Promotion!

The purpose of promotion is to create awareness in consumers or generate interest and desire to buy products. Promotion can also be used to create or change a brand image and maintain market share.

Promotion - communicating information between the seller and potential buyer

Promotion’s main job is to tell target customers that the right Product is at the right Place

Categories Of Promotion

Product promotion – tries to convince customers to buy its products over competitors

Institutional promotion – create a favorable image for a business

Types Of Promotion

Advertising

Personal Selling

Publicity/Public Relations

Sales Promotion

Direct Marketing

Personal Selling

Involves direct contact with prospects and customers

Very costly due to salaries paid

Telemarketing

Personal meetings

Email/Phone contact

Publicity/Public Relations

Publicity – any unpaid form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods, or services.

News worthy events

Press releases

Talk shows

Can be unintentional

Public Relations – company created campaigns to influence a target audience

Sales Promotion

Activities other than selling, advertising, and publicity to stimulate interest, trial, or purchase

Can be aimed at final consumers, middlemen, or company sales force

Promotion through the Product life

As products move through the four stages of the

product lifecycle different promotional strategies

should be employed at these stages to ensure the

healthy success and life of the product .

Introduction

When a product is new the organisations objective will be to inform the target audience of its entry. Television, radio, magazine, coupons etc may be used to push the product through the introduction stage of the lifecycle. Push and Pull Strategies will be used at this crucial stage.

Growth

As the product becomes accepted by the target market the organisation at this stage of the lifecycle the organisation works on the strategy of further increasing brand awareness to encourage loyalty.

Maturity

At this stage with increased competition the organisation take persuasive tactics to encourage the consumers to purchase their product over their rivals. Any differential advantage will be clearly communicated to the target audience to inform of their benefit over their competitors.

Decline

As the product reaches the decline stage the organisation will use the strategy of reminding people of the product to slow the inevitable

Questions need to be considered (with the promotion mix):

What are we trying to achieve?

How might we achieve it?

How much will we need to spend?

Where will we need to spend it?

When will we need to spend it?

What creative appeal is most likely to work?

How can we best measure the results, feed these back into the decision making process, and improve strategy?

Types of promotion

Advertising: Any non personal paid form of communication using any form of mass media.

Public relations: Involves developing positive relationships with the organisation media public. The art of good public relations is not only to obtain favorable publicity within the media, but it is also involves being able to handle successfully negative attention.

Sales promotion: Commonly used to obtain an increase in sales short term. Could involve using money off coupons or special offers.

Personal selling: Selling a product service one to one

Direct Mail: Is the sending of publicity material to a named person within an organisation

Direct mail allows an organisation to use their resources more effectively by allowing them to send publicity material to a named person within their target segment. By personalizing advertising, response rates increase thus increasing the chance of improving sales. Listed below are links to organisation who's business involves direct mail.

Internet Marketing: Promoting and selling your services online using various forms of online marketing techniques such as banner advertisements, videos or social media.

ATl&BTL!

above-the-line activities

paid-for advertising in newspapers and magazines.

product placements in a range of publications are used to promote the different brands

TV and radio advertising. Radio advertising in particular allows to target its key audience quickly and in a way that young people find relevant

Advertising through Billboards

Below-the-line promotions offer opportunities to communicate directly with the consumer

E-mail helps to regularly contact its database of consumers with promotions and product information. Magazines and leaflets present product and lifestyle content.

Sales incentives, promotions and competitions generate excitement and interest in the brand.

Marketing mix

People– all people who directly or indirectly influence the perceived value of the product or service, including knowledge workers, employees, management and consumers.

People is one of the elements of service marketing mix. People define a service. If you have an IT company, your software engineers define you. If you have a restaurant, your chef and service staff defines you. If you are into banking, employees in your branch and their behavior towards customers defines you. In case of service marketing, people can make or break an organization. Thus many companies nowadays are involved into specially getting their staff trained in interpersonal skills and customer service with a focus towards customer satisfaction. In fact many companies have to undergo accreditation to show that their staff is better than the rest.

Process – procedures, mechanisms and flow of activities which lead to an exchange of value.

Service process is the way in which a service is delivered to the end customer. Lets take the example of two very good companies – Mcdonalds and Fedex. Both the companies thrive on their quick service and the reason they can do that is their confidence on their processes. On top of it, the demand of these services is such that they have to deliver optimally without a loss in quality. Thus the process of a service company in delivering its product is of utmost importance. It is also a critical component in the service blueprint, wherein before establishing the service, the company defines exactly what should be the process of the service product reaching the end customer.