The Marketing Communications Mix

A company's overall marketing communications mix also called its promotion mix consists of the particular blend of advertising, sales promotion, personal selling ,public relations, and direct- marketing tools that the company utilize to pursue its marketing and advertising objectives. Definitions of the five main promotion tools follow:

Advertising:  Any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of goods, ideas or services by known sponsor.

Personal selling: Personal presentation by the firm's sales force for making sales and customer relationships.

Sales promotion: Short-term incentives to encourage the buy or sale of service or product. Public relations: Building good relations along the company's many publics by obtaining favourable advertising, building a good corporate picture, and handling or heading off unfavourable buzz, stories, and events.

Direct marketing: Direct connections along carefully targeted particular consumers to both get an immediate response and cultivate long-term customer relationships-the use of, mail, fax, telephone, e-mail, the Internet, and other type of tools to directly communicate with particular consumers.

Each of the categories involves specific tools. Example of this is advertising includes print, broadcast, outdoor, and other forms.  Personal selling includes trade shows, sales presentations, and incentive programs. Sales promotion includes point-of-purchase displays, premiums, specialty advertising, coupons, discounts and demonstrations. Direct marketing includes catalos, fax, kiosks, telemarketing, the Internet, and more. Due to technological breakthroughs, now people can communicate through traditional media (radio, newspapers telephone, television), plus through newer media forms (cellular phones, fax machines pagers, and computers). The new technologies have encouraged many companies to move from mass communication to more targeted communication and one-to-one dialogue.