Even if you’ve already got a marketing strategy and an advertising budget, you still need a public relations plan to help your business grow. This Quick-Read includes basic and creative tips for designing your PR campaign. OVERVIEW [top] Public relations (PR) involves activities that promote a positive image, foster goodwill or increase sales. You might engage in PR through: Media relations and publicity — using the media to sell your product… Read More »Launching a PR Campaign

 Advertising In one sense, advertising is old-fashioned. It has a long, storied history as a device to sell products. But the way we write and deliver ads today barely resembles the classic print, radio and TV pitches of the past. Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal communication about a company, product, service or idea by an identified sponsor. That means you must buy space or time for an advertised… Read More » Advertising and Promotional Channels

UNDERSTANDING THE MAIN COMMUNICATION CHANNELS Advertising. Advertising is any paid form of media communication. This includes print ads in magazines, trade journals and newspapers, radio and TV announcements, Web-based visibility-building, and billboards. Advertising is a nonpersonal promotional activity because the seller has no direct contact with the potential customer during the communication process. Sales Promotions. In-store demonstrations, displays, contests and price incentives (50% off, buy-one-get-one-free) are sales promotion techniques. Public Relations. These activities… Read More »UNDERSTANDING THE MAIN PROMOTIONAL MIX COMMUNICATION CHANNELS 

WHY YOU NEED A PROMOTIONAL MIX If you deliver your message in many different ways, you increase your odds of reaching your target market. Hundreds of messages a day bombard your target market, but only a select few penetrate their consciousnesses. Of those, an even smaller percentage eventually lead them to act. You may want to communicate a range of messages to different markets. If you have a product, such… Read More »WHY YOU NEED A PROMOTIONAL MIX

You drive sales by promoting the benefits of your company’s goods or services to pools of potential buyers. The ways you promote your organization will largely determine whether you successfully plant the right messages in the minds of your target audience. This module explains how you can establish a promotional mix best suited to your company’s needs and resources WHAT TO EXPECT Even a superior product doesn’t sell itself. Your… Read More »How to Promotional Mix Work

One of the most ancient techniques of marketing, personal selling was widely used when large scale production was unknown and the market size was limited. But even today, personal selling could an effective tool for companies to target individual prospects more specifically. The American Marketing Association defines personal selling as an “oral presentation in a conversation with one or more prospective purchasers for the purpose of making sales”. Unlike advertising,… Read More »Personal selling – when and how Work

General Discussion Instructions You are required to post to this discussion THREE TIMES, on THREE DIFFERENT DAYS. Please refer to the Discussion Grading Rubric for details regarding how your performance will be assessed. NOTE: Please be certain to read the entire discussion assignment since in some cases there is more than one question you need to discuss, respond to, or address. Be sure that you have answered the entire question! Post 1:… Read More »Marketing Mix

Putting It Together: Marketing Mix Synthesis In this chapter you have seen how businesses use the marketing mix to gain market share, enhance the value of their brand, and attract and retain customers in order to increase revenue and profit. Let’s take a final look at this from the perspective of the most valuable brand in the world: Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is sold in more than two hundred countries around the world and… Read More »Putting It Together: Marketing Mix

Advantages and Disadvantages of Guerrilla Marketing Guerrilla marketing has several notable advantages. It can be inexpensive to execute—it’s often much cheaper than traditional advertising when you consider the number of impressions and amount of attention generated. It encourages creativity and inventiveness, since the goal is to create something novel and original. Guerrilla marketing is about buzz: it is designed for viral sharing, and it taps into powerful word-of-mouth marketing as people… Read More »Advantages and Disadvantages of Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla Marketing Tactics: The Usual Suspects As you saw in the example of the lamppost transformed into a McDonald’s coffeepot, all kinds of spaces and urban environments present opportunities for the guerrilla marketer. In fact, guerrilla marketing initiatives can be executed offline or online. Some companies feel that an edgy, unexpected online campaign with creative guerrilla elements is a little safer than executing a project in the bricks-and-mortar world. It goes… Read More »Guerrilla Marketing Tactics: The Usual Suspects