Marketing Communication

Introduction

Nowadays, marketers have an extremely difficult task, when deciding on how to sell their products, where to sell them and essentially, to whom. The global market has become highly competitive and consumers are increasingly demanding and difficult to satisfy. Therefore, integrated marketing communication was introduced to bring together all the elements of a corporation (advertising, sales, customer service, public relations, direct marketing, sales support, etc.) into a singular, unified force rather than having these different departments working independently and separately from each other (Jobber, 2010, 465).

According to CIM (2010) promotional activities are the way a business promotes their products to consumers and retailers, so they can improve their brand image and create awareness to boost sales and to achieve a competitive advantage. They also grow their profits which expand their market share, inform shareholders and services to differentiate and create a unique selling point (USP).

Promotion is commonly the object of two misconceptions. Often, people take note of highly visible promotional activities, such as advertising and personal selling, and conclude that these make up the entire field of marketing (Pride et al, 2010, p. 431). Therefore, the role of coordinated promotional activities is to facilitate exchanges directly or indirectly by informing individuals, groups, or organisations, and influencing them to accept a firm’s products or to have more positive feelings about the firm. However, to expedite changes directly, marketers take information about a firm’s goods, services, and ideas to particular market segments (Pride et al, 2010, p. 426). To bring about exchanges indirectly, marketers address interest groups (such as environmental and consumer groups), regulatory agencies, investors, and the general public concerning a company and its products. The broader role of promotion, therefore, is to maintain positive relationships between a company and various groups in the marketing environment (Pride et al, 2010, p. 426).

An organisation that wants to introduce a new product or service should wisely study what consumers want. Many companies assume that because they feel they have a good product to offer, that consumers will positively seek it, once it is available. This is a mistake for companies to make. A product or service, which does not satisfy consumers' needs, will not be successful. Consumers want to be sure that the product they will buy will benefit them, some way, as Kotler states (2001, p. 43).

Moreover, customers require a variety of different communication and promotional activities to fulfil their need to know about products and services and then to purchase them. Therefore, an organisation must consider the need to integrate and co-ordinate all of their marketing, communications and promotional activities. (Beamish, 2005, p.

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