Chapter 13

Integrated
Promotion
Decisions

McGrawHill/Irwin

Copyright2010byTheMcGrawHillCompanies,Inc.Allrightsreserved.

The Promotion Mix:

A Communication Toolkit
Promotion decisions must consider the
objectives the marketer has in mind, as
well as the merits of and costs entailed in
using different tools in the promotion mix.
In making these decisions, the marketer is
developing a promotional, or an integrated
marketing communication (IMC) plan.

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The Promotion Mix: A Communication

Toolkit
The principal tools from which a marketer
can choose in developing an IMC plan
are:
Advertising
Personal selling
Sales promotion
Public relations

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Decision Sequence for Developing the Promotion

Mix

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Developing an Integrated Marketing

Communications Plan
Step 1: Define the audience(s) to be
targeted
Three broad ways to segment both consumer
and organizational markets:
Who the customers are
Where they are
How they behave

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Developing an Integrated Marketing

Communications Plan
Step 2: Set the promotional objectives.
SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Relevant, and Time-bound)
Good objectives should include:
A statement defining the target audience.
A statement of how some specific aspect(s) of the
audiences perceptions, attitudes, or behavior
should change.
A statement of how quickly such a change is
expected to occur.
A statement of the degree of change required.
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Developing an Integrated Marketing

Communications Plan
Step 3: Set the promotion budget
The percentage-of-sales method
The competitive-parity method
The objective-and-task method

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Developing an Integrated Marketing

Communications Plan
Step 4: Design the promotion mix
First, marketers decide which promotion
components to use.
Second, they choose the specific activities
within each component.
Third, within each activity they must decide
which specific vehicle to employ.

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Strategic Circumstances and the Relative Importance of

Advertising and Personal Selling as Promotional Tools

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Comparing the Merits of the Promotion Mix

Elements

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Developing an Integrated Marketing

Communications Plan
Step 5: Evaluate the results
Involves finding out whether the objectives of
the promotional activity have been metoften
via marketing research.
Research can also provide important insights
into whether the firm attained its distribution
objectives

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The Nitty-Gritty of
Promotional Decision Making
Making advertising decisions
Setting advertising objectives
Objectives must relate to attitudes or
behavior.
The use of hierarchy-of-effect models move
prospective buyers through a series of steps
awareness, comprehension, conviction,
actionto the ultimate goal of purchasing the
product.
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The Nitty-Gritty of
Promotional Decision Making
Setting advertising budgets and making
media choices
Advertisers must choose some combination of
reach and frequency to attain their advertising
objectives.
Typically, an advertising medium provides a
rate card.
Costs are expressed in cost per thousand
impressions or CPM
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The Nitty-Gritty of
Promotional Decision Making
Traditional media types
New media
International media

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The Nitty-Gritty of
Promotional Decision Making
Developing the creative strategy
Effective marketing communications is a task
that requires creativity and special expertise.
Managing the creative effort:
The unique selling proposition to be delivered
The source of the message
The nature of the appeal embodied in the message

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The Nitty-Gritty of
Promotional Decision Making
Measuring advertising results
Before Tests tests made before the
message is released on a full-run basis
Recall tests
Sales tests

After Tests tests done after the copy is

run in the prescribed media.
Recognition tests
Recall tests
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The Nitty-Gritty of
Promotional Decision Making
Making personal selling decisions
Planning a sales program involves four
sets of decisions
Organizing the salesforce.
Development of account management
policies.
Making deployment decisions.
Developing performance expectations for
each sales rep based on forecasts.
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The Nitty-Gritty of
Promotional Decision Making
The sales cycle
The duration that it will take to meet with the
various decision makers and convince them
to try the product, perhaps on a limited basis
at first, and then to adopt it more fully.

Organizing the sales effort in global

markets

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The Nitty-Gritty of
Promotional Decision Making
Customer service: an increasingly
important personal selling function
Using technology to enhance sales and
customer service performance
Recruiting, training, and compensating
salespeople: the keys to salesforce
performance

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Evaluating and Controlling Salesforce

Performance
Companies use three main approaches in
monitoring the salesforce to evaluate and
control sales performance.
Sales analysis
Cost analysis
Behavioral analysis

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Evaluating and Controlling Salesforce

Performance
Making sales promotion decisions
Sales promotion is less risky than advertising.
Performance is usually easily measurable.
Primary sales promotion techniques:

Price-off promotions
Premiums
Sampling
Rebates
Contests and sweepstakes
Trade promotions
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Evaluating and Controlling Salesforce

Performance
Making public relations decisions
Public relations has several unique
advantages:
Lots of information can be communicated.
High credibility.
Very low or nil cost to reach customer.
Supports both pull and push strategies.

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Evaluating and Controlling Salesforce

Performance
Through public relations, firms
communicate with a variety of publics,
including the consumer, the financial
community and stockholders, the
community, prospective employees,
current employees, suppliers.
Publicity can be used to accomplish
different objectives among different
groups.
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Take-Aways
Marketing managers in most companies
face fundamental strategic decisions
about whether to emphasize advertising or
personal selling in their promotion mix.
Identifying the strategic circumstances
provides direction for these decisions.

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Take-Aways
Getting marketing communications
messagesof any kind, in any medium
noticed and understood is no easy task.
Many ads and other communication
attempts simply dont meet their
objectives. Following the guidelines in this
chapter will mitigate this risk.

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Take-Aways
A clear understanding of ones target
market is essential for planning and
implementing an effective promotional
program. Without such an understanding,
money is likely to be wasted.

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Take-Aways
Many marketing communications efforts
are not easy to evaluate. Setting clear and
measurable objectives up front facilitates
doing so.

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Take-Aways
New media, including the Internet, e-mail,
and mobile telephones, are predicted to
revolutionize ad spending, because their
resultslike those for direct marketing
programscan often be directly
measured.

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Take-Aways
In companies of all sizes, technology will
play an increasingly meaningful role in
managing sales and customer service
efficiency and effectiveness. Caution must
be exercised, however, to avoid sacrificing
effectiveness for efficiency.

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Take-Aways
For new product launches on limited
budgets, sales promotion alone can
deliver substantial impact at a fraction of
the cost of conventional approaches.

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