Business Admin and marketing students-Promotion

Communication is part of the promotional process.   The communication process comprises of a number of stages.  First of all the sender devises a message to send to their intended recipients.  The message is encoded and a medium is chosen.  This medium can be TV, Radio, Facebook, Newspapers etc.  The recipient receives the message and makes sense of it.  In some cases the receiver will give feeback (this can take the form of ringing a freephone number or using a coupon from the newspaper)/  While communication is taking place 'noise' may occur.  Examples of noise include- having a phone conversation while radio ads are on. reading the newspaper while radio adverts are playing etc. 

It is important that the sender keeps in mind the following factors in relation to communication:

• Clear
• Credible
• Context
• Content
• Continuity
• Channel
• Capability
• Compatibility
• Consideration

When the sender is choosing the message he/she needs to consider whether to use personal or non-personal means of communication. 
The sender also needs to decide on the budget for the promotion.  There are a number of techniques available to help the sender decide on the budget.  These are:

• The affordability method
• Objective and task method
• Percentage of sales method
• Competition matching approach

When it comes to deciding on the promotional mix there are a number of factors to consider which include:

1. Target market
2. Characteristics and cost effectiveness of each promotional tool
3. Availability of promotional tools
4. Stages of the PLC
5. Push v Pull strategy