Topic 8 - Marketing Promotions

Question 1

Advertising

Answer 1

Any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor

Question 2

Sales promotion

Answer 2

Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service

Question 3

Personal selling

Answer 3

Personal customer interactions by the firm’s sales force for the purpose of engaging customers, making sales, and building customer relationships

Question 4

Public relations

Answer 4

Building good relations with the company’s various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and handling or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories, and events

Question 5

Direct and digital marketing

Answer 5

Engaging directly with carefully targeted
individual consumers and customer communities to both obtain an immediate
response and build lasting customer relationships

Question 6

Promotion mix (marketing communications mix)

Answer 6

The specific blend of promotion tools that the company uses to persuasively communicate customer value and build customer relationships

Question 7

A company’s total promotion mix consists of ____

Answer 7

the specific blend of advertising, public relations, personal selling, sales promotion, and direct marketing tools that the company uses to engage consumers, persuasively communicate customer value, and build customer relationships. The five major promotion tools are advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations, and direct and digital marketing.

Question 8

What are the five promotional tools?

Answer 8

Advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations, and direct and digital marketing

Question 9

What elements of the product communicate something to the buyers?

Answer 9

design, price, shape, color, venue in which it is sold

Question 10

Although the promotion mix is the company’s primary engagement and communications activity, _____

Answer 10

the entire marketing mix - promotion, as well as product, price, and place - must be coordinated for greatest impact

Question 11

What factors are changing the face of today’s marketing communications?

Answer 11

First, consumers are changing. In this digital, wireless age, consumers are better informed and more communications empowered. Second, marketing strategies are changing. As mass markets have fragmented,
marketers are shifting away from mass marketing. More and more, they are developing focused marketing programs designed to build closer relationships with customers in more narrowly defined micromarkets. Finally, sweeping advances in digital technology are causing remarkable changes in the ways companies and customers communicate with each other.

Question 12

As the marketing communications environment shifts, so will the role of marketing communicators. How so?

Answer 12

Rather than just creating and placing “TV ads” or “print ads” or “Facebook display ads,” many marketers now view themselves more broadly as content marketing managers. As such, they create, inspire, and share brand messages and conversations with and among customers across a fluid mix of paid, owned, earned, and shared communication channels. These channels include media that are both traditional and new, and controlled and not controlled

Question 13

Content marketing

Answer 13

Creating, inspiring, and sharing brand messages and conversations with and among consumers across a fluid mix of paid, owned, earned, and shared channels.

Question 14

What are the four major types of media used by content marketing managers?

Answer 14

Paid media, owned media, earned media, shared media

Question 15

Paid media

Answer 15

promotional channels paid for by the marketer, including traditional
media (such as TV, radio, print, or outdoor) and online and digital media (paid search ads, Web and social media display ads, mobile ads, or e-mail marketing).

Question 16

Owned media

Answer 16

promotional channels owned and controlled by the company, including company Web sites, corporate blogs, owned social media pages, proprietary brand communities, sales forces, and events.

Question 17

Earned media

Answer 17

PR media channels, such as television, newspapers, blogs, online
video sites, and other media not directly paid for or controlled by the marketer but that include the content because of viewer, reader, or user interest.

Question 18

Shared media

Answer 18

media shared by consumers with other consumers, such as social
media, blogs, mobile media, and viral channels, as well as traditional word-of-mouth.

Question 19

integrated marketing communications (IMC)

Answer 19

Under this concept, the company carefully integrates its many communication channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its brands.

Question 20

Integrated marketing communications (IMC)

Answer 20

Carefully integrating and
coordinating the company’s many communications channels to deliver a clear,
consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its products.

Question 21

Encoding

Answer 21

The process of putting thought into symbolic form −for example,
McDonald’s ad agency assembles words, sounds, and illustrations into a TV advertisement that will convey the intended message.

Question 22

Message

Answer 22

The set of symbols that the sender transmits −the actual McDonald’s
ad.

Question 23

Media

Answer 23

The communication channels through which the message moves from
the sender to the receiver −in this case, television and the specific television programs that McDonald’s selects.

Question 24

Decoding

Answer 24

The process by which the receiver assigns meaning to the symbols encoded by the sender −a consumer watches the McDonald’s commercial and interprets the words and images it contains.

Question 25

Receiver

Answer 25

The party receiving the message sent by another party −the customer
who watches the McDonald’s ad

Question 26

Response

Answer 26

The reactions of the receiver after being exposed to the message −any
of hundreds of possible responses, such as the consumer likes McDonald’sbetter, is more likely to eat at McDonald’s next time, hums the “i’m lovin’ it” jingle, or does nothing

Question 27

Feedback

Answer 27

The part of the receiver’s response communicated back to the sender −
McDonald’s research shows that consumers are either struck by and remember
the ad or they write or call McDonald’s, praising or criticizing the ad or its
products.

Question 28

Noise

Answer 28

The unplanned static or distortion during the communication process,
which results in the receiver getting a different message than the one the sender sent −the consumer is distracted while watching the commercial and misses its key points.

Question 29

For a message to be effective ______

Answer 29

the sender’s encoding process must mesh with the
receiver’s decoding process. The best messages consist of words and other symbols
that are familiar to the receiver

Question 30

The more the sender’s field of experience overlaps

with that of the receiver, ____

Answer 30

the more effective the message is likely to be

Question 31

What are the key factors in good communication?

Answer 31

Senders need to know what audiences they wish to reach and what responses they want. They must be good at encoding messages that take into account how the target audience decodes them. They must send messages through media that reach target audiences, and they must develop feedback channels so that they can assess an audience’s response to the message. companies must be prepared to “flip” the communications process −to become good receivers of and responders to messages sent by consumers.

Question 32

What are the steps in developing effective marketing communication?

Answer 32

: Identify the target
audience, determine the communication objectives, design a message, choose the
media through which to send the message, select the message source, and collect
feedback.

Question 33

In identifying the target audience, the marketing communicator starts with ____

Answer 33

having a clear target audience in mind. For example, current users or potential buyers, those who make buying decisions or those who influence buying decisions.

Question 34

Identifying the target audience: Who is the audience?

Answer 34

The audience may be individuals, groups, special publics, or the general public

Question 35

The target audience will ____

Answer 35

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.

Question 36

Once the target audience has been defined, marketers must ___

Answer 36

determine the desired response. In many cases they will seek a purchase response. Purchase may result after a lengthy consumer decision making process (it won’t happen for a while until the consumer decides on the purchase).

Question 37

In determining the communications objectives, the marketing communicator needs to know ____

Answer 37

where the target audience now stands and to what stage it needs to be moved.

Question 38

What are the 6 buyer-readiness stages?

Answer 38

awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, and purchase

Question 39

Buyer-readiness stages

Answer 39

The stages consumers normally pass through on their way to a purchase: awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, and, finally, the actual purchase

Question 40

The marketing communicator’s target market may be totally unaware of the product, know only its name, or know only a few things about it. Thus, ____

Answer 40

the marketer must first build awareness and knowledge

Question 41

Personal communication channels

Answer 41

Channels through which two or more people
communicate directly with each other, including face to face, on the phone, via mail or e-mail, or even through an Internet “chat.”

Question 42

Word-of-mouth influence

Answer 42

Personal communications about a product between target buyers and neighbors, friends, family members, and associates.

Question 43

Buzz marketing

Answer 43

Cultivating opinion leaders and getting them to spread information
about a product or a service to others in their communities.

Question 44

Nonpersonal communication channels

Answer 44

Media that carry messages without personal contact or feedback, including major media, atmospheres, and events

Question 45

Affordable method

Answer 45

Setting the promotion budget at the level management thinks

the company can afford.

Question 46

percentage-of-sales method

Answer 46

Setting the promotion budget at a certain percentage

of current or forecasted sales or as a percentage of the unit sales price.

Question 47

Competitive-parity method

Answer 47

Setting the promotion budget to match competitors’

outlays

Question 48

objective-and-task method

Answer 48

the company sets its promotion budget based on what it wants to
accomplish with promotion. This budgeting method entails (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.

Question 49

advantages and challenges of the objective-and-task method

Answer 49

it forces management to
spell out its assumptions about the relationship between dollars spent and
promotion results. But it is also the most difficult method to use. Often, it is hard to
figure out which specific tasks will achieve the stated objectives.

Question 50

Objective-and-task method

Answer 50

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.

Question 51

push strategy

Answer 51

involves “pushing” the product through marketing channels to final consumers. The
producer directs its marketing activities (primarily personal selling and trade
promotion) toward channel members to induce them to carry the product and
promote it to final consumers.

Question 52

pull strategy

Answer 52

the producer directs its marketing activities (primarily
advertising, consumer promotion, and direct and digital media) toward final
consumers to induce them to buy the product.

Question 53

Push strategy

Answer 53

A promotion strategy that calls for using the sales force and trade
promotion to push the product through channels. The producer promotes the
product to channel members who in turn promote it to final consumers.

Question 54

Pull strategy

Answer 54

A promotion strategy that calls for spending a lot on consumer
advertising and promotion to induce final consumers to buy the product, creating a
demand vacuum that “pulls” the product through the channel.

Question 55

Define the five promotion mix tools for communicating customer value.

Answer 55

A company’s total promotion mix −also called its marketing communications mix −
consists of the specific blend of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public
relations, and direct and digital marketing tools that the company uses to engage
consumers, persuasively communicate customer value, and build customer
relationships. Advertising includes any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and
promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. In contrast, public
relations focuses on building good relations with the company’s various publics.
Personal selling is personal presentation by the firm’s sales force for the purpose of
making sales and building customer relationships. Firms use sales promotion to
provide short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or
service. Finally, firms seeking immediate response from targeted individual
customers use direct and digital marketing tools to engage directly with customers and
cultivate relationships with them.

Question 56

Discuss the changing communications landscape and the need for integrated
marketing communications

Answer 56

The explosive developments in communications technology and changes in
marketer and customer communication strategies have had a dramatic impact on
marketing communications. Advertisers are now adding a broad selection of
more-specialized and highly targeted media and content −including online, mobile,
and social media −to reach smaller customer segments with more-personalized,
interactive messages. As they adopt richer but more fragmented media and
promotion mixes to reach their diverse markets, they risk creating a communications
hodgepodge for consumers. To prevent this, companies are adopting the concept of
integrated marketing communications (IMC). Guided by an overall IMC strategy, the
company works out the roles that the various promotional tools and marketing
content will play and the extent to which each will be used. It carefully coordinates
the promotional activities and the timing of when major campaigns take place.

Question 57

Outline the communication process and the steps in developing effective marketing
communications.

Answer 57

The communication process involves nine elements: two major parties (sender,
receiver), two communication tools (message, media), four communication functions
(encoding, decoding, response, and feedback), and noise. To communicate
effectively, marketers must understand how these elements combine to
communicate value to target customers.
In preparing marketing communications, the communicator’s first task is to identify
the target audience and its characteristics. Next, the communicator has to determine
the communication objectives and define the response sought, whether it be
awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, or purchase. Then a message should
be constructed with an effective content and structure. Media must be selected, both
for personal and nonpersonal communication. The communicator must find highly
credible sources to deliver messages. Finally, the communicator must collect feedback
by watching how much of the market becomes aware, tries the product, and is
satisfied in the process.

Question 58

Explain the methods for setting the promotion budget and factors that affect the
design of the promotion mix

Answer 58

The company must determine how much to spend for promotion. The most popular
approaches are to spend what the company can afford, use a percentage of sales,
base promotion on competitors’ spending, or base it on an analysis and costing of
the communication objectives and tasks. The company has to divide the promotion
budget among the major tools to create the promotion mix. Companies can pursue a
push or a pull promotional strategy −or a combination of the two. The best specific
blend of promotion tools depends on the type of product/market, the buyer’s
readiness stage, and the PLC stage. People at all levels of the organization must be
aware of the many legal and ethical issues surrounding marketing communications.
Companies must work hard and proactively at communicating openly, honestly, and
agreeably with their customers and resellers.