Page 239 - DMGT408DMGT203_Marketing Management

Marketing Management/Essentials of Marketing

Notes Advertising can be extremely cost effective because it can reach a large population at a low cost
per person and the message can be repeated several times. TV commercials combine movement,
visuals, sound, and colour. A company can attempt to enhance its own image and that of its
brand by including celebrity endorsers in its ads appearing in various media.
TV advertising is expensive in terms of actual target audience reached. TV commercials are
usually very brief to furnish meaningful information to audience. Advertising can rarely provide
rapid feedback, measuring its effect on sales is difficult. Advertising clutter in almost all media
is making advertising less capable of attracting consumer attention.
Sales Promotion: More recently, the Council of Sales Promotion Agencies has offered a more
comprehensive definition, “Sales promotion is a marketing discipline that utilises a variety of
incentive techniques to structure sales-related programmes targeted to customers, trade, and/
or sales levels that generate a specific, measurable action or response for a product or service.”

Example: Free samples, discounts, rebates, coupons, contests and sweepstakes, premiums,
scratch cards, exchange offers, early bird prizes, various trade deals, etc.
All such offers generally include specified limits, such as offer expiry date or a limited quantity
of merchandise. Sales promotions are aimed at either increasing immediate sales, to increase
support among marketer’s sales force, or gain the support of resellers of company product.
Personal Selling: Personal selling is a face-to-face paid personal communication and aims to
inform and persuade prospects and customers to purchase products, services, or accept ideas of
issues. It involves more specific communication aimed at one or several persons.

Example: Insurance companies, Eureka Forbes, some cosmetics brands, etc. use personal
selling.
Personal selling is most effective but also more expensive than other promotion mix elements.
It provides immediate feedback, allowing sellers to adjust their sales messages to improve the
impact on customers. Personal selling helps sales people to determine and respond to customers’
information needs and also interpret body language.

Public Relations and Publicity: Public relations is a broad set of communication activities
employed to create and maintain favourable relationships with employees, shareholders,
suppliers, media, educators, potential investors, financial institutions, government agencies
and officials, and society in general, such as annual reports, brochures, events sponsorship,
sponsorship of various programmes beneficial for society.
Publicity is a tool of public relations. It is non-personal mass communication, but not paid for by
the benefiting organisation for the media space or time. It appears in the form of news story
about an organisation, its products, or activities. Some common tools of publicity include news
releases, press conferences, and feature articles.
Unpleasant situations arising as a result of negative events may precipitate unfavourable public
reactions for an organisation. To minimise the negative effects of such situations leading to
unfavourable coverage, companies have policies and procedures in place to manage help any
such public relations problems.
Direct Marketing: Direct marketing is vending products to customers without the use of channel
members. It is a system by which firms communicate directly with target customers to generate
the response or transaction. The response may be to generate an inquiry, a purchase, or even a
vote. Direct marketing uses a set of direct-response media, such as direct mail, telephone,
interactive TV, print, Internet, etc. Through these media, direct marketers implement the
communication process.

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