BINDURA UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE EDUCATION

FACULTY OF COMMERCE

DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING

Name: Henrietta Kudzai Chiteure

REG Number: B210924B

Course: Marketing Communication

Lecturer: Dr A Musekiwa

Assignment Question

Discuss the different marketing communication methods highlighting their pros and cons
Marketing communication methods help an organisation reach its target audience. There is no
one method which works in isolation. For an organisation to successfully meet its objective,
organisations should implore more than on method of communicating with the intended
audience. Marketing is the arm of business concerned with communicating with customers,
therefore they make use of different methods to do this communication. Each marketing tool
has its strengths and weaknesses, and each method is best suited for specific situations.
Understanding your market will help an organisation know which method to use.

Marketers make use of a variety of promotion tools to communicate with customers and other
stakeholders. Also known as Marketing Communication Mix, it consists of “a specific blend
of advertising, public relations, personal selling, sales promotion, and direct-marketing tools
that the company uses to persuasively communicate customer value and build customer
relationships” (Kotler, 2008). The different marketing methods are namely advertising,
personal selling, public relations, sales promotion, directing marketing and digital marketing

Advertising is the oldest trick in the book of marketing. It has been defined as any paid form
of communication from an identified sponsor or source that draws attention ideas, goods,
services, or the sponsor itself. Advertising is a very old form of promotion. In the advent of
the technological era, advertising has greatly improved and can be far reaching to audiences
within the organisations’ geographical area. Advertising is usually delivered through media
such as television, radio, newspapers and increasingly the internet. The main purpose of
advertising is to inform, persuade and remind people of your services that you provide as an
organisation.

Marketers who need to reach large, geographically dispersed audiences, often with high
frequency, use advertising to promote their business. The cost per exposure is low, although
the overall costs are high. It builds brand image, and may stimulate short-term sales, but it’s a
one-way communication with potential customers. As a marketing communication method, it
has its advantages and disadvantages. Advertising creates a sense of credibility or legitimacy
when an organisation invests in presenting itself and its products in a public forum.
Advertising allows marketers to repeat a message at intervals selected and strategically. A
good example is the land reform programme that the government of Zimbabwe had in 2000.
They selected to run their jingles toward the prime-time news slot for people to be constantly
reminded of the advert. (Baker, 1991)
This method of repetition ensures that the message is subconsciously in the minds of people
and there are aware of what it entails. Econet as a telecommunications service provider make
use of this method. Their adverts are strategically placed during radio shows when they know
there is a high number of listeners, especially during drive time home and in the morning
when people are going to work. Some organisations made use of commuter omnibuses, to
advertise their products or services. Protector plus condoms usually had stickers in commuter
omnibuses, this generates human conversation and interestingly when people are travelling
debates are sarked and it creates awareness of their brand and their products.

Advertising is an excellent vehicle for brand building, as it can create rational and emotional
connections with a company or offering that translate into good will. Through this new digital
era, if advertisements are memorable or entertaining the videos can be shared between friends
and they can go viral which then causes viewer impression to skyrocket. However, it is
imperative to note that advertising is highly costly as noted by (Kotler, 2008) This depends
on the medium that is being used, but generally advertising has been a costly expense in most
organisation. If not, properly planned resources could be wasted on the wrong target audience
and the company will not have profitable returns because of that advert.

If advertisements are not properly planned, the message could be missed by the target
audience. Therefore, advertisements should have messages that re generally clear and easy to
understand for the target audience. If the advertising is not digital, it is important to note that
it is difficult for marketers to measure the success of traditional advertising, and because
advertising is a one way medium, where there is usually little direct opportunity for consumer
feedback and interaction. (Fullerton, 1988)

Public relations are also part of the communication methods that marketers implore. Public
relations are the process of maintain favourable image and building strategically beneficial
relationships between an organisation and its publics. This is different from advertising
because this is not a paid form of getting out a message about an organisation. Public
relations do not pay for attention and publicity, instead pr stives to earn a favourable image
through news-worthy and attention worthy activities of the organisation and its publics.
These activities are mainly corporate social responsibility activities which creates a good
image to the publics. Econet uses the philanthropic slate for CSR. They have bursaries under
the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo to further the education for those that are underprivileged but
being intelligent.
This positive accept of Econet automatically associated their brand with a helping hand and
creates positive image to the society that they serve. Like advertising public relations seeks to
promote organisations, products, services, and brands, but public relations play an important
role in identifying and building relationships with influential individuals and groups
responsible for shaping market perceptions in the industry.

Public relations seek to build and maintain a positive image of an organisation, to inform
target audiences about positive associations with a product. Public relations seek to maintain
good relations with influencers, the people who strongly influence the opinions of target
audience. A good example is that of Nyaradzo Funeral Services. They make use of influential
people on the social media in Zimbabwe such as Madam Boss and Jah Prayzah. This method
ensures that the message of the organisation gets to a larger audience as these influencers
have a large following on social media platforms such as Facebook, twitter, and Instagram. It
also seeks to generate good will among consumers, the media and other target audiences by
raising the organisation’s profile.

Public relations as a marketing communication method have their disadvantages and

advantages. Public relations according to (Belch, 1998) provide the opportunity to amplify
key messages and milestones, this means that an organisation can have a press release that
could coincide with the launch of a new product. This creates the right amount of noise to
media houses and the general population at large. Since Public relations is not a paid form of
persuading people, it becomes believable. There is no point in lying when an organisation
could implore truthfulness to inform people about who they are and the services that they
provide. Publicity is seen to be more objective therefore, people tend to give it more weight
and find it more credible.

Public relations activities can generate interesting content that can be featured on the Website
of the organisation. Such information can be engaging to the stakeholders that visit the
website, and it can generate interest and traffic long after the PR event has passed. Zimplats
has a good example of such PR activities that they do. The most talked about is their
engagement with the government to help the marginalised Albino people in the society. They
took the initiative to raise awareness of Albinisim at the same time making people aware of
their organisation.

However, it is also great to note that like advertising, with Public relations the number of
people who would have engaged with the key messages is hard to measure. Therefore, it is
important to note that there is no guarantee of people receiving and acting to the awareness
campaigns the organisation will be doing. Also, there is no control over the accuracy or
thoroughness of the coverage you would have done. (Fullerton, 1988)

Sales promotion are a marketing communication tool for stimulating revenue or providing
incentives or extra value to distributers over a short period of time. Sales Promotion activities
include special offers, displays, demonstrations and other non-recurring selling efforts. Sales
promotion makes use of a variety of tool, such as discount coupons, premiums, daily deals,
contests etc. They attract attention, offer strong purchase incentives, and often boost sagging
sales. They stimulate quick response, but they are short-lived and are not effective at building
long-term brand preferences

These are basically incentives that organisations make use to lure customers to their
organisations and to increase demand for their products or services. They make use of printed
media such as coupons, direct mail pieces and billboards, digital media like the internet,
email, websites, and social media.

Sales promotion is a technique which is valuable way to acquire contact details for current
and prospective clients. Most of the methods used require a person to leave behind their
details and this can be added to the customer databases of an organisation to constantly send
emails about the organisations products and services. Consumer sales promotions according
to (Elvy, 1991) can generate loyalty and enthusiasm for a brand, product, or service.
However, if a company continually gives out product samples and coupons it can risk
tarnishing the company’s brand.

Sales promotions are delivered to targeted groups via marketing campaigns during a pre-set,
limited amount of time. In order to broaden awareness, impact and participation, sales
promotions are often combined with other marketing communication mix such as social
media campaigns encouraging people to post about entering a sponsored contest on twitter,
Facebook and Instagram. It is also important to note that sales promotion cannot compensate
for a poor product, a declining sales trend ineffective advertising or a weak brand loyalty.

Personal selling is very effective in building customer relations and helping the customer
move from the knowledge and awareness stage to conviction and action. It’s relationship-
oriented and the most expensive to use of the promotion as this requires a person to be
travelling form one place to another. This type of communication is carried out by sales
representatives, who are the personal connection between a buyer and a company, or a
company’s product or services. (Almousa, 2013)

Good salespersons offer advice, information and recommendations and they can help buyers
save money and time during the decision process. This marketing communication method
makes use of sakes presentations which could be in person or virtual to inform prospective
customers about a product or service, they could be conversations between the salesperson
and prospective buyers, where the salesperson tries to build a relationship with the purpose of
scoring a sale. The salespeople could also do door to door selling, offering products for sale,
and showing prospective buyers their samples of the products or services that are offered.

If this method is properly conducted it has the power to persuade, prospective buyers into
buying the product or the service. It is a highly flexible method as the salesperson can model
his/her pitch to suit the prospective buyer. Personal selling minimises wasted effort, the
salesperson can pinpoint the target market and focus their effort to making a sale. Another
advantage of personal selling is that a salesperson is in an excellent position to encourage the
customer to act. The one-on-one interaction of personal selling means that the salesperson
can effectively respond to and over objections that is concerns about the product, its
advantages etc. This one-on-one could be expensive to an organisation, they could make use
of telemarketing, direct mail, or online communication. In this day and era one-on-one
interactions are not advisable as we are living in a pandemic time.

Therefore, it is safe to note that most organisation who want to fully communicate with their
audience and receive feedback could use all the above listed communication methods for
their marketing. Each methods have shortfalls, however, if all are combined, they could
counter act to cover where a certain technique lacks, and this could guarantee an almost
perfect marketing communication method.
References
Almousa, M. (2013). Consumers' Perspectives from developing Country.
Baker, M. (1991). Research For Marketing. Houndmills: Macmillan Education Limited.
Belch, G. a. (1998). Advertising and Promotion. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Elvy, B. (1991). Marketing: Made Simple 3rd Ed. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd.
Fullerton, R. (1988). How Modern Is Modern Markerting? Marketings's Evolution and The
Myth of The Production Era.
Gummesson, E. (2003). Internal marketing in the lights of relationship marketing and
network organizations, New York”,. In R. a. Varey, Internal marketing: directions for
management. New York: Routledge.
Kotler, P. a. (2008). Principles of Marketing. 12th Edition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson
Education Inc.