CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ELEMENT OF PROMOTION
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Define promotion
2. List and explain promotion mix variables
PROMOTION DEFINED
Promotion is any form of communication a firm uses to inform its target customers about its product and services. Put differently, promotion is the most visible part of marketing that involves the use of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations and direct marketing to inform, persuade, and remind the market about a product, services, ideas, persons, events and other offers.
INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION
Integrated marketing Communication (IMC) is a concept that explains the need for firms and marketers to use two or more elements of communication during any product promotion campaign and to ensure that all the promotion elements consist and convey uniform message about a product or an organization. The idea is that, each of the promotional elements of marketing can be an effective communication tool for certain groups of customers; that is, one element cannot be effective in all cases. IMC also suggests that, when one product message is communicated to target consumers via internet banner, billboard, football sponsorship, television adverts, press release, telemarketing, personal selling, and point-of-purchase displays, the message becomes more understandable, reinforced, persuasive and compelling to the audience. Thus, Kotler and Armstrong (2006) define IMC as the careful integration and coordination of many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent and compelling message about the organization or its product. Clear message means that the promotion campaign should contain simple and short sentences, languages understandable by the audience, and simple illustrations that can be easily decoded by the target audience to influence purchase decisions. Consistent message means that promotional campaigns through advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relation and direct marketing channels should convey the same message. Compelling message means that a promotion campaign should be convincing and persuasive enough to stimulate buying actions.
MARKETING COMMUNICATION PROCESS
Communication, which is the process of using words, sounds, or visual cues to exchange information between two or more people, is made up of a set of sequential steps called communication process. Thus, communication process refers to the parties, tools and functions involved in every effective communication. By extension, marketing communication process (MCP) describes the stages marketers follow in developing and transmitting product messages to the target consumers, and obtaining feedback in an environment that may be polluted with noises, which could distort the intended meaning of a message. MCP includes sender, encoding, message, decoding, receiver, response, feedback, and noise.
i. Sender: This refers to the communicator and in most cases, the marketer. The promotion message usually originates from the marketer. A customer becomes the sender when he/she gives feedback or initiates marketing communication.
ii. Encoding: This refers to the process by which a sender/marketer codes his/her intentions, ideas and thoughts in symbols (alphabets, words, figures, pictures, graphs, sounds, intonations, signs) that can be easily decoded and understood by the target customers/audience. It is important to note that customers can also encode message.
iii. Message: This refers to a set of symbols (a copy, an illustration, audio, and audio-visual presentations) that the sender or marketer transmits to the target consumers/recipients.
iv. Media: This has to do with the channel through which message is transmitted to the consumers. Examples of the media channels are radio, television, billboard, internet, and newspapers.
v. Decoding: This is concerned with the interpretation of the encoded message. In other words, decoding is the process by which the receiver or target customer assigns meaning to the symbols encoded by the sender. Marketers may perform decoding function when customers initiate the marketing communication.
vi. Receiver: This refers to the target audience or recipients of the message sent by the sender. In marketing communication, this party represents the customer but may also be the marketer.
vii. Response: The reaction of the receiver to marketing message in terms of purchases, referrals, or enquiries.
viii. Feedback: The listening ability of the sender or marketer to gather information about the consumers’ response. It may also be regarded as a portion of the sender/customer’s response that is communicated to the marketer.
ix. Noise: All forms of distractions that distort the intended meaning of a message during encoding, transmission and decoding stages of communication.
MARKETING COMMUNICATION MIX
Marketing communication mix is also called promotion mix. It refers to a set of communication tools that a company uses to achieve its marketing communication objectives. These are:
i. Advertising;
ii. Sales promotion;
iii. Public relations;
iv. Personal selling; and
v. Direct marketing.
ADVERTISING
A popular adage says: “if you do not blow your trumpet, nobody will do it for you”. This explains why companies pay for space and time in mass media like television, radio, newspaper and magazine in order to tell their product stories to the target market. Therefore, advertising can be defined as any sponsored commercial announcement about a specific company’s product, services, idea, or event in mass media to specific market segment(s) in order to create awareness, patronage and sales. Put differently, advertising is any prepared and controlled product commercial sponsored by a company and communicated to the target customer audience through electronic or print media with the primary aim of influencing consumers to buy. Advertising involves purchase of media space and time by any company to facilitate promotion of its products, services, ideas, persons, and events to a large number of target audiences for the realization of sales goals.
Features of advertising
The characteristics of advertising that makes it distinct or similar to other promotional tools are itemized and explained below:
1. The message source: This refers to a firm that sponsors an advertisement. It may also refer to individual(s) employed by a firm to present and/or act the message, for example, popular celebrities such as sport stars and movie stars.
2. The signature/advertiser: This refers strictly to a firm whose products are advertised.
3. Mass media: The medium of communication, for example, newspaper house, television station, radio station, magazine publishers, and outdoor platforms (e.g. bill boards, public spaces, etc).
4. Advertising agency: This refers to an independent company that specializes in designing advertisement messages.
5. Recipients/audience: The recipients of the advertisement message are the members of the target market. For examples, members of the market for whom the advertisement is packaged.
6. Non-personal: Advertising differs from personal selling in the sense that it does not involve face-to-face interaction between sales persons and prospects.
7. One-way communication: Advertising is a one-way communication from the manufacturer to the consumers, while personal selling involves two-way communication between manufacturer’s sales representatives and prospective consumers (i.e. presenting the product and responding to questions).
8. Controlled message/presentation: What to say during the advertisement, who and how to say the message are usually designed, acted, recorded, programmed and tested before real implementation. So, it is not flexible like personal selling and public relation tools that can extend or reduce the presentation time to suit a particular situation.
9. Message contents: This addresses the issue of what to say in advertisement to gain the attention, concentration, understanding and response of the targeted consumers. The options available to the advertiser are rational appeal, emotional appeal or moral appeal approaches. In rational appeals, the unique benefits of a product are presented such as quality, economy, and performance. Emotional appeals adverts use presentation styles that stimulate the positive emotions of the consumers (love, humour, and happiness) and put them in a state of wanting to buy in order to experience or share love and happiness. This is common with car, beverage and décor adverts. Emotional appeals advert at times arouse the negative emotions of the consumers (fear, shame) to make them see reasons to buy. This is common with antiseptics’ adverts and sanitary pads. Moral appeal adverts try to caution the target consumers on the right and wrong behaviors and how such behaviours affect people and environment. Adverts on climate protection and child labour are good examples.
10. Message format: This has to do with the arrangement and presentation of an advertisement in terms of the headline or caption, copy (main message), illustration (picture), colour, sound (music and jingle), voice, gesture, movement, and posture, etc.
11. Message structure: Most product have positive and negative sides, the advertising dilemma is: “do you present either the positive benefits or the negative effects of a product (one-sided argument) in an advert? Or both (two-sided argument)?”. In practice, one-sided argument is the most widely used especially where the recipients are not highly educated. However, two-sided approach becomes necessary when companies are mandated by law to present the side effects of a product to the public during advertisement as obtainable in drugs, packaged foods, and herbicides.
Objectives of Advertising
Advertising is generally aimed at informing, persuading, reminding or reinforcing consumers about a particular offer.
1. Informative advertising: This is aimed at creating awareness about a new product in terms of brand name, features, functions, performance, price and retail outlets. It is heavily used when introducing a new product. However, it can also be used in increasing awareness for an existing product, especially when an existing product is introduced in a new market.
2. Persuasive advertising: This is aimed at creating strong likeness, preference, and conviction that leads to the purchase of a product or services. Persuasive advertising is adopted when a company’s product is faced with increased intense competition. To beat competition, comparative advertising in which a company compares the features of one brand with others can be used.
3. Reminder advertising: Here, the aim is to encourage repeat purchase of a company’s existing product or services. Brand advertising without any accompanying messages on billboards, TV, and newspaper are good examples. Reminder advertising is used for mature products.
4. Reinforcement advertising: This is aimed to assure present customers that they have taken right decision in purchasing the company’s product in the past and the same purchasing decisions should be made now and in the future.
Advantages of Advertising
Advertising provides numerous advantages to firms, current and prospective consumers, and advertising agencies. Some of the advantages are stated as follows:
1. Advertising facilitates mass dissemination of product information to consumers at the same time since it relies on mass media like television, radio and newspaper.
2. It can be repeated severally over a long time thereby increasing the chance of reaching and influencing members of the target market.
3. It can be transmitted via any media vehicle (radio, television, or newspaper) depending on the prevailing situation (e.g. advertising objective, company resources, and target audiences’ access to radio and television networks).
4. Television adverts has added advantage of incorporating product, the presenter, the verbal message, sound, and other artistic work, which make communication more effective.
5. It complements sales promotion programmes. That is, sales promotion progammes like trade fairs, displays, coupons, and rebates need to be advertised for them to be effective.
6. It often generates publicity. That is, effective advertisements are carried as news.
7. It supplements personal selling. That is, salespeople find it easy to sell when product awareness has been created among the prospects.
8. It is flexible in the sense that it can be designed to inform, redesigned to persuade, and further re-designed to remind consumers.
9. It influences purchases and boost sales.
10. It is a profession that creates jobs for many people.
11. It educates people and makes them live better life.
12. It entertains and reduces body stress.
13. It generates revenue to the government, especially when advertising agencies are levied taxes.
Disadvantages of Advertising
Advertising may fail to yield the desired results as enumerated below:
1. Advertising is usually very expensive, and only financially strong companies can afford to use it.
2. Most adverts are puffs (exaggerated opinion and not facts) that mislead consumers to buy products that cannot satisfy their needs. In true sense, some of the advertised products cannot offer value for money.
3. In trying to reduce risk to life through advertising, immoral behaviour is further encouraged in the society. For example, the advertisement of condom to avoid HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases tends to encourage fornication and adultery.
4. Advertising influences people to buy more than they can afford at a time, thereby encouraging waste of scarce resources and throwing people into a state of penury, lack, frustration, and debtors.
5. Advertising inflates prices of goods and services in the market at the expense of consumers. This is because advertising is an expenditure that has to be recovered by a firm through apportioning the cost to unit prices of goods and services.
6. Advertisers often use deceptive and misleading messages in the name of creativity, which favor the sellers but work against the interest of the consumers.
7. Advertising to minors or children can be very dangerous. Clearly, a child without income and developed capacity of reasoning and deciding can, after being stimulated by an advert, resort to stealing.
8. Some adverts are fraudulent in nature, for examples, false promises, false testimonials, false comparisons, and partial disclosures.
9. Some adverts can be offensive and irritating. For example, using nudity to advertise female sanitary pad, underwear, and contraceptives can be irritating or unacceptable in some culture.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ADVERTISING AND ADVERTISEMENT
Advertising and advertisement, like many marketing terms (e.g. consumer vs. customers, communication vs. promotion, and needs vs. wants), are used interchangeably in daily communication despite sharp conceptual distinction. The distinctions between the two terms are contained in Table 13.1.
Table 13.1: Distinctions between Advertising and Advertisement
Advertising | Advertisement |
Advertising is a process of compiling an advertisement. | Advertisement is the end product of advertising. |
Involves activities before an advertisement (e.g. target market, objectives and budget), during advertisement (e.g. implementation), and after advertisement (e.g. monitoring, measuring and evaluating the effectiveness of advertisement). | Advertisement refers to every single announcement on television or radio. |
Advertising is a broader concept; it encompasses advertisement. | Advertisement is a narrower concept; it is embedded in advertising. |
GUIDELINES ON ADVERTISEMENTS AND PROMOTIONS IN NIGERIA
The guidelines on advertisements and promotions in Nigeria are contained in the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Act of 2003. Under section 2 of the Act, important terms are identified and explained as follows:
§ Advertisement: “any message, the content of which is controlled directly or indirectly by the advertiser, expressed in any language and communicated in any medium with the intent to influence their (consumers) choice, opinion or behavior”.
§ Promotion: “any message, the content of which is controlled directly or indirectly by the advertiser, expressed in any language and communicated in any medium with the intent to influence their (consumers) choice, opinion or behavior in order to receive a reward or benefit”.
§ Commission: “Nigerian Communication Commission”.
§ Licensee: “any person who holds an operating license issued by the Commission”.
Minimum Standards and Requirements for Advertisement
Section 3(a) of the NCC Act which deals with “standards and requirements” partly states that:
i. The licensee shall attach a detailed report of the advertisement clearly specifying the goods and/or services and the target consumers.
ii. The licensee shall, if the goods and services on which an advertised claim or representation depends can be tested by survey or data, provide such data which must be reasonably competent and reliable, reflecting the true and accepted principles of such research.
iii. The licensee must adhere to set standards for quality and grade of service set by the commission. Etc.
Section 3(b) of the NCC Act which deals with “pricing” states that:
i. The licensee must communicate all prices and financial implications clearly and have no hidden or disguised price adjustments, discounts, unrealistic price comparisons or exaggerated claims as to worth or value. Advertising with complicated price structures and information shall not only appear in transient types of media such as radio and television but must be accompanied with detailed print media explanations, and on the licensee’s website. The transient media must specifically instruct consumers to see the print mediums for details.
Section 3(c) of the NCC Act made the following pronouncements regarding “advertorial medium”:
i. The licensee shall be required to make advertisements and advertisements for promotion only via print, radio, mail, licensee’s website, text messages, electronic mail (where permitted by recipient to send such promotional material), and/or visual media, with accuracy and clarity of the goods and services being offered.
ii. No advertisement or advertisement for a promotion shall contain any obscenities or profanities unsuitable for young persons and children or contain any racial or prejudicial content relating to national origin, religion, sex, gender or age.
Section 3(d) of the Act deals with “comparative advertising” and states:
i. Advertisement must not unfairly discredit, disparage or attack other products, services, advertisements or companies, or exaggerated the nature or importance of competitive differences.
ii. No licensee shall imitate the slogans or illustrations of another advertiser in such a manner as to mislead the consumer.
Laws on “internet connections” are contained in Section 3(e) of the NCC Act. It states:
i. Licensees offering internet connections should state the internet connection speed available to end-users as well as specific upload and download speed. If the connection speed quoted is only obtainable under special circumstances, then the circumstances should be clearly stated.
SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
1. Define advertising and state its features?
2. Why is advertising the most visible aspect of marketing?
3. Compare and contrast advertising and marketing.
4. Argue for or against: “advertising do more good than bad to the society”.
5. Compare and contrast advertising and advertisement.
SALES PROMOTION
Sales promotion is any short-time marketing prgramme by a company that causes excitement and encourages immediate purchase of a firm’s products and services. It can also be regarded as a variety of short-term incentives that encourage trial purchase of a product or services. It includes contests, games, lotteries, premiums and gifts, samples, fairs and trade shows, exhibits, demonstrations, coupons, rebates (cash refund offers) and entertainments, among others.
Sales promotion is usually used together with advertising. Advertising offers reasons to buy a given product or services while sales promotion offers incentives to buy now.
Objectives of Sales Promotion
Sales promotion seeks to achieve the following major objectives:
i. Trial purchase: A free sample to consumers can stimulate trial-purchase now and repeat-purchase later.
ii. Build long-term customer relationship: When free management-advisory or consultancy service is offered to retailers and consumers, it tends to build and cement long-term relationship between a company and its customers.
iii. Introduce a new product: Sales promotion is used to accelerate the introduction and acceptance of new products and services. For example, product samples encourage trial of new products, which may lead to repeat-purchase by the consumers; trade fare enables a company to demonstrate and introduce a new product into a new a geographical area.
iv. Create demand for seasonal goods: Sales promotion can boost sales especially during periods of low demand. For example, discounts and allowances encourage off-season buying. The off-season for umbrella is harmattan season – period of no-rain and little sunlight; demand for umbrella during this season is naturally low but can be increased through sales promotions.
v. Increase repurchase rates: Sales promotion often stimulate current users of a particular product to buy more of the product during sales promotion programmes such as bonuses, premiums, rebates, contests, games, and sweepstakes, etc.
vi. Reward loyal customers: It is important to appreciate and reward customers who stick to company products despite competitive appeals. Free gifts, bonuses and patronage rewards are good examples of sales promotion techniques that reward customers.
vii. Attract new customers: Sales promotion can be effective in attracting new customers from the competitors, especially if the switching cost is low and other switching barriers are non-existence or less cumbersome. This is a common practice in the Nigerian GSM industry, where consumers often abandon subscription or sim-cards of Company ABC and switch-on to a new Company XYZ in order to enjoy free calls for say, three months.
viii. Increase sales: The ultimate objective of sales promotion to a company is to increase sales and profit in the short-run and in the long-run. The short run gains are the additional sales from sales promotion period that exceed what obtains in non-sales promotion periods; examples are price-cut sales promotion techniques. The long run sales benefits results from the use of free gifts (which is a cost to the company) that gradually increase brand equity, company image and reputation, and translates to customer retention, loyalty and sustainable patronage.
Characteristics of Sales Promotion
i. Short-term: Sales promotion activities usually have lifespan of three months to six months. In rare cases, the duration may be shorter than three months (e.g. trade shows, displays and galore) or longer than six months (e.g. trade promotions).
ii. Reward: Rewards are embedded in sales promotion to show appreciation to customers for their patronage. Good examples are ‘patronage reward’ for consumers who purchase firm’s product regularly, and ‘sales reward’ given to employees who meets sales target or quota. Rewards cement strong and lasting relationship between a firm and its customers, as well as employees.
iii. Incentives: This is very similar to reward package but different in the sense that it is targeted at the new prospects in order to win their patronage.
iv. Advertising: Sales promotion activities require publicity about the conditions or requirements for consumer participation as well as the duration of the programmes. Thus, radio and television advertisements are used to create publicity about a sales promotion activity.
v. Targeted at consumers, distributors, sales force, and industries: Majority of sales promotion programmes are targeted at the final consumers (e.g. soap users); many are targeted at the marker intermediaries (e.g. soap retailers); others are targeted at company sales people.
SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
1. Compare and contrast sales promotion and advertising.
2. What are the main objectives of sales promotion?
PUBLIC RELATIONS
Public Relation (PR), as the name implies, is concerned with the study of how organizations should relate with the public groups such as consumers, labour unions, government, investors, community and the like in order to continue to gain public support, endorsement and trust for the business to succeed. Public Relations Institute of Australia (2010) defines PR as a deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its publics. PR is the management process whose goal is to attain and maintain accord and positive behavior among social groupings on which an organization depends in order to achieve its mission.
The definition of PR above suggests that PR share the following features:
i. Management process: PR is not just an event but also a cyclical chain of events that involves analysis of public interests and concerns, setting communication objectives, choosing the medium of communication, implementing the plans and evaluating performance against targets.
ii. Deliberate activity: PR is not impromptu and haphazard task, but a conscious exercise or assignment. It is intended rather than spontaneous. In fact, PR is a management function, which entails that a position, tasks, responsibilities, and resources must be created, assign or appropriated to it in every organization.
iii. Planned activity: PR is a systematized, organized and coordinated set of activities aimed at building corporate reputation. PR plans are long-term in nature.
iv. Sustained effort: Since public interest is enduring and metamorphosing, PR strategies and efforts has to be refined and re-sharpened periodically to address existing and emerging public interests and concerns that may affect the organization negatively.
v. Create mutual understanding: PR involves two-way communications between the organization and the public. This is to enable companies get the public views, opinions, concerns, complaints, interests and demands about its activities (product, employment, pollution, waste management, pricing, etc), and react by way of providing explanations and justification for certain action as well as plans to adjust policies and practices to cater for the needs and concerns of the public. In other words, PR should be beneficial to both parties – the organization and the public.
vi. Achieve organizational mission and objectives: PR is a means to an end and not an end in itself. It is a tool used by business managers to stimulate positive and favourable interest in their organization in order to gain public acceptance, support, partnership and patronage required to achieve predetermined goals such as employee job satisfaction, product quality, sales turnover, environmentally friendly product, customer satisfaction, profit maximization, shareholders value maximization, market leadership, and social responsibility, etc. The extent to which organizations are able to achieve their set goals (performance) will determine its image and reputations in the eyes of the public.
vii. The organization: Organizations are entities that engage in PR. They hire PR experts to work in PR Departments. PR officials create publicity and manage crisis or disturbances from the public by means of information dissemination, among others.
viii.The public: This refers to any group that has interest in an organization – customers, employees’ union, government, community, financiers, investors, shareholders, and environmentalists. Customers’ interest is on fair price and product safety; employees’ are interested in fair wages, job security and industrial safety; government expects companies to comply with tax laws and product standards; communities are worried about pollution, waste and land allocation and make demands for social responsibility, scholarship and employment quota; financiers are after prompt payment or settlement of debts and interests; investors and shareholders are interested in annual profit, dividend and stock price; and environmentalists wants organizations to preserve and not destroy animals, plants, trees, ozone layer, and rivers.
PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC RELATIONS
Principles of public relations provide professional rules to guide PR practices. Page (n.d.) identified six principles of PR:
i. Tell the truth: A company should provide the public with accurate information on its mandate, functions/activities, ideals, and practices.
ii. Prove it with action: Company reputation is build through performance. That public perception of an organization is determined 90% by doing and 10% by telling.
iii. Listen to the customer: Company excel through customer, therefore, the PROs should ask and listen to customers about their needs and wants, and channel the information to the management for effective decisions.
iv. Manage for tomorrow: Begin to build goodwill with the public today for the benefit of tomorrow, especially when things turn bad.
v. Conduct PR as if the whole company depends on it: PRO should have inputs in the long-term corporate goals and strategies of an organization. He/she should analyzed the impact of corporate plans and strategies on the public and advise the management accordingly.
vi. Realize a company’s true character is expressed by its people: Every employee of an organization is naturally involved in PR on behalf of the organization. This is because the public opinion about an organization is shaped by the words and deed of its workforce.
vii. Remain calm, patient and good-humored: When a crisis arises, the PRO should remember that, cool heads communicate best.
Other principles of PR, as presented by Cobot (2012), are as follows:
i. Organizations exist only by public consent: This principle stresses the importance of the public or stakeholders to the organizations. Public interests and powers may influence an organization’s objectives favourably or unfavourably. To succeed, every organization must win public consent – the public must accept and support you as a company; they must approve and permit the company’s being and operation; and they must identify with, recognize and patronize the company.
ii. Mutually beneficial relationships require two-way communication: This principles stresses that organizations strive to hear the public’s story about all its activities. The principle opines that communication is effective, fair and balanced when there is feedback. Thus, organizations are expected to listen to public complaints, concerns and interests relating to the organization activities and respond to it accordingly.
iii. It’s not our job to put a clean shirt on a dirty body: This principle is against cover-up, propaganda, deception, hype or spin. Hype may be beneficial in the short-run but when discovered can erode public trust forever. ‘Putting a clean shirt on a dirty body’ means that particular information does not represent the reality or the situation on ground. Organizations should pursue excellence and Total Quality Management (TQM) principles to have clean bodies on which clean shirts can be worn at all time.
iv. Act, then communicate: Public Relations simply means perform, then relate (tell) the performance to the public. In fact, when a company performs well, the public will notice it and spray information or positive word-of-mouth around to other members of the public.
v. Clarity is more important than cleverness: This principle cautions PROs to design messages according to the communication objectives, use language and symbols that recipients or customers can easily decode, and chose the media that will deliver the message to the target public. In trying to be clever, the right message and media may not be used thereby defeating the aim of the communication.
vi. Activity does not equal result: This principle complements the “act, then communicate” principle earlier discussed. PR activities should not represent cost elements, but should convincingly contribute to the organizations’ sales, profit, donation, and other objectives of pursuit.
vii. Never refuse an opportunity to tell your own side of the story: Costly mistakes are bound to happen in every organization, and when they do the press and the public want an explanation – the company’s side of the story. PROs often avoid bad news about their organization and would rather respond “no comment” than provide some explanation. It’s better to comment that “investigation on the immediate and remote causes of the accident/incident are on-going and details of the initial findings will be release to the public” than say “no comment”. An organization may set 100 good records in many years of its operation, and just one bad incidence may overshadow the past good deeds.
viii. Manage expectations: During publicity, promises are made to the public which raises public or consumers expectations. Consumers’ responses to the publicity in terms of purchase usually avail them the opportunity of comparing the promises/expectations with the reality (product performance); they get disappointed when the product or service performance fall short of expectations. Thus, it is important to uphold the principle of “tell the truth”.
ix. Practice public relations proactively whenever possible: In PR, it is more important to be proactive (attack) than reactive (defend).
x. Be a bridge, not a barrier: In other word, a PRO should be a relationship builder and not propagandist. He should advocate two-way balanced/symmetry communication that creates mutual relationships over and above one-way communication that uses hype, publicity, and manipulations. Two-way communication connects the public to the organization and vice versa, however, one-way communication tries to protect the organization from the public’s disturbances.
Difference between PR and Publicity
PR and Publicity are often used interchangeably despite the differences in their technical meanings as itemized in Table 13.2 below.
Table 13.2: Difference between PR and Publicity
Public Relations | Publicity |
PR is a deliberate engagement in newsworthy events such as sponsorship, corporate social responsibility/investment, and launching innovative products to create good public image about the company. | Publicity is concerned with company news by third party that helps in building good company reputations. It also involves third party assessment and stories about the company. |
This is broader in contents and tools. It includes publicity, public information, and public feedback. | It is narrower than PR in the sense that it is a component of PR. |
PR strategies covers long-term. | Publicity strategies are short-term in nature. |
PR is largely controlled by the organization. | Publicity is not under full control of the company. |
Importance of PR
PR provides the following benefits to the organization and/or its customers:
i. It gives more credibility, believability and reliability to company goods and services;
ii. It helps in building and maintaining mutual relationship between the company and the customers;
iii. It is cheaper than other traditional communication tools such as advertising, personal selling, and sales promotion.
iv. It instills trust in the minds of the customers;
v. It generates sales leads through articles in the trade journals about new products;
vi. It helps in developing new prospects for the new markets, for example, individual who hear or read news about the product make enquiries and eventually buy the products;
vii. It instigates sales calls by individuals who read or heard about a new product;
viii.It facilitates endorsement of company product by a third-party;
ix. It makes available free or cheap literature on companies’ products, prices, distributors, and its other operations;
x. It helps companies with weak financial base to avoid heavy advertising costs and still get their products sold;
xi. It helps in building company and product image on a continuous basis;
xii. It can be instrumental in damage control to product image;
xiii.It is an effective tool in protecting the image of the company and its product;
xiv.It can be used to overcome consumer resistance to products; and
xv. It is useful in changing consumer attitudes, behavior and perceptions.
Disadvantages of PR
PR has certain disadvantages:
i. The media time and space cannot be guaranteed;
ii. Measuring PR performance or results can be difficult;
iii. Company has no absolute control over publicity material; and
iv. It is subjective to abuse by desperate PR professional who may resort to hype, propaganda and deception.
SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
i. Differentiate between PR and publicity.
ii. State the advantages and disadvantages of MPR.
iii. Explain the general principles of PR.
PERSONAL SELLING
This refers to a direct method of selling in which a company’s sales representative meet prospective buyers, communicate to them about the product, sell to them and offers installation and maintenance services. Put differently, it refers to face-to-face, telephone or internet interaction between the company’s sales person(s) with one or more prospective buyers for the purpose of making presentations, answering questions and procuring orders.
Objectives of personal selling
Personal selling helps companies achieve the following objectives:
i. Prospecting: All activities that involve looking for the right buyers.
ii. Targeting: Selecting the right time and place to meet and present offerings to the prospective buyers.
iii. Communicating: Informing the prospective consumers about the company’s offerings.
iv. Selling: The actual presentation of products and services to consumers. It involves dealing with objections, answering questions and finally, closing sales.
v. Servicing: Salespeople offer a range of services to customers: delivery, financial, installation and repairs services.
vi. Information gathering: This involves gathering information for the firm for marketing research purposes.
Importance of Personal Selling
Communication: It facilitates direct, face-face or interactive communication between the salesperson and the prospect(s)/customer(s) regarding a company’s product(s).
Flexibility: It enables the salesperson to change the selling tactics in line with the customer’s mood, appearance, gender, culture, and other important socio-economic and personality variables.
Demonstration: Through personal selling, sales people can demonstrate how a new product can be coupled and uncoupled, used, operated, switched-on and off, and serviced.
Installation services: Salespeople are usually trained to perform installation services, usually free of any charges.
After-sales services: Salespeople pay repeated visits to customers who have earlier purchased products in order to fix minor problems or give valuable advice on how best to use the product to minimize recurrence of technical faults.
Relationship building: Personal selling is an effective promotional strategy for building and sustaining marketing relationships with esteemed profitable customers by way of understanding customers’ first name, knowing customers address and keeping contact especially during festive periods, and being very friendly.
Gathering information: Through personal selling, a company can use its salespeople to gather relevant and reliable primary data on consumer behaviour and market situation in order to gain better understanding of the consumers in terms of their needs, preferences, purchasing power, and competitive strategies among others.
Closing sales: This means the act of making a customer pay for the promoted product, which is the greatest challenge, yet the most important task in the selling process. Thus, personal selling has the advantages of promoting a product and turning the product to cash on the spot.
Market Penetration (effective distribution): The right salespeople can be used to penetrate into the market. A good example is the use of salesgirls to distribute goods in societies or cultures that practice purdah – where married women are not permitted to associate with the outside world (except for strong cogent reasons) while men other than their husbands are banned from entering such houses.
Price negotiation: Personal selling facilitates price haggling between the sales person and the customer.
Refine customer’s view: When a customer has negative view about a company’s product, personal selling can be used to counter such view by highlighting the unique benefits of such a product.
Personal Selling Approaches/Context/environment
Personal selling can take place in different environment: on air, in the store, and in the field.
i. Telemarketing: A personal selling approach that relied solely on phones for prospecting, presentation, closing sales, and follow up. The advent of General System for Mobile (GSM) has made telemarketing inevitable to selling organizations. Examples of telemarketing are outbound and inbound telemarketing discussed under types of salespeople.
ii. Over-the-counter or retail selling: A personal selling approach that occur within a retail store. Usually, the buyer approaches the stores to make purchases, while the salesperson (over-the-counter seller) is present to attend to the customer. Types of retail selling are order taker and order getter; these concepts are explained under types of salespeople.
iii. Field Selling: Paying cold calls or fixed appointments to offices and homes of prospects/customers in order to strike a sale deal. It means walking about to meet people and make sales.
Draw Backs of Personal Selling
The main disadvantages of personal selling are highlighted below:
High cost of wages: Since a salesperson can only attend to one prospect/customer at a time and few numbers of customers per day, companies usually resort to hiring large number of sales people to facilitate reasonable sales which often leads to increased wages and cost of operations.
Low sales per head: A salesperson can only attend to one prospect/customer at a time and few numbers per day, leading to low sales revenue.
Cost of training: To guarantee effective selling and its attendant benefits, the salespeople have to be trained and retrained which increased cost of operation.
Spread product message slowly: Personal selling tool cannot spread product message as fast and as widely as other marketing communication tools like advertising and public relations.
Team Selling
Team selling refers to a group of salespersons with specialized product, engineering, clerical, marketing and financial related skills working towards a common sales goal, usually sales growth.
Advantages of Team Selling
It enables comprehensive handling of any objection from the customer since all experts – product engineer, professional seller, clerk, and distributor – are members of the team.
It gives customers the impression that the company is big since it (the company) could afford team selling. This builds customer confidence.
It facilitates learning of other important skills by the members of the team.
It is not boring selling in company of colleagues.
It facilitates building of relationship with customers since after-sales expert is part of the team.
It facilitates gathering of information about the customers since clerk or administrator is among the team.
Disadvantages of Team Selling
It can be costly to operate, especially by small businesses.
It can result into conflict among members.
Conditions that Favour Team Selling
When products are customized for few individual customers.
When selling a very complex product.
When several individuals are involved in taking sales decisions in respect of a company’s product.
When competitors are achieving better sales results and dominating the market due to well-coordinated sales force.
When the cost of team selling can be recovered from one single successful major sales.
SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
1. Personal selling is both an art and science. (a) How can a sales person combine both the art and science of personal selling in achieving his/her sales target? (b) What are the relevance of sales people to the company and consumers?
2. What are the objectives of personal selling?
3. Under what conditions should a firm adopt team-selling approach?
4. How is team-selling important to firms and customers?
5. What are the disadvantages of team selling?
6. List and explain the personal selling approaches.
DIRECT MARKETING
The advancement in information and communication technologies has taken marketing communication to another level – direct marketing. Direct marketing is the use of cell phones, e-mail, internet, fax or mail to inform individual customers and solicit for their response about a given product or service. Forms of direct marketing are telephone marketing, direct-mail marketing, catalog marketing, direct-response television marketing, kiosk marketing and on-line marketing.
Objectives of Direct Marketing
i. Customized message: Database is created for each customer and used to design individualized communication messages for him/her.
ii. Build long-term relationships: Customized offerings are made to each customer according to his/her peculiar needs. Also, seasonal greetings such as birthday, Eidl Fitr/Kabir and Christmas greetings are communicated to each customer which he/she (the consumer) may regard as very caring, and friendly.
iii. Solicit for consumer response: Consumer can lay complaints, make purchases, or make enquiries via direct marketing.
Indirect Marketing Communication
This refers to marketing communication tools/elements other than direct communication tools that facilitate transmission of message from one source to many audience/consumers at a given time. Examples are advertising, sales promotion and public relations.
Direct marketing process
The steps involved in direct marketing are:
i. Set goals and objectives: This is the planning stage where a marketer is required to set communication objectives – informing, persuading, researching (data gathering), and reminding prospects and customers.
ii. Identify the target audience: Which market is the company interested in serving and communicating? A company may choose to communicate business organizations or household consumers, large or small scale business organizations, and high income or low income consumers about its product and services.
iii. Determine the response mechanism: Being an interactive form of marketing communication, it is important to decide on the feedback mechanism – telephone calls, email, Short Message Service (SMS) or texting, kiosk marketing, mailing, etc.
iv. Select the marketing channels: A decision need to be taken on how product will be delivered to customer after placing order by phone calls, SMS, or email. Goods ordered through direct marketing can be delivered to customers via postal services, sales reps, retailers and agents.
v. Design and produce the campaign: The message that needs to be communicated to the consumers’ needs to be developed in terms of structure, contents and source.
vi. Implementing and evaluate performance for continuous improvement: Directing marketing programmes need to be evaluated periodically after implementation. The evaluation may reveal performance gap that can be improved in order to achieve predetermine objectives of direct marketing.
Forms of Direct Marketing
Marketers can use any of the following direct marketing tools to supplement indirect communication tools in order to achieve the organization’s marketing communication objectives most effectively.
i. Direct mail marketing: This involves mailing letters, flyers, posters and materials (e.g. product samples) by marketers to prospective and exiting customers through postal services. Mailed letters are used for sale offers while flyers and posters are used for product announcements. Direct mail may be used to request for customer information and to also build relationship with customers. In using this method, a marketer should obtain mailing lists of targeted customers, prepare a print message, parcel the message attractively, and address and post the parcel to targeted customer. Letters and flyers can also be delivered via fax mail and e-mail.
ii. Telemarketing (telephone marketing): Telemarketing is the use of phones by marketers to establish voice contacts so as to promote, obtain immediate and interactive feedbacks, and sell goods to prospects or customers. Telemarketing is indispensable by business organization, either small or large, because virtually every adult now possesses and uses phone in both developed and developing nations like Nigeria.
Two forms of telemarketing are available to marketers: outbound telemarketing and inbound telemarketing.
a. Outbound telemarketing: Obtaining a call list and dialing customers’ numbers in order to promote and sell company’s product. It is useful for direct selling, generating and screening leads, data base marketing, and supporting sales force.
b. Inbound telemarketing: A form of telemarketing in which a call center or unit is created within a company’s sales department and call-receiving personnel are hired and trained to receive and respond to phone calls from customers stimulated by the on-going advertising, sales promotion, sponsored events, and/or public relations programmes. Marketers can encourage customers to participate and engage in inbound telemarketing by circulating contact or response numbers to the prospective and existing customers via television, radio, newspaper, bill board, and email advertising.
i. Short Message Service (SMS): This technique involves writing and sending uniform or customized promotional text messages to individual customers via General System for Mobile (GSM) phone lines, and soliciting for customers’ response. It differs from telemarketing in the sense that a single promotional text message can be sent to hundreds of customers at a time, yet each customer can view the message at his/her convenient time.
ii. Catalogue marketing: Literally, a catalogue means exhaustive or comprehensive list of items that consumer may want to buy or sellers may want to sell. Thus, catalogue marketing is a direct marketing technique where by marketers prepare and distribute catalogues (long list of products and their corresponding prices, functions and possible means of delivery) to consumers and the consumers respond by mailing purchase offers/orders, while goods are delivered by the company using a courier. Catalogue marketing is done both in print and online, hence the name print catalogue and web-based catalogue respectively.
iii. Kiosk marketing: Traditionally, a kiosk is a small shop designed for selling special items, or a public telephone booth. The concept of kiosk marketing has a slightly different meaning – information and ordering machines placed in departmental stores, super markets, trade shows, and public places like airports, stadia, railway stations, schools, and busy streets. In kiosk marketing, customers can feed in their personal information (text, photographs, bio-metrics) into the machine, view product information stored in the machine, order for products (customize or un-customized), receive a printed copy of the transaction, and await product delivery via the machine, mail or salespeople. In other words, kiosk machines do not dispense tangible products ordered but may dispense intangible products like snapped and edited pictures, movies, and music; in fact, kiosk machines are now connected to the internet thereby expanding its functional roles and capabilities on daily bases. Different companies in different industries have contracted and collaborated with electronic and ICT engineering companies for different designs of kiosk machines that can perform the basic tasks of kiosk marketing most effectively. For example, the automated teller machine (ATM) is a good example of kiosk marketing in the banking industry.
iv. Direct-Response advertising: This refers to a direct marketing technique in which long adverts that end with “call-this-number-now” are aired on a mass media like television and radio in order to inform, persuade and stimulate direct response from the target customers. In fact, some television stations, called ‘shopping channels’, are now fully dedicated to advertising of consumer and industrial products. What differentiate traditional advertising with direct-response advertising is that contact/response/call-us-back numbers are not featured in the former but clearly featured in the latter.
Three types of direct-response advertising are explained below:
a. Direct-response television advertising: A direct-response advertising via television channels and usually targeted at television viewing consumers. Its advantage lies in the fact that the advertised product can be visualized in addition to the audio message. It can reach wider audience.
b. Direct-response radio advertising: A direct-response advertising via radio channels and usually targeted at radio listeners. The major disadvantages are that the advertised product cannot be visualized; telephone numbers and web-addresses are not easily memorized or written down by farming, driving, or trading customers. However, it is effective in advertising a product to rural dwellers who do not enjoy electricity supply, especially in developing countries; it is also less costly to the advertising company compare to direct-response advertising; and it can reach wider audience.
c. Direct-response print advertising: This is the type of direct-response advertising that appears in the print media and on bill boards. It is advantageous because print response numbers on the newspapers and bill boards can be easily copied for immediate or future product enquiries or placement of orders.
v. Online/internet marketing: By definition, internet is an electronic communication network that connect computers worldwide for the purpose of sharing information. Thus, internet marketing can be regarded as a process and set of techniques for promoting and selling products online. It is any means used by a company to market its products and services online.
Put differently, internet marketing is an electronic communication platform or network for creating web sites, advertising products and services directly to prospects and customers, gathering customer data, receiving direct response from targeted customers for orders, delivering downloadable products, making or receiving payments, and building lasting relationships with customers.
SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
1. (a) Define direct marketing, (b) State importance of direct marketing to business organizations, and (c) State the objectives of direct marketing.
2. The advent of internet and GSM has made traditional means of promotion such as television, billboards and radio advertising, and personal selling less effective. Do you agree?
3. List and explain forms of direct marketing.