Promotion refers to communicating with the public in an attempt to influence them toward buying a product. Promotion is also coordination of individual methods of promotions such as advertising, personal selling and sales promotion.
Promotion Mix
Promotion mix consists of these elements:
1. Advertising
2. Personal selling
3. Sales promotion
4. Public relations
Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Advertisement is important for standardized products; products aimed at large markets; products that have easily communicated features; products low in price; and products sold through independent channel members and/or are new products.
Use of advertising is for promoting products or organizations; stimulating primary and selective demand; offsetting competitor advertising; making salespersons more effective; increasing use of product; reminding and reinforcing customers; and, reducing sales fluctuations. Personal selling refers to personal presentation by the firm’s sales force for the purpose of making sales and building customer relationship.
Types of Advertising Agencies
The objective of advertising is to create awareness within a specific target audience during a specific period of time. Types of the advertising agencies that carry out the objectives of advertising are creative Agency; Media Buying Houses; Public Relation s; Off Line Advertising Agency and Production Houses
Personal selling
Personal selling is a persuasive communication between a representative of a firm and one or more potential buyer for a sale. It is a face to face communication with an aim to sell a product. The advantages of personal selling are freedom to adjust a message to satisfy customers informational needs, dynamic; precision, enabling marketers to focus on most promising leads; give more information; two way flow of information, interactivity; Discover the strengths and weaknesses of new products and pass this information on to the marketing department. Its minus is high cost.
Forms of personal selling (types of sales persons): These are the types of sales persons: order taker seeks to have repeat sales; order getter identifies potential customers who will buy a product;
The sales management process
1. Sales plan formulation – setting the objectives; organizing sales force
2. Sales plan implementation – sales force recruitment, selection, training , motivation and compensation
3. Evaluation and control of the sales force , including quantitative and behavioral assessment
Sales plan formulation
1. Setting objectives – this is specifying what to achieve
2. Organizing the sales force – taking into consideration various organizing structure : geographical structure, customer structure, product structure,
Steps in personal selling process
Prospecting and qualifying: this identify potential customers and screening them
1. Pre-approach : learning about a customer before making a call
2. Approach : knowing how to meet the buyer
3. Presentation : showing the product benefits
4. Handling objections: overcoming buyer objections
5. Closing : ask the buyer for order
6. Follow-up : ensuring customer satisfaction and repeat business
Types of sales force structure
1. Territorial : in this case the sales force can have exclusive territory to sell the product line of the firm
2. Product : the sales force is structured along the product lines
3. Customer : the sales force is structured along the customers’ type
4. Complex : it can combine territory, product and customer
Sales promotion is defined as the short-term incentives, to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service. Public Relations is building good relations with the firm’s various publics and corporate clients by publicity and interacting in favorable moods and media, as well as handling unfavorable rumors, stories and events are also the part of public relations. To achieve its objectives, public relations make use of methods that include the press conference, press release, event sponsorships, publicity event, letter to editor, media tours, articles
Steps to develop public relations strategy, to
1. Define objectives for publicity and media plan
2. Define the specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time-bound objectives
3. Determine the target audience
4. Develop a schedule for public relations campaign
5. Develop plan of “attack”
6. Put to measure to track the results of the campaign
Direct marketing can also be understood as part of promotion mix. Direct marketing is communications with targeted individual consumer to obtain an immediate response and development of long-term relationship. Direct marketing involves direct communications with targeted individual consumers to achieve an immediate response and develop long lasting customer relationships. Direct marketing can be done through E-mail, Direct mail, Telephone, Catalogues, and Fax. That is, forms of Direct marketing includes face to face marketing; telemarketing; direct mail marketing; Catalog marketing; direct response television marketing and kiosk marketing.
Developing effective communication
To facilitate the objectives of the promotion, effective communication needs to be developed.
To develop effective communication,
Identify the target audience
Define objective
Design a message
Determine message contents
Determine message structure
Choose Media
Decide on personal communication channel
Decide on non-personal communication channel
Select the message source.
Sales Promotion
Sales promotion is the short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service for a limited time period. The main objective of sales promotion is to build relationship between consumer and the brand as well as creating short term sales or temporary brand witching.
To carry out the objectives of sales promotion, the salesperson is a representative of a firm, who performs one or more works in terms of vision, communicating, servicing, and information gathering.
Sales promotion tools
The salesperson has various sales promotion tools such as consumer promotion tools ; sample – small amount of a product offers free to the consumer for trial; coupon; cash refund offer; price pack; premium; advertising specialties – items printed with an advertiser’s name, given as a gift to consumers; patronage reward; point of purchase display of products; contests and games.
Promotion Mix Strategies
There are push strategy and pull strategy
Push strategy is a promotion strategy in which the seller pushes the product through distribution channels to final consumer.
Pull strategy is in which the seller directly hit the final consumer to induce them to buy the product. Consumer will demand the product from channel members, if the pull strategy effect successfully.
Public Relations
Public relations is building good relations with the company’s various publics and corporate clients by publicity and interacting in favorable moods and media, as well as handling unfavorable rumors, stories and events . The tools of public relations use: press release; product publicity; public affairs; lobbying and investors.
Place (Distribution channels)
Place , which is also known as the distribution channels, is a set of interdependent organizations involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by the consumer or business user. The distribution channels can be
- Direct channel ( from producer to a consumer)
- Indirect channel ( from producer through intermediaries to a consumer)
Through distribution producer’s (manufacture’s) product can pass to a wholesaler, then to a retailer before finally reaching a consumer. Or it may go first to a retailer finally to reach a consumer. In these cases, there are intermediaries between the producer and the finally consumer. But the producer can sell directly to the final consumer. In this case, there is no an intermediary. The intermediaries may be short or long. It is long, for instance, when the product passes through an agent, a wholesaler, retailer, and short when it only passes through a retailer to reach a consumer. Intermediaries, such as retailers and wholesalers, tend to add efficiency because they can do specialized tasks better than the consumer or the manufacturer. Intermediaries add efficiency by
1. Breaking bulk – the final consumer buys only the small quantity; quantities are gradually broken down to reach a consumer
2. Intermediaries move goods efficiently
3. Consolidation and distribution – the final consumer can access a product easily as in the supermarket
4. Carrying inventory less costly to the holding of inventory
5. Financing – wholesaler and retailer may negotiate for lower prices
Determining on need and the nature of distribution channel involves making decisions on location of the consumer, cost of distribution, type of product and the strategy of distribution.
