AN ASSIGNMENT ON

MARKETING MANAGEMENT

TOPIC: contrast between Sales Promotion,

Public Relations &Direct Marketing.

SUBMITTED TO:
PROF. R. SUNITHA

SUBMITTED BY:
Ashish Kumar S

Ghosh Vijit Biplab

MD. Mojahid Islam

Robin Varghese

Sumit Kumar Panda

GROUP NO: 6
SALES PROMOTION, PUBLIC RELATION AND
DIRECT MARKETING
 Introduction
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. A company’s total promotion mix also called its marketing
communication mix. It consists of the specific blend of advertising, public
relations, personal selling promotion and direct marketing. Following are the brief
explanations about these:

Advertising: any paid form of non personal presentation of ideas, goods or

services by an identified sponsor.

Sales promotion: Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sales of a

product or service.

Personal selling: Personal presentation by the firm’s sales force for the purpose of
making sales and building customer relationship.

Public relationship: building good relation with the companies various publics by
obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and handling or
heading of unfavorable rumors stories and events.

Direct marketing: direct connections with carefully targeted individual consumers

to both obtain an immediate response and cultivating lasting consumer relationship
through the use of direct mail, telephone, internet and other tools to communicate
directly with specific consumers.

As we are discussing only about sales promotion public relation and direct
marketing, we are explaining here about this in detail.
 I. Sales promotion

Sales promotion simply means short-term incentives to encourage the

purchase or sales of a product or services. Sales promotion is any initiative
undertaken by an organization to promote an increase in sales, usage or trial of a
product or service (i.e. initiatives that are not covered by the other elements of the
marketing communications or promotions mix). Sales promotions are varied.

Often they are original and creative, and hence a comprehensive list of all available
techniques is virtually impossible (since original sales promotions are launched
daily!). Here are some examples of popular sales promotions activities:

 Buy-One-Get-One-Free (BOGOF) - This is an example of a self-

liquidating promotion. For example if a loaf of bread is priced at $1, and
cost 10 cents to manufacture, if you sell two for $1, you are still in profit -
especially if there is a corresponding increase in sales. This is known as a
PREMIUM sales promotion tactic.
 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) incentives such as bonus
points or money off coupons. There are many examples of CRM, from
banks to supermarkets.
 New media - Websites and mobile phones that support a sales promotion.
For example, in the United Kingdom, Nestle printed individual codes on
KIT-KAT packaging, whereby a consumer would enter the code into a
dynamic website to see if they had won a prize. Consumers could also text
codes via their mobile phones to the same effect.
 Merchandising additions such as dump bins, point-of-sale materials and
product demonstrations.
 Free gifts e.g. Subway gave away a card with six spaces for stickers with
each sandwich purchase. Once the card was full the consumer was given a
free sandwich.
 Discounted prices e.g. Budget airline such as EasyJet and Ryanair, e-mail
their customers with the latest low-price deals once new flights are released,
or additional destinations are announced.
  Joint promotions between brands owned by a company, or with another
company's brands. For example fast food restaurants often run sales
promotions where toys, relating to a specific movie release, are given away
with promoted meals.
 Free samples (aka. sampling) e.g. tasting of food and drink at sampling
points in supermarkets. For example Red Bull (a caffeinated fizzy drink)
was given away to potential consumers at supermarkets, in high streets and
at petrol stations (by a promotions team).
 Vouchers and coupons, often seen in newspapers and magazines, on packs.
 Competitions and prize draws, in newspapers, magazines, on the TV and
radio, on The Internet, and on packs.
 Cause-related and fair-trade products that raise money for charities, and
the less well off farmers and producers, are becoming more popular.
 Finance deals - for example, 0% finance over 3 years on selected vehicles.

Many of the examples above are focused upon consumers. Don't forget that
promotions can be aimed at wholesales and distributors as well. These are known
as Trade Sales Promotions. Examples here might include joint promotions
between a manufacturer and a distributor, sales promotion leaflets and other
materials (such as T-shirts), and incentives for distributor sales people and their
retail clients.

II. Public relations

Public relation simply means building good relations with the companies
various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building a good corporate image,
and handling or heading off unfavorable rumors stories and events. Here, publics
may include press, media, government, customers, investors etc. In the modern
marketing world, every company is having its own public departments. They may
perform following functions:

 Press relation or press agency: creating and placing news worthy in the
news media, to attract attention to a person, product or service.
  Product publicity: publicizing specific products.
 Public affairs: Building and developing local community relations.
 Lobbying: building and maintaining relations with legislators and
government officials to influence legislation and regulations.
 Investor relations: maintaining relationship with shareholders and others in
the financial community.
 Development: public relations with donors or members of non- profit
organizations to gain financial or volunteer support.

III. Direct marketing

Direct marketing is a channel free approach to distribution and/or
marketing communications. So a company may have a strategy of
dealing with its customers 'directly,' for example banks (such as
CityBank) or computer manufacturers (such as Dell). There are no
channel intermediaries i.e. distributors, retailers or wholesalers.
Therefore - 'direct' in the sense that the deal is done directly between the
manufacturer and the customer.
As mentioned above, 'direct' also in the sense that marketing
communications are targeted at consumers by the manufacturers. For
example, a brand that uses channels of distribution would target
marketing communications at wholesalers/distributors, retailers, and
consumers, or a blend of all three. On the other hand, a direct marketing
company could focus upon communicating directly with its customers.
Direct marketing and direct mail are often confused - although direct
mail is a direct marketing tool.
There are a number of direct marketing media other than direct mail.
These include (and are by no means limited to):
 Inserts in newspapers and magazines.
 Customer care lines.
  Catalogues.
 Coupons.
 Door drops.
 TV and radio adverts with free phone numbers or per-
minute-charging.
 ...and finally - and most importantly - The Internet and
New Media. ordered online, packed and chilled, and
sent to customers in any part of the world by courier.
Many companies use direct marketing, and a current example of its use,
as part of a business model. There is no intermediary or agent; customers
book tickets directly with the airlines over The Internet. Airlines capture
data that can be used for marketing research or a loyalty scheme.
Information can be processed quickly, and then categorized into
complex relational databases.
Then, for example, special offers or new flights destinations can be
communicated directly to customers using e-mail campaigns. Data is not
only collected on markets and segments, but also on individuals and
their individual buyer behavior. Companies such as Amazon are
wholesalers of books (i.e. they do not write or publish them) - so they
use Customer Relationship Management and marketing communications
targeted directly at individual customers - which is another, slightly
different example of direct marketing.