Principles of Marketing: Chapter 14 : Engaging Customer, and Communication.

This chapter is all about engaging customers to create value by using IMC tools. Promotional mix is using a set of promotional tools to communicate the brand. Since in marketing mix, Promotion is the only tool which is the voice of the brand.

The first tool of the promotional mix is the Advertisement. Normally a layman would have categorized advertisement and promotion in the same category. Since in advertisement is a promotional tool where it is compulsory for the sponsor to identify himself. For e.g. Oye Hoye (chips), a product of United Snacks or Faiza beauty cream a product of Poonia Brothers. There are three strategies of advertisement vis-e-vis ATL (Above the line), BTL (Below the line) and TTL (Through the line).

A short-term incentive to promote your brand is called Sales Promotions. The best example is the discounts, clearance sales, buy 1 get 1 free. Since these are short-term company can afford to give these amount of discounts to the customers.
Personal selling where company’s sales force is given targets to achieve. It is basically DTDS (Door to door selling), most common example is selling insurance or credit cards to people. Digital Marketing is evolving day by day.
The part (TTL) is basically Digital Marketing where the world commerce is shifting. People are doing business from their home through Google AdSense and making money. Another important aspect of digital marketing is social media marketing. Companies are not doing OOH (Out of home advertisement) but they are investing more towards building social media pages and sponsor their pages in their desired target market and demographics.

As the advancement of technology and customers are becoming more tech savvy or geek, companies are changing their marketing strategies because the customer is changing. They solved this problem by using the technique called IMC (Integrated Marketing Communication) where they use different tools of marketing to reach out customers in a unique way. Since integration means combining different promotional mix and find the optimal mix between them.

IMC is made up different steps: 1) Identification of target market (means on the basis of target market strategies and ask yourself what, how, when and where you will engage them). 2) Communication objective (AIDA model). 3) Designing an intended message (For example see the new paper ad section and see how ads are constructed and how they are giving an intended message to you). 4) Choosing the right media and channel for telling your customers about your brand. 5) Lastly, the Message source that who will endorse your product, you can do it through Celebrity or any sports personality and through them you collect a feedback from them about how was your communication strategy.

How much company should allocate their promotional budget? The method is known as the Affordable method where you keep or sets a budget according to the company’s range. Percentage of sale process is basically setting a percentage of the budget on the basis of how many per unit items were sold. Looking at the competitive strategy and mimicking what they are doing. Like how much amount of money they are spending on one tool and why? And lastly, You develop a budget on the basis of certain objectives and task in hand. For example, you want to do market penetration strategy for your product. This is the objective, and you need to set the budget accordingly.