Marketing strategies, the communication mix and online marketing

The communication mix, or marketing mix, is a well-known marketing tool that we can and should use in our business to give our products the widest possible reach and drive sales while building lasting relationships with customers.

I think it’s important to add online marketing tools to these communication strategies to adapt them to today’s world, where most potential customers:

1. Do their research
2. Ask questions
3. And buy

At Mailrelay, we’ll walk you through how this communication mix works, step by step.

Online.

To reach these customers, we need to combine the best of both worlds: traditional or offline marketing, and online marketing.

And it’s far from impossible.

In fact, I don’t think there’s any other way to work and get good results.

The communication mix is made up of:

1. Personal selling
2. Advertising
3. Sales promotion
4. Public relations
5. Sponsorship
6. Direct marketing

All of these tools can benefit from the tools and ways of working of the online world.

What is a marketing strategy?

In short, we could define a marketing strategy as the set of marketing actions a company carries out in order to achieve a predefined goal. Such as:

1. Increasing brand visibility
2. Increasing sales
3. Building customer loyalty
4. Standing out from the competition
5. Etc.

Since these marketing actions share a common goal, they will be related in some way within the marketing strategy, so that together they help achieve the goals that have been set.

What types of marketing strategies are there?

From here on, in this post we’ll talk about the different marketing strategies that exist, how they fit into the communication mix, or marketing mix, and how we can improve them with online marketing.

First, here’s a short video that I think you’ll find useful for laying the groundwork for what we’re going to discuss:

We’ll go step by step through the different marketing strategies (or methods or tools of the communication mix, if we want to look at it that way).

We’ll also see how we can improve these processes with online marketing.

And of course, I look forward to your comments 🙂

► Personal selling

This is usually the main communication and sales tool in many companies, the base of the pyramid of marketing actions, so to speak.

It is carried out by sales staff, whose goal is to find the ideal product to meet the customer’s needs.

We can see examples of this marketing strategy in any physical store we walk into.

It’s a very effective method because the salesperson can interact directly with the potential customer:

1. Ask about their needs
2. Gather important information
3. And observe their reactions to the different proposals

This makes it possible to better understand the customer’s needs and tailor the proposal.

Of course, this direct contact isn’t always possible.

Think, for example, of B2B trade shows or events, where customers aren’t going to make a purchase decision right away and are just gathering information to decide later.

The salesperson could later try to follow up by phone.

However, these phone calls are often seen as a nuisance and as an attempt by the company to apply pressure.

Sometimes, rushing the sale ends up spoiling the relationship, and the deal is lost.

· Example of an online marketing strategy to improve personal selling

In my opinion, email marketing, combined with content marketing, is a type of online marketing strategy that complements personal selling perfectly.

Because sometimes what the potential customer is really looking for is information.

And we can provide it little by little by email.

Email is also a two-way channel, through which customers can reply and ask any questions they have.

Plus, since customers can open and reply to the email whenever they want:

1. They don’t feel pressured

And they are therefore more willing to keep moving forward in the sales process.

So an email marketing service, combined with the right content strategy, can be a big help in personal selling. And with Mailrelay you can send mass emails for free!

► Advertising

Advertising is a communication medium that has traditionally been carried out through the press, radio and television.

It’s a mass communication medium, so it loses the personal touch that the personal selling we discussed earlier had.

It’s one of the most widely used marketing strategies precisely because of its wide reach.

That’s one of its advantages: volume and reach.

Not to mention its usually low cost (compared to the number of potential customers we can reach).

· Examples of digital marketing tools for advertising

In online marketing, we have some tools that are used for advertising.

Such as AdWords and the Display Network, to give an example.

But we also have other tools that can work together with traditional advertising media:

1. For example, social media

We’re all used to seeing hashtags on TV shows and in commercials by now.

The media are well aware of how important it is to communicate wherever potential customers are.

This is what’s known as cross-media marketing.

► Sales promotion

Here we have another example of a common marketing strategy. In this case, these are communications that try to boost sales over a specific period.

Either with discounts, promotions, etc.

They may or may not coincide with sales seasons or other times of general promotions.

Perhaps we can see it as a one-off advertising push, so it should be coordinated with or included in the advertising strategy.

· Online marketing tools for sales promotion

In my opinion, there are many online marketing tools that can help a great deal with sales promotion. Some examples could be:

1. Social media to gain extra visibility and try to make promotions go viral
2. Email marketing to complement and/or reinforce the promotion through another channel. It’s very common, when promotions are sent by letter, to reinforce them with a mailing with a similar design
3. Using landing pages and A/B tests to optimize the conversion rate in real time
4. And web analytics to properly analyze how the traffic generated by the promotion behaves, as well as the different conversion funnels

As we said at the beginning, the sales process can’t be understood without the online channel, so these and other tools become essential for sales promotion.

The ones we’ve discussed are just a few examples of marketing strategies for businesses or entrepreneurs, but there are more.

► Public relations and sponsorship

With the rise of influencer marketing, sponsorship has become an essential tool in many companies’ marketing mix.

It’s very common to see brands sponsoring events, activities and people (usually elite athletes).

From Formula 1 to tennis, actors, charity events and so on.

For a coffee lover like me, thinking of Nespresso means seeing George Clooney.

Brands seek to create an effect of assimilation or association, whereby the sponsored person’s “virtues” are transferred to the product.

That way, George passes his class on to Nespresso.

Other Formula 1 sponsors, like Rolex, are after that image of luxury and glamour.

Of course, they also aim to gain visibility at events with large audiences.

· Online marketing tools for public relations and sponsorship

When it comes to sponsorship, we’ve come a long way in the online world, and more and more online marketing tools are emerging that make sponsorship easier.

This has helped small businesses gain access to these communication tools.

Sponsoring YouTubers, social media influencers and even blogs, with both banners and content.

Tools like:

1. Coobis
2. Lowpost

They make this kind of sponsorship very easy for any company, and they’re just a few of the many tools out there.

► Direct marketing

Direct marketing is similar to advertising, but it involves analyzing and segmenting the audience we’re targeting.

It’s still a form of mass communication, but it has a more clearly defined target.

And, also unlike advertising, there’s the possibility of a response, since a communication channel is in place.

Finally, it’s a measurable communication channel, so we’ll know its results.

Sending mass emails would be an example of direct marketing.

· Online marketing tools for direct marketing

In this case, email marketing would be a clear example of an online marketing tool applied to direct marketing.

As long as we don’t use “no-reply” emails to send our mailings, because in that case the recipient would have no way of replying.

In any case, emailing is measurable, and we’ll be able to see the results of the actions we take.

In short, we can see how marketing strategies and the communication mix

Evolve and adapt to the times, in some cases transforming themselves and in others using online marketing tools that help them do their job better.

In any case, we have an ever-growing arsenal of tools that we need to know and organize in order to use them properly.

What do you think?

Will the offline communication mix disappear or adapt?

Other articles you may be interested in:

• How to build customer loyalty via email: 8 examples
• Selling by email
• Free email marketing account

Within this communication mix, price is still one of the key marketing mix variables you need to coordinate with your message.

Jose Argudo

CMO at Mailrelay. Writes about email marketing, copywriting, and conversion for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

More articles by Jose · LinkedIn