Every marketer has a huge arsenal of marketing communication tools at their disposal. Many of them have appeared or have received different air updates thanks to the modern development of technology, and others, on the contrary, have faded into the background due to their ineffectiveness in influencing the consumer at this stage.

 Classification of communication tools in marketing.

 Despite the rotation of tools, all of them, in one way or another, are classified into four types, which differ in their impact on the target audience. These are:

•  Advertising.
•  Public relations (PR or public relations).
•  Promotion (sales promotion).
•  Direct marketing.

 Of course, some tools have attributes of several types of marketing communications, which makes their division conditional. But even in such a mixed effect, there are still some of the parameters that it dominates, which allows us to assign it to one of those listed in the previous classification. Let's see their differences.

 Advertising.

 Paid communication of a compact message, sufficiently assertive and regularly repeated in the media, whose objective is to get the consumer to make a purchase. Regardless of our occupation, each of us has encountered this type of marketing communication many times in our lives.

 Advertising can take the form of audiovisual content (videos), graphic or photographic images, audio tracks, etc. Thus, the media or communication channels can be television, radio, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, outdoor and indoor advertising surfaces, etc.

 Public relations.

 Cognitive, educational, explanatory, or motivational content aimed at developing the consumer in an area of ​​activity related to the purchase and/or use of the promoted product. It is already clear from the name that tools of this type have a public nature. Therefore, speeches, events, conferences, seminars, presentations, exhibitions, etc. all this is the arsenal of public relations communication.

 Before the rise of social media, there was a separate toolkit in public relations for working with the media, including press conferences, press releases, commentary, and interviews.

 But with the decline in the role of the mass media and the reorientation of consumers towards the Internet, other solutions for influencing audiences became relevant, which in different classifications are combined in such new names and acronyms as:

•  Internet Marketing (Digital Marketing).
•  Content marketing.
•  Influencer marketing.
•  SMM (Social Media Marketing).
•  SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
•  SEM (Search Engine Marketing).
•  SE RM (Search Engine Reputation Management).

 Regardless of the name, all public relations tools related to Internet marketing and promotion have one thing in common: content creation or management.

 This is content management, which consists of creating websites, web links, and corporate blogs, sending newsletters, managing accounts on social networks, collaborating with bloggers and vloggers, and reacting to responses to your comments and negative posts on aggregating sites and social networks.

 In general, anything that creates opinions about or affects a brand is a matter of public relations.

 Sales promotion.

 It is the communication of a message related to an evident benefit for the consumer, intended to stimulate the activity of consumers or channel members in a certain limited period or the purchase of a certain volume.

 This group of tools includes various types of discounts or bonuses. For example, sample distribution, tastings, gifts with purchase, two-for-one promotions, contests, and sweepstakes.

 Direct marketing.

 Interaction with the consumer is based on a personalized offer formed from the accumulated knowledge of the recipient's consumption behavior. This group of communication tools is experiencing a renaissance with the development of technology.

 Direct marketing is now so relevant and popular that it is associated with the development of new areas in marketing such as data science, big data, and predictive marketing.

 The ability to identify users on the web provides a wealth of information about consumers that were previously difficult or impossible to collect. The availability of traces makes it possible to build consumer behavior patterns that are more likely to lead to a purchase or, conversely, to switch a loyal customer to a competitive offer.

 The challenge for companies is to make a personalized offer at the right time.

 Of course, direct marketing tools are increasingly technological solutions, the core of which is a CRM system that accumulates all incoming information about customer actions.

 Incoming data is processed, analyzed, and categorized into segments, resulting in a personalized recommendation for future business-customer interactions. And personalized offers are delivered via email, push notifications via an app, telemarketers, or sellers at a traditional offline point of sale.

 As we can see, the four main means of marketing communication are contained within digital marketing. It is almost impossible to imagine how to have such a large reach and be in contact with so many people at the same time without the use of digital tools specially designed for marketing purposes.

 Any specialist in digital marketing or marketing, in general, has to be constantly learning and updating the use of each new tool that appears on the market. In this way, he will be able to take better advantage of each of its benefits and will be able to offer increasingly productive results for the company or brand to which he provides his professional services.

 Every marketer has a huge arsenal of marketing communication tools at their disposal. Many of them have appeared or have received different air updates thanks to the modern development of technology, and others, on the contrary, have faded into the background due to their ineffectiveness in influencing the consumer at this stage.