Term Paper on Communication

Communication
Channels/Media used in Promotion Term Paper:

With the aim of providing an integrated marketing communication that is, a message that is closely coordinated with overall marketing strategy, the producers of SpofoKnife are going to use:

Advertising: The company is going to use TV as well as newspaper and magazine advertising. We will place our ads in specialized editions on tourism and alpinism. Besides, we envisage an in-store advertising campaign. Advertising budget is calculated to match the competitors’ spending on similar products at the in the initial stages of product introduction and on a percentage-of-sales basis in subsequent periods. Some ads will be placed on the Internet, predominantly on websites dealing with tourism, nature and alpinism.

Direct marketing will allow us to elicit a quick response from the target market by sending a direct message to our potential consumers. This strategy will also help us to evaluate the potential for growth associated with a new product. We will focus on the use of direct-mail marketing and direct sales. In direct-mail marketing, we will target the people found on the lists of various tourist, alpinist and scout organizations. Besides, we will try to obtain lists of customers from tour agencies that sell trips to wild natural areas.
Sales promotion that will be targeted at achieving short-term objectives offering incentives for sales force to promote our product. We will encourage sales force to sell our products by offering them a discount for purchasing the initial batch of SpofoKnives, as well as a discount for meeting certain target volumes.
Publicity and Public Relations. We will keep the public informed on the improvements we will continuously make to our products. Our company will establish a direct phone line in addition to the website link where we will collect the opinions of our consumers on the quality of our product and the changes that can be made to make it even more efficient.We are going to host annual tourist gatherings where SpofoKnife will serve as “admission ticket” and will keep the public informed of these events.
We will use other kinds of communication activities. In stores, we will organize product demonstrations where anybody will be able to taste a meal using SpofoKnife. In addition, we will exhibit our product at trade shows.

The reasons for using channels and messages to be used

Advertising was picked because it allows the producer to cover a broad audience and allows the company to have full control of the communicated message. This channel can be expected to bring in quick results. Targeted advertising campaign in special magazines will enable the SpofoKnife makers to reach the audience that is most likely to take an interest in the product.
Direct marketing was chosen as a channel of communication for the speediness with which it allows to get the message through to consumers. Also, in the first stages of our campaign we will value the information on how readily the consumers respond to our message. Level of response to direct-mail promotions will allow us to infer whether our product is perceived as having value by consumers. Using this channel, we also can hone in our efforts to win recognition for the product.
Sales promotion is used because the company understands how crucial the efforts of the sales force are in contributing to the success of SpofoKnife. We want to reward the salesmen for the time and effort they put in selling our products. It is also important to win the first contact with the sales force, and we will try to do this by offering incentives to start selling our products. We also understand that the sales people have options in choosing the products to sell, and other firms also offer incentives, so we are going to try to match their promotions so as to provide adequate return for our sales force.
Publicity and Public Relations. We are committed to conducting an open and fair business adhering to the strictest ethics code and striving to deliver the best value for our customers. That is why we believe that the supply of information about our company needs to be adequate to satisfy the public interest. We hope to come up with interesting and original ideas that will draw the attention of the pubic to our production, and will turn out to be beneficial for the local community in which we will work and for the society in general. In this way we try to attract the attention that would otherwise have to be drawn through an expensive advertising campaign. Besides, we believe that people have more trust in independent media reports rather than in paid advertising, and press articles will make our message more meaningful for the people.
We believe that product demonstrations will be useful as they will bring the innovative and earlier-unseen object closer to consumers’ everyday lives, imprinting on their minds that it can be regarded as a habitual and handy companion. In trying out free and tasty meals with SpofoKnife, consumers will develop a strong positive association with the product that could urge them to buy it when they see it on the shelf.
Trade shows will provide a connection to the store managers, and businessmen working in the tourism industry, which could lead to the establishment of mutually beneficial contacts and development of new business initiatives.

Strategy to measure the effectiveness of the campaign
The effectiveness of the promotion campaign will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

Tracking Studies whereby respondents are asked recall questions on their responses to advertising. Tracking studies are used to test consumer attitude to advertising campaign and the most common methods include “face-to-face interviewing and telephone surveys” (Mintz 1988).
Linking Objectives to Incremental Contribution – we will engage in the analysis of our financial data such as increase in sales volume so as to measure the advertising expenditure to the effects advertising has on our bottom line (Winer 2004).
Past Sales and Advertising – we will evaluate the relationship between historical statistical data on the past sales and their relationship to the advertising campaign expenditures that were undertaken in the past.
Advertising testing. To evaluate whether our campaign adequately reflects the message we want to get through to the consumer, we will engage in two kinds of testing: pre – testing (includes on-air tests, dummy vehicle ads, and field tests) and post-testing that will assess the effectiveness of advertising through the use of recall tests, association measures, single-source systems, inquiry tests and recognition tests (An Introduction to Integrated Marketing Communications)

Conclusion
SpofoKnife will be marketed using most of the channels available to managers such as advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, publicity and public relations, product demonstrations and trade shows. The marketing staff will use specialized media to target specific market segments, as well as multipurpose channels to alert wide audience to the existence of a new product.

Internet is one of the vehicles that will be employed in promoting SpofoKnife. Its inclusion was caused by its broad reach, and easy availability of this resource.

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