CHAP 14: Engaging Customers and Communicating Customer Value

(Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy)

5 promotion mix tools

The promotion mix/marketing communication mix:
- Advertising: paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion (broadcast, print, online,
mobile, outdoor,...)
- Public relations: building good relations with the company’s various publics (press releases,
sponsorships, events, and webpages…)
- Personal selling: personal customer interactions (sales presentations, trade shows, and incentive
programs)
- Sales promotion: short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale (discounts, coupons,
displays, demonstrations, and events)
- Direct and digital marketing tools: engaging directly with carefully targeted individual
consumers (direct mail, email, catalogs, online and social media, mobile marketing,...)
=> Company use these tools to persuasively communicate their value propositions to customers and they
must coordinate with the entire marketing mix.

I. Integrated marketing communications (IMC)

New Marketing Communications Model
- Consumers are changing > better informed and more communications empowered > actively
research info rather than depending on brand
- Marketing strategies are changing > from mass marketing to focused marketing programs
- Advances in digital technology > from smartphones and tablets to satellite and cable television
systems to the many faces of the Internet > more targeted, social, and engaging marketing
communications
-> Rather than creating ads, marketers consider
- Content marketing: creating, inspiring, and sharing brand messages and conversations with and
among consumers across a fluid mix of paid, owned, earned, and shared channels
Consumers are bombarded by brand content from a broad range of sources > confused company images,
brand positions, and customer relationships.
Integrated marketing communications (IMC): Carefully integrating and coordinating the company’s
many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the
organization and its products
- Recognize all touch points where the customer may encounter content about the company and its
brands.
- Deliver a consistent and positive message at each contact.
 II. Effective marketing communication
A view of the communication process

2 major parties: sender and receiver

2 major communication tools: the message and the media.
4 major communication functions: encoding, decoding, response, and feedback
Sender: The party sending the message to another party.
Encoding: The process of putting thought into symbolic form convey the intended message.
Message: The set of symbols that the sender transmits
Media: The communication channels through which the message moves from the sender to the receiver
Decoding: The process by which the receiver assigns meaning to the symbols encoded by the sender
Receiver: The party receiving the message sent by another party
Response: The reactions of the receiver after being exposed to the message
Feedback: The part of the receiver’s response communicated back to the sender
Noise: The unplanned static or distortion during the communication process, which results in the receiver
getting a different message than the one the sender sent
Steps in developing effective marketing

1. Identify TA: heavily affect the communicator’s decisions on what will be said, how it will be
said, when it will be said, where it will be said, and who will say it.

2. Determine communication objectives

Needs to know where the target audience now stands and to what stage it needs to be moved in the
consumer decision-making process
Buyer-readiness stages: stages consumers normally pass through on their way to a purchase: awareness,
knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, and, finally, the actual purchase

- Awareness & knowledge: totally unaware of the product, know only its name, or know only a
few things about the product/service
- Liking: feeling favorable about it
- Preference: prefer the companys’products to competing brands
- Conviction: believe that the product is the best thing for them

3. Design a message
In practice, we can’t move audience throgh all but can ensure desirable qualities of good message
AIDA model
- Get Attention
- Hold Interest
- Arose Desire
- Obtain Action
=> Design: message content (what to say) + message structure and format (how to say it)
Message content: an appeal or theme that produce the desired response
- Rational appeals: relate to the audience’s self-interest (desired benefits)
ex: lifebuoy – bảo vệ 99,9% sạch vi khuẩn biến đổi
- Emotional appeals: attempt to stir up either negative or positive emotionsthat can motivate
purchase
ex: open coke – open happiness (Coke)
- Moral appeals: are directed to an audience’s sense of what is “right” and “proper”
ex: Pampers - "1 Pack = 1 Vaccine"
Message structure

• whether to draw a conclusion or leave it to the audience?

• whether to present the strongest arguments first or last?
• whether to present a one-sided argument? or a two-sided argument?
Message format: needs a strong format for the message (decisions on the headline, copy, illustration, and
colors)

4. Choosing communication channels and media

Personal communication channels: two or more people communicate directly with each other (face-to-
face, on the phone, via mail, internet chat) > effective as allow for personal addressing and feedback

• Under company control (ex: company salespeople)

• Not directly control by company (independent experts - consumer advocates, bloggers,..)
• Neighbors, friends, family members, associates, or other consumers talking to target buyers >
Word-of-mouth influence: personal communications about a product between target buyers and
neighbors, friends, family members, and associates.
• Create opinion leaders for their brands > Buzz marketing: cultivate opinion leaders for the
brand and get them to spread information about a product/service to others in their communities
Nonpersonal communication channels: media that carry messages without personal contact or
feedback, including major media, atmospheres, and events
- Media
• print media (newspapers, magazines)
• broadcast media (television, radio)
• display media (billboards, signs, posters)
• online media (email, company websites, and brand mobile and social media sites)
- Atmosphere: designed environments that create or reinforce the buyer’s learnings toward buying
a product (ex: không gian của brand gucci)
- Events: staged occurrences that communicate messages to target audiences (Event ra mắt xe
Vinfast)
 5. Select the message source
- Messages delivered by highly credible sources are more persuasive.
- Marketers hire celebrity endorsers - well-known athletes, actors, musicians, and even cartoon
characters to deliver their messages

6. Collect feedback

III. Setting the total promotion budget and mix

4 ways to set promotion budget:

• Affordable method: setting the promotion budget at the level management thinks the company
can afford, start with total revenues, deduct operating expenses and capital outlays, and then
devote some portion of the remaining funds to advertising
• Percentage-of-sales method: set the promotion budget at a certain percentage of current or
forecasted sales or as a percentage of the unit sales price
• Competitive-parity method: set the promotion budget to match competitors’ outlays.
• Objective-and-task method: developing the promotion budget by (1) defining specific
promotion objectives, (2) determining the tasks needed to achieve these objectives, and (3)
estimating the costs of performing these tasks. The sum of these costs is the proposed promotion
budget
Shaping the Overall Promotion Mix
The concept of IMC suggests that the company must blend the promotion tools carefully into a
coordinated promotion mix.
1. The nature of promotion tools:
 2. Promontion mix strategies
- Push strategy: using the sales force and trade promotion to push the product through channels
(primarily personal selling and trade promotion)
- Pull strategy: calls for spending a lot on consumer advertising and promotion to induce final
consumers to buy the product (primarily advertising, consumer promotion, and direct and digital
media)
Note: xem đang work với ai
- work với bên trung gian > push
- work on consumers > pull
Bait-and-switch advartising: a sales tactic in which a customer is attracted by the advertisement of a
low-priced item but is then encouraged to buy a higher-priced one. It is unethical and illegal
Exercises:
1. John 's sales force works with Home Depot, who in turn sell John products to final consumers.
2. Crest asked dentists to recommend its toothpaste to their patients. It offered samples that dentists could
buy at cost to give to their patients to encourage patients to take better care of their teeth.
3. Glasis is a type of paint made specifically for use on cars. An ad in Motor Trend magazine advising
consumers to request their body shops use Glasis paint.
4. A customer goes to the supermarket, he/she looks for the signs that notate sales and discounts— leading
to picking up some items he/she never knew he needed