective demandBrand advertising•Corporate image advertising•Commercial / non-commercial advertising•Action / response advertising•Retail advertising

•Consumer advertising•Business-to-business advertising:

•Industrial advertising•Professional advertising•Trade advertising

Geographic area Medium

•National advertising•Regional advertising•Local advertising•International advertising

•Print advertising (newspapers and magazines)•Broadcast / electronic advertising (radio and television)•Out-of-home advertising and cinema•Digital (Internet, cell phones)

• Sales promotion is a blend of marketing communications activities and materials designed to intensify the efforts of the marketer’s sales force, induce intermediaries to stock and sell the marketer’s product offering, and/ or persuade consumers to buy the product offering within a specified, limited time period.

• Sales promotion objectives – should be realistic and connected to a time frame.

• Factors determining the sales promotion strategy include:• Product-related factors• Customer-related factors• Organisational-related factors• Situation-related factors

• When to use sales promotion – should be planned very carefully• The impact of sales promotion on sales:

• Brand switching• Repeat purchasing• Purchase acceleration• Category expansion

The Marketing Communication tools: sales promotions

• Direct response marketing is an interactive system of marketing designed to create and keep customers by developing long-term personal relationships with each of them through increasingly relevant product or service offerings. To achieve this, direct response marketing uses one or more advertising media to generate a measurable response in the form of an order, a request for further information and/ or a visit to a store or other place of business.

• The differences between direct response marketing and general marketing:

• The key elements of direct response marketing include: the right target market, the right offer, the right timing and the right creative appeal.

• The advantages of direct response marketing – the 7 A’s: accountable, added-value, answer-back, allegiance, automated, appropriate, action.

The Marketing Communication tools: direct response marketing

Direct Response Marketing General Marketing

This is selling to individuals – customers are identified by name, address and purchase behaviour

This is mass selling – buyers share common demographic, psychographic and lifestyle characteristics

Distribution is an important benefit Product benefits do not always include convenient distribution channels

The medium is the market place Retail outlet is the market place

The marketer controls the product until delivery The marketer loses control as the product enters the channel

Advertising is used to generate an immediate order or enquiry Advertising is used to create awareness and benefit recall – the purchase action is deferred

Repetition of offer is used within the advertisement Repetition of advertisements is used over time

Consumer may experience high perceived risk, as the product is bought unseen – recourse is distant

Consumers experience less risk – they have direct contact with the product and direct recourse

• Sponsorship is the alignment of a brand with an activity in order to exploit the commercial potential created by the association, thereby positively impacting brand image and/ or sales among the sponsor’s target market, in order to attain marketing and corporate objectives.

• Objectives can include to support an event, to achieve immense media exposure, to build relationships, to build brand equity and more.

• Sponsorship selection criteria include target market coverage, communication factors, timing/ seasonality, competitor activity, event profile, potential media exposure, product or brand relevance, image, budget/ costs, hospitality opportunities, return on sponsorship investment and exclusivity.

• Types of sponsorships include national teams, provincial teams, leagues, individual clubs, individual athletes, developments and multi sponsorship. A sponsorship can be technical sponsors in sport or licensing and merchandising sponsors.

• Benefits of sponsorships include flexibility, brand equity, media exposure, cost-effectiveness, industrial labour relations, opening doors, crossing all frontiers, presenting new challenges and uniting the nation.

• There could be potential pitfalls in regards with ignorance of contractual rights, ambush marketing, broadcast rights, staff, expenses, once-off sponsorships, agents and the media.

The Marketing Communication tools: sponsorship

• Personal selling is a person-to-person process by which the seller learns about the prospective buyer’s needs and wants, and seeks to satisfy them by offering suitable goods or services and making a sale.

• The art of persuasive communication includes two-way communication, asking questions (closed questions and open-ended questions), listening, observing body language and using ‘magic words’.

• Sales tasks include sales development, missionary selling, maintenance selling and support selling• Sales positions include a product delivery salesperson, inside order taker, goodwill builder, technical

expert, creative seller of tangible goods, creative seller of intangibles, key account selling and team selling.• The successful salesperson should have a keen understanding of the company history, executives and key

personnel, marketing policy, pricing and credit policy, customers and competitors, buying centre and gatekeepers.

• Advantages include focused attention, tailored messages, immediate feedback, complex information, demonstrations, customer education, relationship building, targeted prospects, expenses match requirements, closing the sale and bottom-line responsibility.

• Disadvantages include the small number of contacts, high costs per call and the negative impact of poor selling skills.

The Marketing Communication tools: personal selling

Ice Activity 1• You are a sales person for either Revlon

cosmetics at Clicks or Mica hardware.• A customer comes in browsing some of your

products. A. Write 5 prospective questions that you as a

sales person can ask the customer (not greeting questions)

B. The customer was persuaded to buy the product, how would you finish off the sales conversation?

• PR is the management, through communication, of perceptions and strategic relationships between an organisation and its internal and external stakeholders.

• PR vs. marketing: • PR has the goal of building and maintaining accord with stakeholders

on whom the organisation depends in order to achieve its mission.• Marketing has the goal of attracting and satisfying customers on a

sustained basis in order to achieve the organisation’s economic objectives.

• PR paves the way for marketing through various activities.• Specific PR functions include media relations and placement, organising,

writing, production, speaking and training.

The Marketing Communication tools: public relations (PR)

• Digital media marketing endeavours to provide information and to build and maintain customer relationships through online (digital) activities. The differences with digital and traditional media are interactivity and individuality. Above-the-line is one message to many, where digital marketing comprises of online information gathering, direct marketing, social interaction and customer feedback.

• The company website can be used as a communications tool for online news, community building and online polls.

• Search engine marketing is one of the most important digital marketing tools.• Online advertising includes horizontal banners, buttons, skyscrapers, fixed tiles, pop ups, pop-unders,

contextual links/ text advertisements, sponsorships, rich media, micro sites and ad features.• E-mail marketing can achieve great success when implemented correctly.• Citizen media includes blogs, podcasts, wiki’s, vlogs and moblogs.• Viral marketing is effective when it gives away products or services, provides for effortless transfer to

others, scales easily from small to very large, exploits common motivations and behaviours, uses existing communication networks and takes advantage of other peoples’ resources.

• Affiliate marketing is the online version of rewarding referrers for business and leads generated as a result of their efforts.

• Mobile marketing includes SMS, MMS, games and web mobile marketing.• Social media marketing includes blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and many more.

The Marketing Communication tools: digital media marketing

• Planning the MC campaign consists of seven main steps as displayed

Planning the marketing communications (MC) campaign

• Social aspects – MC tools are very influential in our everyday lives.• Ethical and regulatory aspects: ethics are moral standards and principles

against which certain behaviour can be assessed. The broad description of ethical behaviour will include aspects like honesty, integrity, fairness and sensitivity.

• There are three main types of self-regulation that industry may employ, including:

• Voluntary self-regulation• Mandated full self-regulation• Mandated partial self-regulation

• Ethical issues in advertising include: • Truth in MC • Advertising to children • Promoting controversial products

Social, ethical and regulatory issues in MC

• A number of trends are emerging in the field of MC, which marketers must be aware of and integrate into their MC strategy, where appropriate. These trends can include:• Traditional marketing methods are losing their grip on customers at

an alarming rate• Consumers have changed beyond recognition• Consumers today have far more control• Communication channels are exploding and fragmenting• Fragmentation of media

The future of MC

• You are the marketing manager for a graphic design company and you have to develop a marketing strategy for the following year. List the possible marketing communication tools that are available for use and then choose three of these tools that would be most effective for your company. Describe why you would mainly make use of these three tools.

(10)

• List the steps in a marketing communications campaign and explain shortly how it can be applied to your graphic design company.

(14)

• Explain three types of self-regulation that the industry may employ and give examples of issues that are under the spotlight today.

(6)