Marketing Mix - Promotion
- Topic: 4.5 The marketing mix - Promotion
- Overall Focus: Examining promotion within the context of the marketing mix.
Core Concepts
- Promotion: Methods of communicating messages to the market, usually to sell goods.
- Three Key Objectives of Promotional Strategy:
- Inform: Alerting the market about a firm's products, especially new or updated ones, to influence purchasing decisions.
- Persuade: Encouraging customers to make a purchase, switch from a rival brand, or adopt brand loyalty.
- Remind: Retaining customer awareness of and interest in an established product.
- Above the Line (ATL): Paid-for promotional methods through independent mass media sources.
- Below the Line (BTL): Non-mass media promotional activities, allowing the business to have direct control.
- Through the Line (TTL): Strategies that involve both ATL and BTL methods in an integrated marketing approach.
- An effective promotional mix should elicit the following responses (AIDA):
- Attention: Capture attention from the target market.
- Interest: Generate interest by extending the attention of the target market.
- Desire: Create a need for the product in the target market.
- Action: Get the target market to make the purchase.
- Television Advertising:
- Benefits: Can be targeted to specific audiences.
- Drawbacks: Huge costs of production and advertising for a short time slot.
- Radio Advertising:
- Benefits: Can reach a large audience while being significantly cheaper than television advertising.
- Drawbacks: Can only communicate audio messages, which is less engaging.
- Cinema Advertising:
- Benefits: Can be targeted to specific audiences.
- Drawbacks: Limited audience size compared with radio or television advertising.
- Newspaper Advertising:
- Benefits: Can be targeted to specific audiences with greater precision. Advertisements can be referred to later.
- Drawbacks: High cost, particularly for small businesses. Short shelf-life.
- Magazines:
- Benefits: Can be targeted to specific market segments through specialist magazines. Longer shelf-life than newspapers.
- Drawbacks: Readers get bombarded with overwhelming
advertising clutter. Long lead-time between placing an advertisement and publication.
- Outdoor Advertising:
- Benefits: High level of exposure, dynamic advertisements.
- Drawbacks: Only suitable for mass market products, difficult to monitor effectiveness, high level of competition, prone to damage.
- Direct Marketing: Promotional activities that aim to sell a product straight to a customer rather than through an intermediary.
- Includes telemarketing, email advertising, and direct mail by post.
- Personal Selling: Promotional activities that rely on sales representatives directly helping and persuading customers to buy.
- Examples include sales presentations, in-person meetings with clients, and door-to-door salespeople.
- Sales Promotions: Temporary ways to boost sales and attract new buyers.
- Examples include BOGOF (buy one get one free) deals, discount vouchers, free samples, competitions for prizes, 'free gifts', and customer loyalty schemes.
- Point of Sales (POS) Promotion: Promotion of a product at a location where customers pay for the product, often used in supermarkets and convenience stores.
- Publicity and Public Relations (PR):
- Publicity: Promoting a business and its products by getting media coverage without directly paying for it.
- Public Relations (PR): Marketing activities aimed at establishing and protecting the desired image of an organization.
- Examples of PR events: product launch parties, press conferences, radio, podcasts and interviews, book signings, donations.
- Trade Shows: Enable exhibitors to conduct live demonstrations to showcase and promote their products.
- Sponsorship: A business providing financial funds and resources to support an event or another organization in return for publicity and prime advertising space.
- Word-of-Mouth (WOM): The spread of information from one person to another through oral communication, including written reviews.
- Packaging: Packaging can be a powerful component of the marketing mix, e.g., carrier bags and trademarked colors.
- Temporary ways to boost sales and attract new buyers. Examples include:
- BOGOF (buy one get one free) deals
- Discount vouchers
- Free samples
- Competitions for prizes
- ‘Free gifts’ (e.g. a free spatula for every wok purchased)
- Customer loyalty schemes
- Integrating an effective promotional mix involves considering the following factors:
- Cost: Cost per head of promotional methods.
- Product: Methods of promotion need to suit the nature of each product.
- Product Life Cycle: Refer to the product life cycle stages.
- Legislation: Some products are forbidden from being promoted in certain markets.
- SMM: Gaining internet traffic through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
- Focuses on creating content that attracts attention and encourages people to further share the content.
- The use of social media influencers is fast becoming a must-have promotional strategy.
Social Networking
- Any platform used by individuals to build social relationships.
- Focuses on the human interaction aspect of social media.
- Non-social media platforms can also be used for social networking, such as blogs.
- Promotion and promotional content is increasingly under scrutiny for ethical reasons.
- Critics argue that it is a socially irresponsible waste of money that could be better spent on research and development for better products.