Marketing Communications Mix: Promote Better and Effectively!

Communicating your company’s brand positioning and delivering it to the target audience is the foundation of the organization’s marketing strategy. Designing the right marketing mix involves the four P’s i.e. Product, Price, Place and Promotion. If you are in the field of marketing communications, then you must coordinate your efforts towards the last P of the marketing mix – Promotion. You need to develop strong sales and advertising messages that will connect with your customers instantly and effectively highlight your product’s quality and differentiation from other brands. Remember, while creating your promotional mix, you should ensure that you can deliver your promises and are able to create a believable position in the market. Company reputation is built over years but it just takes seconds to lose it because of unethical promotions or inability to deliver to your customers. Therefore, promotions are as important as your product or service quality, pricing and other offerings. Creating an effective marketing communication mix through a well-researched strategy will not only help your reach out to your customers but also help you adapt to the ever-changing marketing environment. Learn more about creating an effective Market Strategy with this course.

What is Marketing Communication Mix?

An organization’s promotional mix consisting of various promotion tools like advertising, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling, direct-marketing tools and online, digital and integrated marketing methods is called the Marketing Communications Mix. It is the way to communicate your brand value to the consumer and build long-lasting customer relationships. If you are a marketing professional, a business owner or an entrepreneur, then this course on Marketing Fundamentals can help you get started in one day. We will look at these promotion tools one by one and understand the various benefits that each has to offer. We will also visit the need for an integrated marketing communications and identify the communication objectives that companies must focus on.

Importance of Integrated Marketing Communications

Most often your advertising department and sales management team may be communicating different messages to your consumers, which lead to an inconsistent promotional message. For example, your newspaper advertisement might have promoted a certain price whereas the product label doesn’t reflect the same price; this causes confusion in the mind of the consumer that further aggravates due to a totally different message on your website! Since different communication channels are handled by different departments of your organization, very often your marketing communication mix falls out of sync. This is where the concept of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) helps you integrate the various channels to deliver a uniform and compelling message about your brand to the target audience. It brings together all the company’s messages under one campaign to promote a single, clear and consistent positioning statement.

Different Factors of Marketing Communications Mix

1. Identifying target audience – If you don’t know who your audience is, you can’t decide on what to communicate, how to communicate, when, where and who will communicate the company’s message. Therefore, the first step to building a marketing communication mix is to identify your target audience.
2. Determine Communication Objectives – Companies must find out at what stage of buyer-readiness their consumers are presently in. The six stages that consumers normally go through before buying a product are – awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and purchase. For more insights on creating the right marketing communications mix, skip right ahead to this course on effectively managing your digital Marketing Campaign. You must design your communication mix so as to address all these aspects as well as the organization’s objectives in delivering the message and moving the target audience towards a favorable stage.
3. Delivering the Message – Your promotional messages must not only be catchy and hold the consumers’ attention but also compel them to like your product and make a purchase. Putting the message content together and choosing the appropriate communication media either through personal or non-personal channels is an important part of delivering the right message at the right time.
4. Setting up Promotional Budget – While there are innumerable ways to attract the customers, you need find out how much you can spend on promotions. Budgeting based on the target consumers and industry requirements is key to achieving promotional success.
5. Creating a Promotion Mix – Different companies have different marketing strategies wherein they use several promotional tools like advertising, direct marketing, personal selling or online marketing etc. Each tool has its own advantage and costs involved; therefore it is important for you to choose the right marketing communications mix also called as promotion mix.

Elements of Marketing Communications

• Advertising

This is widely used by companies to reach out to geographically distributed consumers in a large scale. It could be through TV ads, paper and print ads, billboards, radio announcements etc. to reach out to a mass audience. While such a promotional tool is quick and seen as legitimate by the consumers, it is very expensive and also happens to be a one-way communication with your potential customer.

• Personal Selling

This is very effective in building customer relations and helping the consumer move from awareness and knowledge stage to conviction and action. Your marketing personnel need to use their people skills and learn to listen to the audience so that the consumer’s requirements are addressed. You get immediate feedback and increase sales potential.

• Sales Promotion

Through discount coupons, contests, daily deals and other offers, you can promote your product sales and create short-term marketing effects. Learn more about Sales Promotions in this course.

• Public Relations

You can use company news, promotional events, sponsorship programs etc. along with other promotion tools to reach out to prospective customers. Such a campaign is very cost-effective and economical while reaching out to a larger audience.

• Direct Marketing

This is a highly personalized communication tool that is addressed to a specific person through emails, telephone or mobile messages, online media etc. It also allows for customer interaction and is mostly used as a targeted marketing approach.

• Online Marketing

Internet and powerful mobile technologies have rapidly increased company efforts to market their products and build customer relationships via social media, websites, mobile apps, e-commerce, online promotions etc. Create your online presence and find out the best way to communicate with your audience in a cost-effective, quick and reliable way. This course can help you create a smarter, faster and better online marketing blueprint.

These are the main tools of creating an effective marketing communications mix for your business. However, while doing so, you should be aware of the various legal and ethical issues surrounding marketing communications. Respect customer privacy and adhere to social norms and government regulations while you build a powerful marketing communications mix for your organizational growth.