2.7 - Promotion and Marketing Communications
Marketing Campaigns and the Promotional Mix
A marketing campaign is a coordinated effort to promote a product to potential customers, drawing on some or all of the tools in what's called the promotional mix. That mix includes five main tools: media advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, direct marketing, and public relations. Businesses use these tools to communicate messages that differentiate their products, build brand loyalty, and drive sales and revenue.
For example, a company launching a new sports drink might run TV and online video ads (media advertising), hand out free samples at high school games (sales promotion), email coupons to people on its subscriber list (direct marketing), have sales reps pitch the drink to grocery store buyers (personal selling), and send out a press release about its sponsorship of a local youth league (public relations). Each tool does a different job, but they all repeat the same core message.
Matching Promotional Tools to Buying Decisions
Which tools a business picks depends heavily on how customers make decisions about that particular product. For consequential purchases, like cars, high-end electronics, or financial services, customers usually want detailed information and personalized interaction, so businesses lean on personal selling, in-depth consultations, and demonstrations. For routine purchases, like snacks or basic household items, customers are usually fine with less information and are more influenced by convenience and familiarity, so businesses rely more on mass media advertising and direct marketing.
When to Use Each Promotional Tool
Media advertising, through channels like TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, or online display ads, works well when a business wants to reach a large number of people with the same message at the same time, like a national commercial for a new drink.
Personal selling involves direct interaction between a sales rep and a potential customer, and it's used when a business wants to provide detailed information or demonstrate how something works. This often includes a sales pitch, a short presentation laying out the product's value proposition to close the sale.
For example, a sales pitch for a water bottle at a sporting goods store might go: "You said you're outside at practice for two hours. This bottle keeps water ice cold all day, it fits in your bag's side pocket, and it's $10 less than the brand next to it." It ties the product's value proposition to what this customer just said they need.
Sales promotions, like discounts, coupons, limited-time offers, or free add-ons, are used to speed up customer decisions, clear out unsold inventory, and create urgency to buy soon.
Direct marketing, through flyers, brochures, catalogs, direct mail, or targeted emails, is used when a business wants to reach a lot of potential customers with a message targeted to a specific segment.
Public relations, through press releases, media interviews, news articles, or community events, is used when a business wants to build or maintain a favorable public image rather than push an immediate sale, focusing on long-term trust and reputation.
Developing and Evaluating a Marketing Campaign
To develop a campaign, a business sets a clear goal (like 500 new customers in three months), identifies the target customer, decides on a core message (usually built on the value proposition), picks the promotional tools and channels that reach that customer, and sets a budget. To evaluate a campaign, it compares the results with the goal using data like sales, new customers, customer acquisition cost, website visits, and survey responses. A campaign that reached lots of people but brought in few customers, or that cost more per customer than those customers are worth, needs to change.
Digital Marketing and Changing Customer Interactions
Digital marketing means using the internet and digital tools, like websites, email, social media, mobile apps, and online or search ads, to connect with and serve customers. Over time, businesses have shifted more and more of their marketing budgets away from traditional formats like newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV, and toward digital platforms instead.
This shift took off in the early 21st century. In the U.S., spending on digital ads passed spending on TV ads around 2016, while newspapers lost much of the ad money they once depended on.
Digital tools offer some clear advantages. They can reach either a global audience or a very specific customer segment with more precise targeting than most traditional tools allow. They also enable more personalized messaging based on user data and behavior, often at a lower cost than traditional mass media. And they allow businesses to collect large volumes of customer data, sometimes called big data, like clicks, views, conversions, time spent on a page, or purchase behavior tied to a campaign. This helps businesses understand how customers respond to different messages and what factors actually drive a purchase.
For example, a local bakery can pay for social media ads shown only to people within 10 miles who have shown an interest in desserts, something a TV ad can't do. A search ad appears right when someone searches for "birthday cake near me." An online store can email each customer recommendations based on what they've bought before. And a business can run two versions of an ad at once (an A/B test) and see within days which one gets more clicks and sales.
Some traditional tools, like personal selling, did allow for a bit of data collection through human interaction, but others, like TV ads or billboards, offered very little direct feedback. Digital tools have massively expanded both the scale and the detail of data businesses can gather and analyze.
All this data collection also ties back to the privacy and security risks covered in 2.1: the more customer data a business gathers, the more it has to protect.