Managing Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

Relationship Building: DM, Personal Selling and Sales

Promotion

Lecture 20

Introduction• Once a market offering is developed to meet target

market needs, intended customers must be informed of the offering.

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) comprises:– advertising– sales promotions– personal selling– direct selling, and– public relations

Sales Promotion

• Sales promotions are marketing activities that stimulate consumer purchases and improve retailer or middlemen effectiveness and cooperation.

• Examples:

– Discounts

– In store demo’s

– Samples

– Coupons

– Contests, Sweepstakes etc.

• Creating good relationships with the popular press and other media to help companies communicate messages to their publics—customers, the general public, and governmental regulators—is the role of public relations (PR).

• Management of unfavourable rumours, stories and events.

Public Relations

Direct Marketing

Trends within DM:- Database Marketing: DB marketers build and

maintain a pool of data on current and prospective customers and communicate with them using a vairety of media. It is popular due to its cost efficiency.

- Three components of DM:- Interactive Marketing- One or More Advertising Media (Dell: using mass and

dm)- Measurable Response

Relevance to IMC

• Best way to build a DATABASE which can be used for future purposes as well.

• E.g. Microsoft CRM

• People like to view themselves as unique and not part of any particular segment. Through DM, companies can send discrete meesages to individual customers and prospects.

Types of DM

1. Personal Direct Selling: Peterson and Thomas define DS as… “face to face selling from a fixed retail location”.

2. Telemarketing: includes selling and prospecting by telephone, answering phone inquiries and providing sales-related services to callers.

3. Direct Response Advertising: advertising that asks the reader, viewer or listener to provide straight feedback to the sender. Any medium can be used but most common are direct mail, catalogues, magazines and TV. (Refer to pg 440 in textbook)

Personal Selling

• Best marketing tool for Relationship Building.

• Employs use of “Human Interaction”.

• .. “interpersonal communication process by which a seller ascertains and then satisfies the needs of a buyer to the mutual long-term benefit of both parties.”

Types of Personal Selling

• CLASS ACTIVITY: Divide into groups of 5-6 and choose ONE Personal Selling activity EACH.

Advantages of Personal Selling

• Its personal nature which makes it more persuasive.

• Facilitates instant feedback.• Time effective: the sale does not have to be

made that very day. The relationship can be established first and then a sale can follow through.

• One of the major tasks of personal selling is to gain distribution for new products e.g., Industrial Products. STORAGE CRAFT

Drawbacks of Personal Selling

• Labour Intensive

• High Costs

• First impression may be the last impression

Role of Personal Selling in IMC

1. Gathering Information

2. Disseminating Information

3. Fulfilling Orders

4. Building Relationships: may be more service oriented.

Role of Sales Promotion in IMC

• SP is a direct inducement that offers extra incentives anywhere along the marketing route to enhance or accelerate the product’s movement from producer to consumer.

• May encompass the “RELEVANCE” or “RESONANCE” factors.

SNAPPLE: Sales Promotion

Southwest Airlines

• Southwest Airlines served drinks to passengers in plastic glasses with plastic cockroaches in them.

• Is this RESONANCE or RELEVANCE?

Nokia Sales Promotion

• Nokia launched one of its largest pan-European sales promotion campaigns using a sponsorship collaboration with Kylie Minoque that offered consumers exclusive access to one of the world’s best known pop stars.

• The campaign sees the Nokia 5310 and 5610 XpressMusic handsets offered as exclusive Nokia Kylie handsets, featuring pre-loaded, exclusive video and music content. Consumers also have the opportunity to download the full album and additional content from a promotional website, in addition to giving consumers the opportunity to win “meet and greet” tickets to one of the dates on the Kylie X Tour 2008.

Positive and Negative Effects of SP

• POSITIVE: added value, maximizes sales volume, builds short term market volume, may attract customers from competing brands.

• NEGATIVE: excessive promotion may reduce profitability, overemphasis on price destroys brand equity, may lead to a price war.

Sales Promotion Strategies

• PUSH

• PULL

Class Activity

• Choose ANY THREE examples of Sales Promotions which have caught your attention.

• Justify your selection by citing your reasons for classing it as a Sales Promotion.