Broadcast vs. Conversation Communication Strategies

The traditional components of a promotional mix include:

·         Advertising

·         Direct Marketing

·         Personal Selling

·         Sales Promotion

·         Public Relations

These tactics are referred to as broadcast or “one to many” communications because the tactics are not personalized toward individual consumers. However, tactics such as direct marketing and personal selling, which are essentially targeted at specific individual consumers. Advertising, sales promotion, and public relations is geared toward a mass amount of consumers based on a mass amount of consumer’s wants, needs, and desires.

These approaches are becoming less and less effective today because such as our internet is becoming more and more personable consumers are expecting their whole way of purchasing goods to be personal to their own individual needs, wants, and desires as well. Unfortunately advertising is seen as the most costly tactic and traditionally you would want a tactic that would be more cost-effective in order to make the most profit in the end. Public relations seems to be a less effective tactic today because a lot of the products in the market don’t require the consumer to be fully knowledgeable about it; for example food items. Overall, because these tactics are referred to as “one to many” communications they are becoming less effective as a whole because since they are traditionally targeted toward the individual it is not the most effective approach due to the geography of the market. The market is dispersed across the entire globe and being able to target everyone’s individual needs seems nearly impossible. 

Riley, Jim. “Promotion – introducing the promotional mix” 23 September 2012. Tutor2u. <http://www.tutor2u.net/business/marketing/promotion

          _factors.asp>. 03 October 2013.