Integrated Marketing Communications (Marketing Communications Essay

Integrated Marketing Communications (Marketing Communications Management, Copley) - Essay Example This is more like an effective communication with the target market. Sales promotion is a marketing communication tool specifically designed to provide consumers with some incentive inducing immediate response, possibly in the form of purchase. Sales promotion tools and techniques may include coupons, sampling, refunds and rebate, bonus packs, price off deals. For example Kellogg's may come up with a new brand of cereals. To encourage product trial, Kellogg may place a coupon in Kellogg's Corn Flakes. The crossruff coupon may encourage those who purchase and use Kellogg's Corn Flakes to try the new Kellogg brand. When we talk of sampling, Proctor and Gamble has always used sampling to get homemakers to try a new brand of detergent. They mail a sample to adult females in households across US. Sampling is very common with food items. A decade ago the advertising to sales promotion ratio was around 60:40, but today in many consumer packaged companies sales promotion accounts for 65 to 75 percent of the combined budget. Haagen Dazs ran a cents off sales promotion called Sweet Charity where the price savings would be contributed to support public television. This offer enhanced the Haagen Dazs image by making it "a patron of the art". Public relation is an important tool to maintain a positive image of the firm in the minds of the customers to enhance repeat patronage. The most common use of public relations tools to achieve goals of the habit formation strategy is publicity. Microsoft's campaign launching Windows 95 was an MPR success story. No paid ads for Windows 95 had appeared by August 24, 1995, the launch day. Yet everyone knew about it. The Wall Street Journal estimated about that 3000 headlines, 6852 stories, and over 300 million words were dedicated to Windows 95 from July 1st to August 24th. Microsoft team around the world executed attention-grabbing publicity. Another example of Wine Growers of California who had hired public relations firm of Daniel J. Edelman, Inc, to develop a publicity campaign to convince Americans that wine drinking is a pleasurable part of good living and to improve the image and market share of California wines. Direct Marketing Direct Marketing will be addressed as a marketing communication tool used in the form of direct forms of distribution. Direct mail, catalogs, telemarketing, direct response advertising, new electronic media and direct selling are one of the few examples. Citicorp, AT&T, IBM, Ford and American Airlines have used integrated direct marketing to build profitable relations with customers over the years. Retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales and Fredrick's of Hollywood regularly send out catalogs to supplement in store sales. Personal Selling Personal selling which is the face-to-face interaction with one ore more prospective purchasers for the purpose of making presentations, answering questions and procuring orders. Looking at this example we learn how John Deere used personal selling as means of selling its products. In 1993 when the dwindling demand for farm equipment and the aggressive actions of competitors pushed Deere's managers to create a strategy that involved its hourly assembly workers in finding and approaching prospects. Deere sent some of its experienced and knowledgeable workers to regional trade exhibits across North America to pitch the company's equipment to dealers and farmers. Once the new reps had wooed potential customers with