ABSTRACT
Marketing communications or promotion is used to communicate with customers in connection with product offerings. This chapter explores the promotional mix, including its tools, and integrated marketing communication campaigns. It explains the stages in the design of communications strategies, including a discussion of concepts such as target audiences, marketing messages, communication channels, promotional budgets and monitoring promotional performance. The chapter presents approaches to the use of key elements in the communications mix, including public relations, advertising, online marketing, communication through the physical environment, direct marketing, sales promotions, exhibitions and events, sponsorship and personal selling. Customer relationship management, both through face-to-face interaction and through data collection by means of customer relationship management systems, bridges both marketing communication and marketing research. The approach that emphasizes the need to integrate channels for optimum impact is known as integrated marketing communications (IMC). Public relations (PR) deals with the quality and nature of the relationship between an organization and its publics.
