Promotion Is All About Companies Communicating With Customers
Promotion Is All About Companies Communicating With Customers
Promotion Is All About Companies Communicating With Customers
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. Can be face-to-face or via telephone.
Sales promotion - Media and non-media marketing communication are employed for a pre-
determined, limited time to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve
product availability. Examples: Coupons, sweepstakes, contests, product samples, rebates, tie-
ins, self-liquidating premiums, trade shows, trade-ins, and exhibitions.
Public relations - Paid intimate stimulation of supply for a product, service, or business unit by
planting significant news about it or a favorable presentation of it in the media. Examples:
Newspaper and magazine articles/reports, TVs and radio presentations, charitable contributions,
speeches, issue advertising, and seminars.
Direct Marketing is often listed as a the fifth part of the marketing mix
Exhibitions - are try-outs. You make your product, and let potential buyers try the product, this
way, you know directly what people see in your product. The downside, your competitor can see
exactly what you are doing
Promotion Mix
Marketers have at their disposal four major methods of promotion. Taken together these
comprise the promotion mix. In this section a basic definition of each method is offered while in
the next section a comparison of each method based on the characteristics of promotion is
presented.
Advertising – Involves non-personal, mostly paid promotions often using mass media outlets to
deliver the marketer’s message. While historically advertising has involved one-way
communication with little feedback opportunity for the customer experiencing the advertisement,
the advent of computer technology and, in particular, the Internet has increased the options that
allow customers to provide quick feedback.
Sales Promotion – Involves the use of special short-term techniques, often in the form of
incentives, to encourage customers to respond or undertake some activity. For instance, the use
of retail coupons with expiration dates requires customers to act while the incentive is still valid.
Public Relations – Also referred to as publicity, this type of promotion uses third-party sources,
and particularly the news media, to offer a favorable mention of the marketer’s company or
product without direct payment to the publisher of the information.
Personal Selling – As the name implies, this form of promotion involves personal contact
between company representatives and those who have a role in purchase decisions (e.g., make
the decision, such as consumers, or have an influence on a decision, such as members of a
company buying center). Often this occurs face-to-face or via telephone, though newer
technologies allow this to occur online via video conferencing or text chat.