Marketing Communications Quiz

Engaging Consumers and Communicating Customer Value: Advertising and Public Relations

• The promotion mix, also called the marketing communications mix, encompasses tools a company uses to engage customers, communicate value, and build relationships.

Promotion Mix

• A promotion mix, or marketing communications mix, is a specific blend of promotion tools.
• Components include advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations (PR), and direct and digital marketing.

Advertising & Personal Selling

• Advertising: Reaches a broad audience at a low cost per exposure, building long-term brand image and potentially triggering quick sales; viewed as legitimate but impersonal.
• Personal selling: Involves personal interaction between people, building various customer relationships, prompting buyers to listen and respond; very expressive but very expensive.

Sales Promotion, Public Relations & Digital

• Sales promotion: Utilizes many tools and unique qualities to attract attention and incentives for purchase, dramatizing product offers and boosting sales; often creates short-lived effects.
• Public relations (PR): Highly believable to readers, often dramatizing companies or products to reach many prospects economically; well-thought out PR can be effective.
• Direct and digital marketing: More targeted and interactive; this marketing can be an effective and efficient way to communicate with customers.

New Marketing Communications Model

• Factors changing today's marketing communications include changing consumer behavior, changing marketing strategies, advances in digital technology, marketers reaching smaller consumer segments, the mixed use of traditional and digital media, and content marketing managers creating brand messages and conversations.

Content Marketing

• Marketers are becoming content marketing managers, creating, inspiring, and sharing brand messages and conversations across paid, owned, earned, and shared media.
• Content marketing encompasses blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, social media, memes, user-generated content, and newsletters.

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

• IMC involves carefully coordinating and integrating company communications to deliver a consistent and clear message about the organization and its brands.
• IMC blends various promotion tools (advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, PR, direct, and digital marketing) to deliver a unified message.

Major Advertising Decisions

• Objectives: Communication, sales objectives.
• Budget: Affordable, percentage of sales, competitive parity, objective and task.
• Message: Message strategy, message execution.
• Media: Impact and engagement, major media types, specific media vehicles, media timing.
• Evaluation: Communication impact, sales and profit impact, return on advertising.

Advertising Objective

• A specific communication task for a target audience within a time frame.
• Objectives can concentrate on reminding (RIP), informing, or persuading customers.

Setting the Advertising Budget

• An advertising budget encompasses dollars and other resources allocated for product or company advertising programs.
• GEICO is highlighted as an example, spending over US$1 billion annually on its successful advertising campaigns.

Methods to Set Advertising Budget

• Affordable method: Sets the budget at a manageable level.
• Percentage-of-sales method: Uses a certain percentage of current or forecasted sales.
• Competitive-parity method: Aligns budget with competitors' spending.
• Objective-and-task method: Defines objectives, determines required tasks, and estimates costs; considered the most logical, but also the most complex method.

Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness

• Advertisers routinely evaluate communication and sales/profit effects.
• Return on advertising investment (ROAI) calculates net return divided by advertising investment costs.

Advertising Strategy

• Two main elements: creating advertising messages and selecting advertising media.

Creating Advertising Message and Brand Content

• Creating advertising messages and brand content requires breaking through advertising clutter, melding advertising and entertainment, and ensuring message and brand content strategy, message execution, and user-generated content align.

Selecting Advertising Media

• Advertising media vehicles deliver advertising messages to target audiences.
• Steps for media selection include determining reach, frequency, and impact; choosing media types; selecting specific vehicles; and determining timing.

Profiles of Major Media Types

• Profiles of major media types involve considering factors such as cost per exposure, coverage, selectivity (e.g., target audience reach), exposure duration, and production quality. Examples include; television, digital/social media, newspapers, direct mail, magazines, radio, and outdoor.

Public Relations (PR)

• Building good relations with a company's various publics; stakeholders, the media, consumers, investors, and communities are crucial.
• Tools for PR include news releases, special events, written materials, videos, corporate identity materials, and public service announcements.

Role and Impact of PR

• PR exerts a strong impact on public awareness at reduced costs compared to advertising.
  • PR involves engaging consumers, making them a part of the brand's story, and fostering conversations.
  • Limited and scattered PR use is a factor.

Test your knowledge on the promotion mix and marketing communications strategies. This quiz covers topics such as advertising, personal selling, and integrated marketing communications. Discover key concepts and differences to enhance your understanding of effective marketing.