1.2. The Elements Of Marketing Communications

Central to the definition of marketing communications is the notion that all marketing mix variables, not just the promotional variable alone, communicate with customers. The definition suggests that marketing communications can be either intentional, as in the case of advertising and personal selling, or unintentional, as when a product feature, package cue, or price symbolizes something to customers that the marketing communicator may not have intended.

Marketers have many tactics at their disposal, and the best marketers use them in appropriate ways to maximize the impact of their communications activities. A very basic taxonomy of promotional tools is the four-way division into advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and personal selling. This taxonomy is really too simplistic; each of the elements subdivides further, and there are several elements which don’t readily fit into these categories.

Table 1 lists some of the elements of the mix.

The primary tools used by most companies in their marketing communications activities are personal selling, mass and direct advertising, sales promotions, publicity, sponsorship marketing, and point-of-purchase communications. To avoid later confusion, the following brief definitions will clarify the specific sense in which each of these terms will be used.

Personal selling is a form of person-to-person communication in which a seller attempts to persuade prospective buyers to purchase the company’s products or services. Historically, personal selling involved primarily face-to-face interactions, but, increasingly, telephone sales and other forms of electronic communication are being used.

Table 1. Elements of the communications mix

Element	Explanation
Advertising	A paid insertion of a message in a medium.
Ambient advertising	Message placed on items such as bus tickets, stamp franking, till receipts, petrol pump nozzles and so forth.
Press advertising	Any paid message that appears in a newspaper or magazine.
TV advertising	Commercial messages shown in the breaks between TV programmes.
Radio advertising	Sound-only advertisements broadcast on radio.
Outdoor ads	Billboards, bus shelters, flyposters etc.
Transport ads	Posters in stations and inside buses and trains.
Outside transport ads	Posters on buses and taxis, and in some countries the sides of trains.
Press releases	New stories about a firm or its products.
Public relations	The planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.
Sponsorship	Funding of arts events, sporting events etc. in exchange for publicity and prestige.
Sales promotion	Activities designed to give a temporary boost to sales, such as money-off coupons. Free samples, two-for-the-price-of-one promotions etc.
Personal selling	Face-to-face communications between buyers and sellers designed to ascertain and meet customers’ needs on a one-to-one basis.
Database marketing	Profiling customers onto a database and sending out personalised mailings or other communications to them.
Telemarketing	Inbound (helpline, telephone ordering) or outbound (telecanvassing, teleselling) telephone calls.
E-commerce	Use of websites to promote and/or sell product.
Off-the-screen-selling	Using TV-adverts linked to inbound telephone operations to sell goods.
Exhibitions and trade fairs	Companies take stands at trade fairs to display new products, meet consumers and customers, and raise the company profile with interested parties.
Corporate identity	The overall image that the company projects; the company’s ‘personality’.
Branding	The mechanism by which marketing communications are coordinated.

Advertising involves either mass communication via newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and other media (such as billboards) or direct communication that is pinpointed to each business-to-business customer or ultimate consumer. Both forms of advertising are paid for by an identified sponsor (the advertiser), but are considered to be non-personal because the sponsoring firm is simultaneously communicating with multiple receivers, perhaps millions, rather than with a specific person or small group. Direct advertising, also called database marketing, has experienced huge growth in recent years due to the effectiveness of targeted communications and the computer technology that has made it possible.

Sales promotion consists of all marketing activities that attempt to stimulate quick buyer action, or immediate sales of a product. In comparison, advertising is designed to accomplish other objectives, such as creating brand awareness and influencing customer attitudes. Sales promotions are directed both at the trade (wholesalers and retailers) and consumers. Trade-oriented sales promotion includes the use of various types of display allowances, quantity discounts, and merchandise assistance to encourage wholesaler and retailer response. Consumer-oriented sales promotions involve the use of coupons, premiums, free samples, contests/ sweepstakes, and rebates. As we will discuss in subsequent chapters, expenditures on sales promotion have grown in recent years at a more rapid rate than advertising investments.

Sponsorship marketing is the practice of promoting the interests of a company and its brands by associating the company or a brand with a specific event (such as a tennis tournament or festival) or charitable cause (such as the United Way).

Publicity, like advertising, describes nonpersonal communication to a mass audience; but unlike advertising, the sponsoring company does not pay for advertising time or space. Publicity usually assumes the form of news items or editorial comments about a company’s products or services. These items or comments receive free print space or broadcast time because media representatives consider the information pertinent and newsworthy for their audiences. It is in this sense that publicity is «not paid for» by the company receiving its benefits.

Point-of-purchase communications encompass displays, posters, signs, and a variety of other materials that are designed to influence buying decisions at the point of purchase. Two additional and integral elements of point-of-purchase communications are packaging and brand naming.

The management of marketing communications is, then, the practice of coordinating these various elements, setting objectives for what the elements are intended to accomplish, establishing budgets that are sufficient to support the objectives, designing specific programs (such as advertising campaigns) to accomplish objectives, evaluating their performance, and taking corrective action when results do not meet the objectives.