QUESTION: Access The Elements Of Promotion And Indicate Each The Types That
Should Be Used For The Sales Of Products To Specialized Customers And General
Introduction
It is not enough for a business to have good products
sold at attractive prices. To generate sales of profits, the benefits of
products have to be communicated to customers. In marketing this is commonly
called “Promotion”
Promotion is all about companies communicating with
customers. A business total marketing communication programme in called the
“promotional mix” and consists of a blend of advertising, personal selling,
sales promotion and public relations tools. In this, the description of the
four key, elements of promotional mix in details is important.
The Promotional Mix
1.
Advertising:-
Any paid presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an
identified sponsor. Examples. Print ads, radio television, billboard, direct
mail, brochures and catalogs, sings, in-store displays, posters, motion
pictures, web pages, banner ads, and emails.
2.
Personal Selling:- A process of helping and persuading one or more prospects to
purchase a good or service or to act on any idea through the use of an oral
presentation. Examples sales presentations, sales meetings, sales training and
incentive programs for intermediary salespeople, samples, and telemarketing an
be face-to-face or via telephone.
3.
Sales Promotion:- Incentives designed to stimulate the purchase or sales of a product,
usually in the short term, examples: coupons, sweeps takes, contests, product
samples, rebates, tie-ins, self liquidating premiums, trades shows, trade-ins,
and exhibitions.
4.
Public Relations:- Non-paid non-personal stimulation of demand for a product, service, or
business unit by planting significant news about it or a favourable
presentation of it in the media. Examples: Newspaper and magazine
articles/reports, Televisions and radio presentations, charitable
contributions, speeches, issue advertising, and seminars.
Promotion is one of the four elements of marketing mix
(product, price, promotion, distribution). It is the communication link between
sellers and buyers for the purpose of influencing, informing or persuading a
potential buyer’s purchasing decision.
Above the line promotion
1. The following are two types of
promotion: promotion in mass media (e.g television, radio newspapers, internet,
mobile phones, and, historically, illustrated songs) in which the advertiser
pays an advertising agency to place the advertisement.
Below the line promotion: all other
promotion. Much of this is intended to be subtle enough for the consumer to be
unaware that promotion is taking place. E.g. sponsorship, product placement,
testimonials, sales promotion, merchandising, direct mail, personal selling,
public relations, trade shows.
The specification of five elements creates
a promotional mix or promotional plan. These elements are personal selling,
advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing and publicity.
A promotional mix specifies how much
attention to pay to each of the five subcategories, and how much money to
budget for each. A promotional plan can have a wide range of objectives,
including: sales increases, new product acceptance, creation of brand equity,
positioning, competitive retaliations, or creation of a corporate image.
Fundamentally, however, there are three basic objective of promotion.
There are:
To present information to consumers as well as others
to increase demand to differentiate product.
There are different ways to promote
a product in different areas of media. Promoters use internet advertisement,
special events, endorsements, and newspapers to advertise their product. Many
times with the purchase of a product there is an incentive like discounts, free
items, or a contest. This is to increase the sales of a given product.
The term “promotion” is usually an
“in” expression used internally by the marketing company, but not normally to
the public or the market-phrases. Like “special offer” are more common. An
example. Of a fully integrated, long term; large –scale promotion are my coke
rewards and Pepsi stuff. The uk version of my coke rewards is coke zone.
A sales promotion is activity
intended to produce some short-term change in behavior. This can range from a
cents- off coupon that motivates a customer to buy a box of cereal today to a sales
contest that inspires an employee to sing up as many customers as he can by the
end of the month. (when the target is consumers) sales promotion targeted to
consumers encourage purchase or build interest in a product during a specified
time period. They element of sales promotions is its
limited-time nature. Consumer sales promotion tools include the following: (price
or value discount promotion tools) price or value discount promotion tools
include coupons for packaged-goods products like deodorant. These offer cent
off the price and have an expiration date of a few months out, encouraging
immediate purchase similarly, pizza delivery companies located near colleges
typically have special deals at the start of the semester to entice new
customers. In addition to coupons companies place in newspapers, send by mail
(or by mobile phone) or offer on a web site, a marketer may offer a temporary
price reduction at the store or offer a rebate. Unlike a coupon, which gives
the discount immediately upon purchase; a rebate refunds part of the purchase
price to the consumer after the consumer fills out and returns a form along
with a sales receipt to the company.
Bonus packs deliver more product
without more cost, such as 20 percent more nuts in a canned nut mix, or 33
percent more liquid soap for the same price. Some companies offer bonus packs
twice a year as a way to reward customers with special offers. Other companies
time their bonus packs to economic cycles. Whenever there is downturn in the
economy, we do very well with bonus packs and opening price shampoos like
suave, vo5 and Jheri Rheding, “said
Larry Vick, divisional merchandise manager for shopko. During difficult
economic times, people are careful with their money and like to buy products
that offer more of the good for the same amount of money hint: with all of the
economic woes surrounding us, the coupon business is a pretty nice place to be
right now. (visibility –increasing promotion tools)
A premium is a free item you receive
if you purchase another item sexy hair concepts, for examples, offered free
styling gel with purchase of their shampoo conditioner during the “Girls night
out” days at beauty brands retail stores. In some cases, the premium may
directly encourage future product sales, such as the Campbell’s soup cook book
containing new recipes that just happen to call for additional soup flavors (volume
–increasing promotion tools)
Sampling is a popular (though
expensive) promotional tool. Food and beverage companies often provide free
samples to consumers to give them a chance to try a new product for free. More
than one college student has feasted for free by timing strategic visits to
stores like Sam’s club that provide tastes of new food items. Sometimes the
packets will be a smaller trial size; such as two packets of celestial
seasonings. Tea rather than a box, other times the sample will full size, like
a cup of silk yogurt. In the example we mentioned previously, unilever handed
out free samples of its new detergent. Sampling intends to increase future
sales volume by acquiring new customers for the product.
Promotional products are the “swag”
that companies gives out, stuff like free pens, polo shirts, coffee mugs, and
key chains emblazoned with a company’s logo. The purposes is to keep the brand
top of mind by keeping it visible in the channel partner’s daily life. The most
effective promotional products are ones that are attractive and covey a
positive message about your product or services. They often keep a brand or company
top of mind because the logo is hard to miss an idea of the mind-boggling array
of swag that’s available out there, visit the gifts and premiums manufacturers
directory at hltp: // www. globalsources.Com/
suppliers/gift-premium/3000000151985 htm. And you though scoring a free pen was
a major coup!
Public Relations: the purpose of public relations (PR) is to build good relationships with the
advertiser’s publics, namely consumers, stockholders, legislators, and
employees. We define PR as “communication that attempts to earn public
understanding and acceptance of the firm by stressing the practices, policies,
and procedures of an individual or the organization or the organization. This
can be accomplished by identifying donations to charitable organizations, sponsorship of esteemed causes or events, contributions
to individual, community, or societal well-being, and so on.
Direct Marketing: Refers to sales communications delivered directly to
individual consumers through e-mail direct mail, and telemarketing. The goal is
to use information about individuals in order to present them with messages
relevant to their needs and interests. The growth of consumer databases and
improvement of technology and methods (such as advanced modeling and
segmentation strategies) has led to increased use- and increased success-of
direct marketing. For example, in the united states in 2006 direct marketing
generated incremental sales of $1.93 trillion, which was 10 percent of the GDP.
Each dollar spent on direct marketing yields, on average, an RDI (return on
investment) of $11.65, compared to an ROI of $5.29 for traditional advertising.
How does direct marketing fit into
an integrated campaign? One application is to send a direct mail piece (usually
a letter or package) to a targeted list of customers. Inviting them to visit a
web site where they can receive further information for examples, Pitney. Bowes
MapInfo ( a company that provides software and services to help business
executives make location- based decisions, such as site selection) mailed
executives one-half of a CD to drive the message that without the dimension of
location, their analysis is not complete. The mail piece gave executives a web
address from which they could download a free white paper to learn more about
location intelligence. MapInfo combined the direct mail piece with banner ads
on business-publication web sites. (such as business week (www.businessweek.com)
FORBES (http://www.forbes.com), CNN money (http://money.cnn.com) and msn money
(http://moneycentral.nsn.com) to drive executives to the white paper. The
result received more than three thousand while paper downloads, of which more
than 70 percent were senior management executives, more than thirteen hundred
options to receive e-mail communications from MapInfo’s webinar.
Personal Selling: Involves direct interaction between a company
representative and the customer. The main advantage of personal selling is the
ability to tailor the massage to the customer in real time, responding not only
to their questions but also to their body language and tone. This type of
direct contact lets the salesperson address customer concerns, sometimes even
when the customer hasn’t voiced them aloud. Salespeople in fashion retail
stores are ready (or at least they should be) with advice on how to accessorize
an outfit or to help in deciding among outfits. Personal selling is even more
important in products that are complex and require significant customer
education or custom.
Configuration: A sales force is a key part of medical products
sales, information technology and solutions sales, or other complex products
and services selling.
Personal selling can also be done
through an outside network of sales reps, for example, barefoot parties sells
loungewear, accessories, and gifts for women through at-home parties held by
its sales agents. Agents get bonuses based on the amount of income the party
generates in addition to a minimum base commission of 20 percent from the party
sales. Some products and services are so complex and intertwined that team
sales approach is needed, in which the selling is handled by a team of
salespeople, technical specialists, field engineers, and supply chain
specialists who coordinate the time table from order to production to delivery.
Telecommunications equipment provider lucent uses this kind of team approach,
paring supply chain executives with sales reps on the sales team. Technical
specialists work with the customer to design a cell phone network, for example.
In one case, lucent created a CDMA (code division multiple access) cell phone
network for a customer in India. The network included over fifty switching
centers, twenty-five hundred based stations, and three hundred thousand circuit
pack and cables. Such complexity demands a team sales approach.
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