Advantages of Marketing Communication Mix

An organization’s promotional mix consisting of various promotion tools like advertising, sales
promotion, public relations, personal selling, direct-marketing tools and online, digital and
integrated marketing methods is called the Marketing Communications Mix.

It is the way to communicate your brand value to the consumer and build long-lasting customer
relationships.

Most often your advertising department and sales management team may be communicating
different messages to your consumers, which lead to an inconsistent promotional message. For
example, your newspaper advertisement might have promoted a certain price whereas the product
label doesn’t reflect the same price; this causes confusion in the mind of the consumer that further
aggravates due to a totally different message on your website! Since different communication
channels are handled by different departments of your organization, very often your marketing
communication mix falls out of sync. This is where the concept of Integrated Marketing
Communications (IMC) helps you integrate the various channels to deliver a uniform and
compelling message about your brand to the target audience. It brings together all the company’s
messages under one campaign to promote a single, clear and consistent positioning statement.
Mix Element Advantages
Advertising Good for building awareness
Effective at reaching a wide audience
Repetition of main brand and product
positioning helps build customer trust
Personal Selling Highly interactive - lots of
communication between the buyer and
seller
Excellent for communicating complex /
detailed product information and
features
Relationships can be built up -
important if closing the sale make take
a long time
Sales Promotion Can stimulate quick increases in sales
by targeting promotional incentives on
particular products
Good short term tactical tool
Public Relations Often seen as more "credible" - since Risk of losing control - cannot always
the message seems to be coming from a control what other people write or
third party (e.g. magazine, newspaper) say about your product
Cheap way of reaching many customers
- if the publicity is achieved through
the right media
Direct Marketing Direct selling is marketing
communication through postal mail,
email or over the telephone. It is the
information that is prepared quickly
and customized to consumers whose
contact information is kept in the
business's database. Direct selling
creates a rapport with the customer
and is often combined with sales
promotions such as coupon mailers.
Like sales promotions, direct marketing
affects the consumer at the point of
purchase.
Disadvantages
Impersonal - cannot answer all a
customer's questions
Not good at getting customers to
make a final purchasing decision
Costly - employing a sales force has
many hidden costs in addition to
wages
Not suitable if there are thousands of
important buyers
If used over the long-term, customers
may get used to the effect
Too much promotion may damage
the brand image
One of the main disadvantages of
direct marketing is the demand from
consumers to end unsolicited contact
from companies. Consumers do not
appreciate privacy intrusion or the
sheer mass of communication,
referred to as spam or junk mail,
received on a daily basis. Other
disadvantages include generating
poor quality leads and failing to bring
a high number of repeat customers