Developing Effective Marketing Communications 279
in a category; brand choice is made in the store; the product is an impulse item; and
product benefits are well understood. A pull strategyinvolves the manufacturer using
advertising and consumer promotion to induce consumers to ask intermediaries for
the product, thus inducing the intermediaries to order it. This is especially
appropriate when there is high brand loyalty and high involvement in the category;
people perceive differences between brands; and people choose the brand before
they go to the store.
➤ Buyer-readiness stage.Promotional tools vary in cost effectiveness at different stages of
buyer readiness, as shown in Figure 5-7. Advertising and publicity play the most
important roles in the awareness-building stage. Customer comprehension is
affected primarily by advertising and personal selling, while customer conviction is
influenced mostly by personal selling. Closing the sale is influenced mostly by
personal selling and sales promotion. Reordering is also affected mostly by personal
selling and sales promotion, and somewhat by reminder advertising.
➤ Product-life cycle stage.Promotional tools also vary in cost effectiveness at different
stages of the product life cycle. Advertising and publicity are most cost effective in
the introduction stage; then all the tools can be toned down in the growth stage
because demand is building word of mouth. Sales promotion, advertising, and
personal selling grow more important in the maturity stage. In the decline stage,
sales promotion continues strong, advertising and publicity are reduced, and
salespeople give the product only minimal attention.
➤ Company market rank.Market leaders derive more benefit from advertising than from
sales promotion. Conversely, smaller competitors gain more by using sales
promotion in their marketing communications mix.Step 7: Measuring Results
After implementing the promotional plan, the communicator must measure its
impact. Members of the target audience are asked whether they recognize or recall
the message, how many times they saw it, what points they recall, how they felt
about the message, and their previous and current attitudes toward the product
Figure 5-6 Relative Spending on Promotional Tools in Consumer versus
Business Markets