Advertising
Advertising is defined as any form of paid communication or promotion for a product, service or idea. Advertisement is not only used by companies but in many cases by the museum, government and charitable organisations. However, the treatment meted out to advertising defers from an organisation to an organisation. Advertising development involves a decision across five M’s (Mission, Money, Message, Media and Measurement).

Mission looks at setting objectives for advertising. The objectives could be to inform, persuade, remind or reinforce. The objective has to follow the marketing strategy set by the company.

Money or budget decision for advertising should look at the stage of the product life cycle, market share and consumer base, competition, advertising frequency and product substitutability.

Message development is divided into four steps; message generation, message evaluation and selection, message execution, and social responsibility review.

Once the message is decided, the next step is finalising the media for delivering the message. The choice depends on the reach of media frequency of transmission and potential impact on the customer. This choice of media types is made from newspaper, television, direct mail, radio, magazine, and the internet. After which timing of the broadcast of the message is essential to grab the target audience’s attention.

Checking on the effectiveness of communication is essential to a company’s strategy. There are two types of research communication effect research and sales effect research.

Sales Promotion
Promotion is an incentive tool used to drive up short-term sales. Promotion can be launched directed at consumers or trade. The focus of advertising is to create a reason for purchase. The focus of promotion is to create an incentive to buy. Consumer incentives could be samples, coupons, free trial and demonstration. Trade incentive could be price off, free goods and allowances. Sales force incentive could be convention, trade shows, competition among salespeople.

Sales promotion activity can have many objectives, such as grabbing the attention of new customers, rewarding the existing customer, and increasing the consumption of occasional users. However, sales promotion is usually targeted at the fence sitters and brand switchers.

Sales promotional activity for the product is selected looking at the overall marketing objective of the company. The final selection of the consumer promotional tools needs to consider the target audience, budget, competitive response and each tool’s purpose. Sales promotion activity should undergo pretest before implementation. Once the activity is launched, it should be controlled as to remain within the budget. An evaluation program is a must after the implementation of the promotional scheme.

Public Relations
Companies cannot survive in isolation. They need to interact with customers, employees and different stakeholders constantly. The public relation office does this servicing of relation. The primary function of the public relations office is to handle press releases, support product publicity, create and maintain the corporate image, handle matters with lawmakers, guide management with respect to public issues.

Companies are looking at ways to converge with functions of marketing and public relation in marketing public relation. The direct responsibility of marketing public relation (MPR) is to support corporate and product branding activities. MPR is an efficient tool in building awareness by generating stories in media. Once the story is in circulation, MPR can establish credibility and create a sense of enigma among salespeople and dealers to boost enthusiasm. MPR is a much more cost-effective tool than other promotional activities.

Direct Marketing
The communication established through a direct channel without using any intermediaries is referred to as direct marketing. Direct marketing can be used to deliver a message or service. Direct marketing has shown tremendous growth in recent years. The internet has played a major part in this growth story. Direct marketing saves time, makes an experience personal and pleasant. Direct marketing reduces costs for companies. Face-to-face selling, direct mail, catalogue marketing, telemarketing, TV and kiosks are media for direct marketing.

Advertisement, Promotional activity, Public relation and direct marketing play an essential role in helping companies reach their marketing goals.

(Total: 5 marks)