Marketing Communication - Promotions vs Advertising

Marketing communication mix decision is one of the most important decisions the marketer has to take to finally sell his product. The communication creates awareness about the product and persuades the customer to use it.

There are different forms of communication: Direct marketing, Public Relations, Promotions, Personal Selling and Advertising. Today newer and newer forms of communication are getting invented day-by-day by marketers to reach to their customers in a better way and before the competition. Experiential marketing was also developed as a result.

Direct marketing is the type of marketing technique in which the targets are made aware of the product personally, by the marketer through direct e-mail, calls, fax, catalog, voice mail etc. It is an interactive kind of marketing. Dell and Amway have championed the concept of direct marketing.

Personal Selling is the outgrown form of Direct Marketing. In this form the marketer personally meets the customer to create awareness. The sales team makes demonstrations and sales presentations to the customers. They also conduct fair and trade shows for the targets. In Business-to-Business market, most of the selling occurs through Personal Selling.

Public Relation is basically an image building exercise. The main idea of this exercise is to garner goodwill and a favorable corporate image. This could be done through number of activities like getting press write favorably of the product and the corporate identity, lobbying, sponsorships, corporate communication etc.

Eg Harley Davidson sponsors various HOG (Harley owner Group) activities and its rallies.

Promotion is the technique to encourage trial and usage of the product. It is an incentive based system. It includes techniques such as free samples, coupons, refund, price-off offers, usage patronage schemes etc. But these techniques can help the firm in increasing the sales and market share just in the short term. In the long term it is not effective.

Advertisement is the most common form of communication technique used nowadays. It is the most impersonal form of communication. Advertisements in newspapers, magazines, media, billboards, sign-posts, motion pictures, point of purchase materials, all are considered forms of advertising. Although the ads are targeted to a particular segment, it is viewed by the mass. Hence it loses its relevance. Today customers are bombarded with thousands of advertisement daily. It is getting difficult for marketers to cut through the clutter of ads and advertise their product. Hence they have started using other techniques to get noticed by the target.