Marketing Communications Mix

A company's total marketing communications mix—also called its promotion mix consists of the specific blend of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and directmarketing tools that the company uses to pursue its advertising and marketing objectives. Definitions of the five major promotion tools follow:

  • Advertising: Any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.
  • Personal selling: Personal presentation by the firm's sales force for the purpose of making sales and building customer relationships.
  • Sales promotion: Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service.
  • Public relations: Building good relations with the company's various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and handling or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories, and events.
  • Direct marketing: Direct connections with carefully targeted individual consumers to both obtain an immediate response and cultivate lasting customer relationships—the use of telephone, mail, fax, e-mail, the Internet, and other tools to communicate directly with specific consumers.

Each category involves specific tools. For example, advertising includes print, broadcast, outdoor, and other forms. Personal selling includes sales presentations, trade shows, and incentive programs. Sales promotion includes point-of-purchase displays, premiums, discounts, coupons, specialty advertising, and demonstrations.

Direct marketing includes catalogs, telemarketing lists, fax, kiosks, the Internet, and more. Thanks to technological breakthroughs, people can now communicate through traditional media (newspapers, radio, telephone, television), as well as through newer media forms (fax machines, cellular phones, pagers, and computers). The new technologies have encouraged more companies to move from mass communication to more targeted communication and one-to-one dialogue.

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Mengubah Hidup Dengan Mengubah Cara Berpikir

Percayakah kamu pada orang yang mengatakan... bagaimana kamu menjalani hidup akan sangat dipengaruhi oleh bagaimana cara mu berpikir? Percayakah kamu bila ada orang yang mengatakan bahwa bagaimana hidup mu saat ini adalah hasil dari bagaimana cara mu berpikir saat ini?

Suatu ketika.... disuatu tempat... hiduplah seorang wanita muda. Usianya baru sekitar 30 tahun, sudah menikah, dan punya dua orang anak. Seperti orang pada umumnya, wanita tersebut lahir dan dibesarkan dalam sebuah keluarga, dimana.... dia selalu dikritik, direndahkan, bahkan tidak jarang diperlakukan secara tidak adil oleh kedua orang tuanya sendiri.

Dan sebagai hasilnya.... wanita tersebut tumbuh dengan kepercayaan bahwa dia tidak berharga. Kepercayaan itu membuatnya menjadi orang yang tidak percaya diri. Suka memandang segala sesuatunya dengan rasa takut, dan dari sisi yang negatif. Dia juga pemalu, suka menyalahkan, dan merendahkan diri sendiri. Dia juga merasa tidak punya bakat dan kemampuan dalam hal apapun.

Suatu hari, saat pergi berbelanja, secara tiba-tiba sebuah mobil yang menerobos lampu merah, dan langsung menabrak mobil yang sedang dikendarainya. Saat membuka mata, wanita tersebut mendapati dirinya sedang berada dirumah sakit, dengan tubuh penuh luka, dan ingatan yang hilang. Untungnya dia masih bisa bicara dan lain-lain, tapi ingatannya akan masa lalu, sama sekali lenyap. Singkatnya, Dia menderita amnesia total.

Awalnya, dokter mengira hal itu bersifat sementara. Minggupun berlalu, tapi ingatannya tak juga kembali. Setiap hari, dengan sabar dan kasih sayang, sang suami dan anak-anaknya mengunjungi, namun wanita itu tetap tidak tahu dan tidak ingat siapa mereka. "Ini adalah kasus yang tidak umum," begitu menurut para dokter. Hingga tidak jarang, para dokter mengunjunginya untuk sekedar bertanya tentang kondisinya.

Bulanpun berganti, dengan ingatan yang tak juga kembali, akhirnya wanita tersebut pulang ke rumah. Sadar akan kondisi dan situasi yang dihadapinya, wanita itu berusaha mencari tahu tentang penyakit yang sedang dideritanya. Mulai saat itu, dia rajin membaca. Dibacanya buku-buku tentang amnesia. Ditemuinya para ahli dibidang tersebut.

Tidak sampai disitu, diapun mulai menulis untuk beberapa jurnal medis tentang penyakit dan kondisi yang dialaminya. Tulisannya ternyata banyak mengundang perhatian, terutama dari kalangan medis. Hingga tidak jarang, wanita tersebut mendapat undangan untuk menjadi nara sumber di berbagai seminar yang berhubungen dengan amnesia.

Selama periode tersebut, tanpa dia sadari, sesuatu yang mengagumkan telah terjadi. Wanita itu seperti terlahir kembali. Wanita itu kini muncul menjadi seseorang yang sama sekali berbeda. Semua perhatian dan kasih sayang yang didapatnya dirumah sakit, ternyata telah membuatnya merasa berharga, dibutuhkan, disayang, dan dicintai oleh keluarga dan orang disekitar.

Wanita yang tadinya pemalu, rendah diri, berpikiran negatif, merasa tidak berharga dan berguna, kini telah menjelma menjadi seorang yang supel, berpandangan positif, informatif, penuh rasa percaya diri, dan banyak dicari. Intinya, wanita tersebut telah menjadi menusia baru. Dia telah mengubah cara berpikirnya, yang sekaligus telah mengubah hidupnya.

Adalah David Hume, seorang philosopher dari Scotlandia, yang disebut sebagai orang pertama yang mengemukakan ide tentang tabula rasa atau blank slate. Teori ini berpendapat bahwa setiap manusia yang lahir ke bumi, adalah dalam keadaan kosong, alias tidak punya ide dan pemikiran sama sekali.

Adapun semua pikiran dan perasaan yang saat ini kita miliki, adalah hasil dari proses pembelajaran akan setiap hal yang telah kita lalui dan alami. Semua orang, kejadian, perlakuan, dan pengalaman dimasa kecil, akan meninggalkan bekas sebagai ingatan (memory.) Ingatan itu akan terus terbawa hingga dewasa.

Akan seperti apa, dan bagaimana seseorang saat dewasa, adalah kumpulan hasil dari semua ingatannya dimasa lalu. Seperti yang pernah dikatakan oleh Aristotle, "What is impressed is expressed." Yang artinya.... Dimana bumi dipijak disitu langit dijunjung.... eh... salah... ma'af.... maksudnya... Apa yang dirasakan itulah yang akan dieskpresikan, betul begitu?

Self-concept, mungkin merupakan salah satu terobosan terbesar yang dilakukan manusia abad 20. Konsep ini berpendapat bahwa setiap orang sebenarnya akan mengembangkan kepercayaannya sendiri, berdasarkan apa yang dia dipercayai. Dan kepercayaan itu akan menjadi master program atau program utama, yang akan dijalankan oleh komputer yang berada dialam bawah sadar.

Bagaimana kau berpikir, apa yang kau ucapkan, rasakan, dan lakukan, adalah hasil dari program tersebut. Berdasarkan konsep inilah, pendapat yang mengatakan bahwa perubahan hidup dan dunia mu, baru akan dimulai saat kau mulai mengubah konsep mu sendiri (self-concept.)

Setiap anak terlahir dengan tanpa konsep. Semua ide, pendapat, perasaan, tingkah laku atau kebiasaan yang didapatnya setelah dewasa, adalah hasil dari proses pembelajaran di masa kecil. Bagamana dirimu sekarang, adalah hasil dari ide atau pemikiran yang kau ambil dan terima sebagai kepercayaan. Saat kau percaya bahwa sesuatu itu benar adanya, maka hal itu akan menjadi kebenaran untuk mu, apapun faktanya.

Itu sama seperti pepatah yang mengatakan.... “You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.”

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Finding the Right ISP

Remote hosting is a very popular option as a large number of companies—probably the vast majority of Webhosting today—offer PHP-enabled Web sites. These are some basic pros and cons to keep in mind.

Outsourced hosting has a lot of advantages. The ISP will (in theory) handle many of the crucial technical and administrative details necessary to keep a site running, such as:

  • Hardware
  • Software upgrades
  • InterNIC registration, IP addressing, DNS
  • Mail servers (POP/IMAP and SMTP)
  • Bandwidth
  • Power supply
  • Backups
  • Security

There’s no cozier feeling than the one you get just before you fall asleep, knowing that some poor schmo at your ISP will be getting the pager message in the middle of the night if something goes wrong with your site. Lurking crackers, downed power lines, munged backup tapes—all that is your host’s headache now.

Especially for developers who have little experience with system-administration issues, outsourcing can be a major time saver. Web hosting is also extremely cost effective in most situations. PHP on Linux or one of the BSDs is almost ridiculously inexpensive and widely available. Currently, only a few companies offer PHP on an NT server platform, and some of them can be pricey. As the Miracles so eloquently urge, “You better shop around (shop, shop ooh).”

Of course, there can be some serious disadvantages to Web hosting. Most of these have to do with control. When you go ISP, you’re basically a guest in someone else’s house and have to play by his rules. Maybe you’re a welcome paying guest, a veritable parlor boarder—but the fact remains that when you live in someone else’s establishment, you can’t just strip down to your undies and lipsync your way through a high-volume version of “Proud Mary” on the dining-room table whenever you feel like it.

People are trying to eat, pal. A few years ago, the most central issue for PHP was module versus CGI. PHP runs best and fastest as a module (in other words, built into the Web server itself rather than running as a separate process). Almost everyone prefers to use the module version if possible. Some ISPs prefer to run the CGI version of PHP, however, because it’s much simpler to administer safely on a shared Web server.

Thankfully, as more Web hosting services set up shop, it’s much easier to find one that will give you the module. Currently, the biggest problem with outsourced PHP hosting is the nonavailability of other programs. Obviously, ISPs have a strong incentive to control the programs you are allowed to run on their servers. However, a lot of a PHP’s value comes from its job as a glue between various services and protocols.

It can be extremely frustrating to be prevented from running a common and useful utility, such as ImageMagick or HTML Tidy, because your Web host won’t allow you to run unauthorized binaries or link to libraries outside your home directory. Also, ISPs generally are not going to give you a choice of which version of PHP to use.

Sometimes they can be quite strict in which extensions they’ll build for you, and sometimes they can be very slow to upgrade to a new major release. Therefore, some PHP packages— even potentially some of the code in this book, if your host is a late adopter of PHP5—will not run for you unaltered. A good rule of thumb is: The more common your needs are, the more possible and appropriate it is to outsource your hosting.

The more oddball and/or bleeding-edge your needs are, the more you’re going to be pushed to host your own whether you want to or not. Of course the unspoken realpolitik addendum to this is: The bigger you are and the more money you have to spend, the more weight you have available to throw around. A few factors will make it considerably more difficult for you to find a hosting service:

  • Generally objectionable content (hate, porn)
  • Unsolicited mailings (aka spam)
  • Content that attracts crackers (security info)
  • Potentially legally actionable content
  • Need for unusual server-side hardware, OS, or software
  • Need for super-high bandwidth, especially if unpredictable

If you’re in one of these categories, you need to mention it up front—you’ll just get the boot anyway once they find out. Chances are good that you won’t get to do much shopping around—if you can find any hosting situation, grab it before they change their minds and look for a better deal later.

Finally, we must mention the most important negative factor of all: the frustration and anxiety caused by a bad hosting experience. Words cannot describe the teeth-grinding, stomachchurning, scream-suppressing state of existence caused by your site crashing just when you’ve been featured on Slashdot, thereby making you look like a total technoposer as well as losing all the good pub you so richly deserve.

That’s not even mentioning more common problems such as lost e-mail, disappearing DNS, unexplained site outages, deleted databases (this actually happened to us once), lack of backups, suffering through an hour-long telephone wait just to talk to some tech supportie who’s never been within ten feet of a server, never getting a response to your polite e-mails, and being overbilled for the privilege (not that we’re bitter, and anyway our lawyer says we can’t name any names).

Bottom line: If you choose hosting, you do so at your own peril. Always be ready to make a quick getaway, which might entail eschewing the cheapest or most fully featured deal in favor of one without long-term contracts and/or prepayments.

Conversely, don’t be an utter jerk when you deal with the employees of your hosting company. If you’ve never outsourced hosting before, take the time to understand the difference between things you can legitimately blame on the Web host (bad tech support) and things that are basically Acts of Fate (Internet traffic in your entire metro area goes out).

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Ready for Some ASP.NET?

ASP.NET is the latest incarnation of Microsoft's Active Server Pages and is the engine that executes ASP.NET web pages. An ASP.NET web page is the program that you create to generate a dynamic web page. For now we'll take a few moments to introduce the concept of an ASP.NET web page.

Two sets of instructions must be executed in order for a visitor to view a dynamic web page. The first set is executed on the web server. Developers call this the server side. The second set is executed on the visitor's computer. Developers call this the client side.

Both sets of instructions are written in an ASPNET web page. The ASP.NET web page is organized into two sections that correspond to the two sets of instructions. These are the HTML markup code section and the controls section.

The HTML markup code section contains HTML markup code that forms the dynamic web page sent to the visitor's computer by the ASP.NET engine. These instructions are executed on the client side by the browser.

The controls section contains instructions that tell the ASP.NET engine how to generate the dynamic web page. These instructions are executed on the server side by the ASPNET engine. The controls section is divided into two subsections called HTML controls and web controls.

The ASP.NET engine that executes the ASPNET web page needs to run within the .NET Framework. This simply means that the ASPNET engine needs help from a group of programs and related files that are collectively called the .NET Framework.

There are two key elements of the .NET Framework: .NET programming languages and Framework classes. A .NET programming language is a language developers use to write instructions telling the ASP.NET engine what to do. VB.NET and C# are each a .NET prograrnming language. Framework classes are like building blocks used to write ASPNET web pages.

An ASPNET web page can be built using an editor such as Microsoft's Notepad that comes with Windows. All that's needed is for you to write the HTML markup code section and the control sections using VB.NET or C#, and then save the page to a file that has the .aspx file extension.

The next step is to execute your ASPNET web page. This is the tricky part because to do this, you need a web server that has access to the ASP.NET engine, and chances are you don't have these on your computer. Don't be too concerned, because you have three options available, depending on which operating system you have running on your computer.

ASP.NET Web Matrix is your best option if you are running Windows NT, Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home, or Windows Server 2003 (unlikely unless your computer is also running a web server) on your computer because it is a free, all-in-one development tool and web server.

It'll take you about five minutes to download this tool, and ASPNET Web Matrix installs in no time. You'll also need to download and install the .NET Framework if you don't already have it installed on your computer. (.NET Framework is already installed if you are running Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, or Windows XP.)

The .NET Framework is also free. You can download it from www.asp.net or msdn.microsoft.com/net. The greatest benefit of using the ASP.NET Web Matrix is that you can build your ASP.NET web page using WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) by dragging and dropping components from a toolbox onto the page.

And you can test your ASP.NET web page with a click of a button, since the ASP.NET Web Matrix has the Web Matrix Web Server built in. ASP.NET Web Matrix has its drawbacks.

First, it doesn't run on Windows 98 or Windows ME, and besides, the ASP.NET Web Matrix Web Server is limited to requests coming from the computer running it. This means that you cannot access the ASP.NET Web Matrix Web Server from outside your computer even if your computer is connected to the Internet, because the ASP.NET Web Matrix web server is not designed as a product web server.

If you're running Windows 98 or Windows ME or simply don't want to download the ASPNET Web Matrix to your computer, then you'll need to make arrangements with a web hosting company to run your ASP.NET web page. A web hosting company provides space on its web server for your web site, usually for a nominal monthly charge.

The company will also help you register your own domain name (e.g., www.mydomain.com) and link your domain to your web site. TIP: GO to web hosting directory find out what domains are still available.

There are thousands of web hosting companies. Visit web site hosting or web hosting rating for a listing of web hosting companies and their offerings. When selecting a web hosting company, make sure that the company supports ASP.NET. If it doesn't, then their web servers cannot handle your ASP.NET web pages.

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Sample 2 “Berikan aku 1000 orang tua, niscaya akan kucabut semeru dari akarnya, berikan aku 1 pemuda, niscaya akan kuguncangkan dunia” . (Bung Karno) “Tidak seorang pun yang menghitung-hitung: berapa untung yang kudapat nanti dari Republik ini, jikalau aku berjuang dan berkorban untuk mempertahankannya”. (Pidato HUT Proklamasi 1956 Bung Karno) “Jadikan deritaku ini sebagai kesaksian, bahwa kekuasaan seorang presiden sekalipun ada batasnya. Karena kekuasaan yang langgeng hanyalah kekuasaan rakyat. Dan diatas segalanya adalah kekuasaan Tuhan Yang Maha Esa.” (Soekarno) “Apabila di dalam diri seseorang masih ada rasa malu dan takut untuk berbuat suatu kebaikan, maka jaminan bagi orang tersebut adalah tidak akan bertemunya ia dengan kemajuan selangkah pun”. (Bung Karno) “Bangsa yang besar adalah bangsa yang menghormati jasa pahlawannya.” (Pidato Hari Pahlawan 10 Nop.1961) “Perjuanganku lebih mudah karena mengusir penjajah, tapi perjuanganmu akan lebih sulit karena melawan bangsamu sendiri.” – Bung Karno “Bangsa yang tidak percaya kepada kekuatan dirinya sebagai suatu bangsa, tidak dapat berdiri sebagai suatu bangsa yang merdeka.” (Pidato HUT Proklamasi 1963 Bung Karno) “……….Bangunlah suatu dunia di mana semua bangsa hidup dalam damai dan persaudaraan……” (Bung Karno) Untuk memilih jenis tomat yang akan ditanam hendaknya sesuaikan dahulu dengan karateristik lokasi. Apabila kebun Anda berada di dataran tinggi pilihlah varietas yang cocok untuk dataran tinggi begitu juga sebaliknya. Benih tomat bisa didapatkan dengan mudah diberbagai toko penyedia saprotan. Apabila Anda sulit mendapatkannya atau harganya terlalu mahal, kita bisa membuatnya sendiri. Caranya dengan menyeleksi buah tomat yang paling baik dari segi ukuran (besar) dan bentuk (tidak cacat). Langahnya sebagai berikut, pilih buah tomat yang akan dijadikan benih. Kemudian biarkan buah tomat tersebut menua di pohon. Setelah cukup tua ambil bijinya dan bersihkan dari lendir yang menyelubunginya dengan air. Setelah itu rendam dalam air, pilih biji yang tenggelam. Kemudian lakukan seleksi sekali lagi terhadap biji tomat, pilih yang bentuknya sempurna(tidak cacat atau keriput). Langahnya sebagai berikut, pilih buah tomat yang akan dijadikan benih. Kemudian biarkan buah tomat tersebut menua di pohon. Setelah cukup tua ambil bijinya dan bersihkan dari lendir yang menyelubunginya dengan air. Setelah itu rendam dalam air, pilih biji yang tenggelam. Kemudian lakukan seleksi sekali lagi terhadap biji tomat, pilih yang bentuknya sempurna (tidak cacat atau keriput).