PROMOTION DECISIONS

Meaning of Promotion
Promotion also referred to as marketing communications is
the element in an organization’s marketing mix.

It serves to inform, persuade, and remind the market of a

product and/or the organization selling the product, in hope of
influencing the target audience/recipients feelings, beliefs, or
behaviour.

The purpose of promotion is to get people to understand what

your product is, what they can use it for, and why they should
want it. You want the customers who are looking for a product
to know that your product satisfies their needs.
Promotion Methods

 Personal selling
 Is the direct or personal presentation of a product to a prospective customer by
a representative of the organization selling it.
 Designed to influence a person’s or group purchase decision, personal selling
takes place on face to face basis or over the phone, and it may be directed to a
middleman (retailers, wholesalers or agents) or final consumer.
 Advertising
 Advertising is any paid form of non-personal communication
about an organization, good, service or idea by an identified
sponsor.
 The paid aspect of this definition is important because the
space for the advertising messages normally must be bought
by the sponsor (organization advertising its products).
 For instance UNILEVER is the sponsor of Blueband
advertisement. On the one hand, advertising can be used to
build a long-term image for a product (such as Coca-Cola ads)
and on the other hand, advertising can trigger quick sales.
 Sales promotion
 Consists of short-term incentives offered to final consumers
and middlemen to encourage them to purchase the company’s
products.
 A free sample is an example of short-term incentive. This
attracts consumer attention and provide information that may
lead to a purchase.
 They offer strong incentives to purchase by providing
inducements or contributions that give additional value to
consumers.
 And sales promotions invite and reward quick response.
Where advertising says, “Buy our product,” sales promotion
says, “Buy it now.”
Public relations
 Encompasses a wide variety of communication efforts
made by the organization, aimed at building good relations
with the company’s various publics by obtaining
favourable publicity, building up a good corporate image,
and handling unfavourable rumors, stories, and events.
 Public relations offer several benefits. It is very believable:
news stories, features, and events seem more real and
believable to readers than ads do.
 Public relations also can reach many prospects who avoid
salespeople and advertisements
 Publicity
 It is a special form of public relations that involves news
stories about an organization or its products like
advertising, it involves an impersonal message that reaches
a mass audience through the media.
 Several things however, distinguish publicity from
advertising. It is not paid for and it appears as news, and
therefore has greater credibility than advertising.
Direct marketing
 Direct communications with carefully targeted individual consumers to obtain an
immediate response, the use of mail, telephone, fax, e-mail, and other non-personal
tools to communicate directly with specific consumers or to solicit a direct
response.
 The many forms of direct marketing for example direct mail, telemarketing,
electronic marketing, online marketing, and others, share four distinctive
characteristics.
 The message is normally addressed to a specific person. Direct marketing is also
immediate and customized: Messages can be prepared very quickly and can be
tailored to appeal to specific consumers.
Factors influencing the choice of the promotion mix

Target Market

 The decision on promotion mix selection is largely influenced

by the audience or target market.

 Key target market variables that affect the choice of a

promotion method for a particular market is; geographic scope
of the market, type of customer and concentration of the
market.

 For instance if the target market is small in terms of

geographical scope, personal selling may be adequate.
However, as the market broadens geographically, greater
emphasis must be placed on advertising.
Nature of the product

 Several product attributes influence the choice of promotion mix. The most
important ones are:

 Unit value: A product with low unit value involves little risk for the buyer, and
must appeal to mass market to survive. As a result, advertising would be the
primary promotional tool. In contrast, high-unit-value products are often
complex and expensive. These features suggest the need for personal selling.

 Degree of customization: If a product must be adapted to the individual

customers need such as an expensive suit the company should be more of
personal selling method. However, the benefits of most standardized products
can be effectively communicated through advertising.
 Presale and post sale service
 Products that must be demonstrated to consumers or that require frequent
servicing to keep them in good working conditions should be promoted using
personal selling. Typical examples include electronic products (television, radio,
refrigerators) and personal computers.

 Stage of the product life cycle

 All products have a product life cycle as described in the previous chapters and
the composition of the promotional mix change over the four life cycle stages.
Promotion Mix Strategies
 In relation to the promotion mix strategies an organization has two options:
push strategy and pull strategy.

 Push Strategy
 When a company uses a push strategy it directs the promotion mix or effort to
channel members.
 The aim is to gain their cooperation in ordering and stocking the product and
thereafter to get the channel members/middlemen to push it to their
customers.
 Personal selling and sales promotions play major roles when push strategy is
used by the company.
 Pull Strategy

 When a company goes for pull strategy it directs its

promotional mix to final consumers.
 The aim is to encourage them to ask the retailer for the
product.
 Seeing the demand from ultimate consumers, retailers
order the product from wholesalers and thus the product or
brand is pulled through the intermediaries.
 END