Industrial Marketing

Chapter 15 : Advertising, Sales Promotion and Public Relations

+Functions of Industrial Advertising

+Advertising Planning Process

+Sales Promotion

+Public Relations & Publicity

Chapter Summary

Industrial advertising plays a crucial role in creating awareness about the marketer’s offerings among its target customers and in improving the sales efficiency. It also provides an impetus to the sales personnel by increasing the effectiveness of their selling activities. It also provides support to channel members like distributors and intermediaries.

The advertising planning process starts with the setting up of advertising objectives, budgets, message selection, and development of media strategy, and ends with evaluation of the effectiveness of advertising. The industrial marketer sets advertising objectives based on the marketing strategy. The advertising objectives may be sales-oriented or communication objectives.

The next step in the advertising planning process is the setting of budgets. The industrial marketer sets the budget depending on the management’s capabilities and financial position. Among the various budgeting methods, the most effective is the objective and task method. After setting the budget, the marketer has to select a message to fulfill the objectives of advertising, apart from creating an impact on target customers.

In the process of selecting the message, the marketer can choose one among the various creative strategies -- generic, pre-emptive, unique selling proportion, brand image, and positioning strategies. The next step is developing a media strategy in which the marketer takes decisions regarding media scheduling and media buying. The last step is evaluating the effectiveness of the advertising.

Marketers can evaluate the effectiveness by pre-testing, post-testing, and by measuring sales enquiries and responses. Industrial marketers can also go in for sales promotion. Through sales promotion activities, marketers make specific appeals to the target customers. This is done through trade shows and fairs, sponsorship of events, catalogs, technical reports, samples, gifts, etc.

In industrial marketing, trade shows are a prominent method of sales promotions. Industrial marketers also make use of public relations with various objectives such as improving the image, gaining recognition in the marketplace, nurturing employee morale, crisis management, etc.

Their public relation activities are directed at present and prospective customers, suppliers, channel members, shareholders, employees and trade unions, local communities, government and other influential groups. The degree of outsourcing of the PR activities depends on the organization’s size, internal skill sets, etc.

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