Marketing Communications: five finger story

Marketing Communications is about establishing an image for company and products. It is to communicate benefits from products, create awareness about new products, keep existing products in focus and generate market excitement. 

The company's marketing communication tactics alerts customers to sale, justifies prices with benefits, answer consumer's questions, provide after sale reinforcement and keep organisation in focus. 

All marketing communication tools should work in unity. It should be a seamless communication process sans hitches. 

Advertising: It is a paid form of non-personal communication about an organisation, product, service or idea by an identified sponsor. 

Paid: purchase of space or time for advertising messages. 

Non-personal: uses mass media to transmit messages to large target groups with little opportunity for immediate feedback. (in case of traditional form on mass media: newspapers, magazines, TV, Radio)

Direct Marketing: It is a method in which organisation communicate directly with target consumers to generate a response or transaction. It is much more than direct mail and direct mail order cataloge system. 

It includes activities like Direct Selling, Tele-marketing and direct response ads through direct mails. 

Sales Promotion: It creates market excitement for quick sales. This method promises additional benefits. There are market activities that provide extra value or incentives to sales force, distributors or the ultimate consumers and can stimulate immediate sales. 

Personal Selling: A 'person-to-person' communication in which a seller attempts to persuade prospective buyers to purchase company's products or services or to act on an idea. 

Few tactics to get success using this tool

1. GFA - Gain Favorable attention

2. Determine need/problem

3. Offer solution

4. Gain commitment

Publicity and Public Relations

Publicity: Publicity is that activity which generates non-personal stimulation of demand for a product, service or business by planning commercially significant news about it, in media that is not paid for.

Public Relations: an organisation systematically distributes information in an attempt to control or manage nature of the publicity it gets and its image.