Promotion

Elements of the Promotion Mix

  • Advertising

  • Public Relations

  • Personal Selling

  • Sales Promotion

Promotion is the communicative element of the marketing mix. Through promotional activities, companies give information about the features and benefits of a product. Potential customers then use this information to make their purchasing decisions.

It encompasses all activities that involve communicating to the customers all the features of the product and its benefits. A strong set of promotional strategies can help position the product favorably in the minds of current customers, attract new customers, and increase sales and foster brand loyalty.

ROLE OF PROMOTION

Promotion has different roles in helping a company perform well in the market. These are the following:

  • Building awareness and creating interest. Companies use promotion to provide information about their product or brand. Promotion helps to create interest above the product or brand.

  • Reinforcing a brand/Establishing brand recall.

  • Persuading customers and enhancing sales.

  • Improving the performance of a declining product. Promotion is used to inform customers if a product is being rebranded and encourage customers to patronize the product once again and restore its position in the market.

THE PROMOTIONAL MIX

Companies must do more than just create customer value. They should also clearly and persuasively communicate this value through the promotional mix. The promotional mix is not a single tool, but rather a mix of tools used by the company to coordinate its promotional elements to deliver a clear and consistent message about the organization and its products. The promotional mix is also called a marketing communications mix (Kotler, 2013).

ADVERTISING

Aims of Advertising

  1. Inform (Informative Advertising)

  2. Persuade (Persuasive Advertising)

  3. Remind (Reminder Advertising)

Advertising typically covers communication methods that are paid for like television advertisements, radio commercials, print media, and internet advertisements. In contemporary times, there seems to be a shift in focus offline to the online world.

Advertising Strategy Elements

  1. Advertising Messages - underlying message or point that the customer should get upon seeing the advertisement
    A. Creative Concept – distinctive and memorable
    B. Execution Styles

    1. Fantasy

    2. Mood/Image

    3. Musical

    4. Scientific Evidence

    5. Testimonial Evidence/Endorsement

    6. Lifestyle

  1. Selecting Advertising Media
    Advertising Media – the vehicles through which advertising messages are delivered to their intended audiences.
    Major Media Types:

    1. Television

    2. Newspapers

    3. Internet

    4. Direct Mail

    5. Magazines

    6. Radio

PUBLIC RELATIONS
Public relations (PR) is the process of maintaining a favorable image and building beneficial relationships between an organization and the public communities, groups, and people it serves. Companies cannot survive in isolation they need to have a constant interaction with customers, employees and different stakeholders. This service of relation is done by the public relation office is to handle press release, support product publicity, create and maintain the corporate image, handle matters with lawmakers, guide management with respect to public issues. The direct responsibility of public relation is to support corporate and product branding activities.

PERSONAL SELLING
Personal selling is the process of communicating with a potential buyer (or buyers) face to face with the purpose of selling a product or service. The main thing that sets personal selling apart from the other methods of selling is that the salesperson conducts business with the customer in person.

Personal selling allows the salesperson to target the message specifically to the audience and receive immediate feedback. In this way, it is more precise than other forms of promotion and often has a greater persuasive impact. Another advantage is that personal selling can be an important source of marketing information.

SALES PROMOTION
Sales Promotion is an incentives tool used to drive-up short-term sales. Sales Promotion can launch directed at consumer or trade. The focus of advertising to create reason for purchase the focus of promotion is to create an incentive to buy. Consumer incentives could be samples, coupons, free trial and demonstration. Trade incentives could be price off, free goods and allowances. Sales force incentive could be convention, trade shows, competition among sales people.

Push Promotional Strategy

A “push” promotional strategy makes use of a company’s sales force and trade promotion activities to create consumer demand for a product: it takes the product to the customer - the customer knows about the product when they buy it.

Manufacturers convince wholesalers or large retailers to handle and sell their products to retailers. Retailers, whether they are large or small, then finish the process by selling the product to the final consumers.

Pull Promotional Strategy

A “pull” selling strategy is one that requires high spending on advertising and consumer promotion to build up consumer demand for a product: it brings the customer to the product - the customer is motivated to buy it.

Advertising on television, in newspaper and magazine print ads, and on the Internet are standard retailer pull techniques. Offering coupons and providing sales, discounts, contests and prizes are other pull methods used in conjunction with advertising.