External Communications

• Marketing Communications
• Sales Messages
• Advertising
• Promotions
• Merchandising
• Publicity

External communications, also referred to as promotions, is often what most people thing marketing is about.

Key Ideas

• Target audience
• Desired result
• Media
• Budget

In developing an effective promotional strategy, there are some basic areas to cover. You must know your target audience. It is important to clearly define your desired result. The method of delivering your message needs to be defined. Finally, clearly identifying your budget is important.

Marketing Communications

• Brand story
• Key message development

Marketing communications include your brand message (refer to section on branding) and the key points. These may be directed at your buyer or final consumer.

Sales Messages

• Should be consistent with marketing messages
• Should be monitored to ensure consistency

A sales message is directed at the buyers, by your sales force. It is important that your sales force understands what you are telling the market. Valuable resources dedicated towards developing a market may be all but lost without the sales force understanding the message.
If possible, establish a method to see if your sales force is including the marketing message.

Creating an Ad Strategy

• The promise
• Support for the promise
• Tone of the campaign
• Rationale

When developing an ad strategy, you need to focus on four issues.

The promise - you need to think about what it is you will deliver to the consumer. It has much to do with your overall branding effort.

Support for the promise - Advertising will be more effective if it includes how the consumer can be sure the promise will be met.

Tone of the campaign - Tonality tends to have a greater impact than what is actually said. Think about how visual presentation affects tone.

Rationale - Be sure to fully develop a rationale in support of the promise. Be ready to explain how it makes sense to the consumer.

Once you have established your advertising strategy, it can become part of the overall plan. In communicating with the target audience, you need to know what media to use. Do you want to use magazines, radio, TV, newspapers, direct mailing?

Whatever media you choose, check to see if there is a way to audit or measure who it reaches. Respectable trade magazines will be able to tell advertisers its readership and will provide an independent audit to verify readership. Request and expect this type of information.

Develop a budget strategy. Quite often your first two media choices will be the most effective and should receive a brunt of the budget.

The Advertising Plan

• Communicate with the target audience
  • The media mix
• Audits and other measures
• Budget strategies
  • The “top 2” rule

Once you have established your advertising strategy, it can become part of the overall plan. In communicating with the target audience, you need to know what media to use. Do you want to use magazines, radio, TV, newspapers, direct mailing?

Whatever media you choose, check to see if there is a way to audit or measure who it reaches. Respectable trade magazines will be able to tell advertisers its readership and will provide an independent audit to verify readership. Request and expect this type of information.

Develop a budget strategy. Quite often your first two media choices will be the most effective and should receive a brunt of the budget.

Types of Promotions

• Price incentives
• Product incentives
• Merchandise or premiums
• Experiences or events

Using promotions in your external communication strategy is an effective way to get people to purchase your product. Promotions come in many forms.

Price incentives include reduced price for volume purchases or coupons.

Product incentives include “two for one” offers.

Merchandise or premium incentives include providing a gift item with a purchase.

Experience or event incentives include winning a vacation if you send in proof of purchase slips and are randomly selected.

Promotional Guidelines

• Set measurable sales goals
• Be time specific
• Target market behavior to:
  • Retaining current users
  • Increasing purchases from current users
  • Increase trial from new users
  • Increase repeat purchases after trial
• Require pre and post-promotion numbers

When you develop your promotional plan, be sure to have some clear guidelines to operate under.

Set measurable sales goals to determine if the communications were as successful as intended. Perhaps similar messages work better in different geographic or demographic locations.

Don’t let the advertising plan linger. At a certain point, be sure have the project end.

Try to determine the buying tendencies of the target market. Develop surveys to determine if you are retaining customers, getting increased purchases from current users, increasing trials of new users, and increasing repeat purchases after trials. This information is important for refining the marketing message.

Establish pre- and post-promotional numbers to track success.

Merchandising

• Don’t forget your package
  • Add product information, recipes, nutrition info, and your brand story.
• Offer ways to bring more attention to the product in store
  • Shelf talkers
  • Brochures
  • Cross promotion

Merchandising is the process of distributing a product or service through planned promotion and directed sales effort.

Be sure that your packaging helps sell the product. Packaging might include recipes, nutritional information and the brand story.

Use of shelf talkers, brochures and cross promotions between complementary products are other ways of attracting customers to your products.

Publicity

• Have to create the story first, before you can tell it.
• Just like your product, it has to offer something new and different to the media
• Product and editorial photos are key to great exposure.

Nothing is wrong with a little positive promotion to help gain exposure. Be sure you’ve created the story before telling it. Have your supporting information developed to cover bases. Media will be attracted to the message if it tells something different. Have a suite of photos available to enhance the promotions.

Marketing Budget

• Should match your goals and target market expectations
• Research costs
• Cost effective choices

Keep your eyes from being bigger than your tummy. Your goals and target market should not exceed your budget. Carefully research costs and make prudent choices.

Other Possible Measures

Marketing

• Are sales and markets growing?
• Tonnage and geographic
• Are interested buyers calling to purchase?
• Number of new customers
• Are my prices increasing? – Premium over market?
• Are you developing a recognizable brand?
• Which marketing tools result in the most new customers?
• Web hits
• Tradeshow contacts
• Requests for samples
• Growing reputation
• If you’re doing V-A products – focus group results