Promotion Decisions

Those unfamiliar with marketing often assume it is the same thing as advertising. Marketing
encompasses many tasks and decisions, of which advertising may only be a small portion.

While creativity is an important element in promotion decisions, marketers must also have a
deep understanding of how the marketing communication process works and how promotion
helps the organization achieve its objectives.

Promotion is a form of corporate communication that uses various methods to reach a targeted
audience with a certain message in order to achieve specific organizational objectives.

Like most marketing decisions, an effective promotional strategy requires the marketer
understand how promotion fits with other pieces of the marketing puzzle (e.g., product,
distribution, pricing, target markets). Consequently, promotion decisions should be made with an
appreciation for how it affects other areas of the company. In addition to coordinating general
promotion decisions with other business areas, individual promotions must also work together.
Under the concept of Integrated Marketing Communication marketers attempt to develop a
unified promotional strategy involving the coordination of many different types of promotional
techniques.

Types of Promotion Objectives

The possible objectives for marketing promotions may include the following:

 Build Awareness – New products and new companies are often unknown to a market,
which means initial promotional efforts must focus on establishing an identity.
 Create Interest – Moving a customer from awareness of a product to making a purchase
can present a significant challenge. The focus on creating messages that convince
customers that a need exists has been the hallmark of marketing for a long time with
promotional appeals targeted at basic human characteristics such as emotions, fears, sex,
and humor.
  Provide Information – Some promotion is designed to assist customers in the search stage
of the purchasing process. In some cases, such as when a product is so novel (New) it
creates a new category of product and has few competitors, the information is simply
intended to explain what the product is and may not mention any competitors. In other
situations, where the product competes in an existing market, informational promotion
may be used to help with a product positioning strategy.
 Stimulate Demand – The right promotion can drive customers to make a purchase. In the
case of products that a customer has not previously purchased or has not purchased in a
long time, the promotional efforts may be directed at getting the customer to try the
product. With an established customer-base, promotion can encourage customers to
increase their purchasing by providing a reason to purchase products sooner or purchase in
greater quantities than they normally do.
 Reinforce the Brand – Once a purchase is made, a marketer can use promotion to help
build a strong relationship that can lead to the purchaser becoming a loyal customer. For
instance, many retail stores now ask for a customer’s email address so that follow-up
emails containing additional product information or even an incentive to purchase other
products in order to strengthen the customer-marketer relationship.

Promotional mix

A successful product or service means nothing unless the benefit of such a service can be
communicated clearly to the target market. An organisations promotional strategy can consist of:

Advertising: Is any non personal paid form of communication using any form of mass media.

Public relations: Involves developing positive relationships with the organisation media public.
The art of good public relations is not only to obtain favorable publicity within the media, but it
is also involves being able to handle successfully negative attention.

Sales promotion: Commonly used to obtain an increase in sales short term. Could involve using
money off, coupons or special offers.
Personal selling: Selling a product service one to one. The purpose is to make presentations,
answering questions and procuring orders.

Direct Marketing- Is the use of mail, telephone, fax, e-mail or internet to communicate directly
with or solicit response from specific customers and prospects.

Direct mail allows an organisation to use their resources more effectively by allowing them to
send publicity material to a named person within their target segment. By personalising
advertising, response rates increase thus increasing the chance of improving sales.

Word-of-mouth marketing- People to people oral, written or electronic communications that

relate to the merits or experience of purchasing or using products or services

Events and experiences-company sponsored activities and programs designed to promote or

protect a company’s image or individual products.

Interactive marketing- Online activities and programs designed to engage customers or prospects
and directly or indirectly raise awareness, improve image, or elicit sales of services.

Push & Pull Strategies -

Communication by the manufacturer is not only directed towards consumers to create demand. A
push strategy is where the manufacturer concentrates some of their marketing effort on
promoting their product to retailers to convince them to stock the product. A combination of
promotional mix strategies are used at this stage aimed at the retailer including personal selling,
and direct mail. The product is pushed onto the retailer, hence the name. A pull strategy is based
around the manufacturer promoting their product amongst the target market to create demand.
Consumers pull the product through the distribution channel forcing the wholesaler and retailer
to stock it, hence the name pull strategy. Organisations tend to use both push and pull strategies
to create demand from retailers and consumers.

AIDA is a communication model which can be used by firms to aid them in selling their product
or services. AIDA is an Acronym for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.. When a product is
launched the first goal is to grab attention. Think, how can an organisation use it skills to do this?
Use well-known personalities to sell products? Once you grab attention how can you hold
Interest, through promoting features, clearly stating the benefit the product has to offer? The
third stage is desire, how can you make the product desirable to the consumer? By demonstrating
it? The final stage is the purchase action, if the company has been successful with its strategy
then the target customer should purchase the product.

Promotion through the Product life cycle. –

As products move through the four stages of the product lifecycle different promotional
strategies should be employed at these stages to ensure the healthy success and life of the product

Stages and promotion strategies employed.

Introduction

When a product is new the organisations objective will be to inform the target audience of its
entry. Television, radio, magazine, coupons etc may be used to push the product through the
introduction stage of the lifecycle. Push and Pull Strategies will be used at this crucial stage.

Growth

As the product becomes accepted by the target market the organisation at this stage of the
lifecycle the organisation works on the strategy of further increasing brand awareness to
encourage loyalty.

Maturity

At this stage with increased competition the organisation take persuasive tactics to encourage the
consumers to purchase their product over their rivals. Any differential advantage will be clearly
communicated to the target audience to inform of their benefit over their competitors.

Decline

As the product reaches the decline stage the organisation will use the strategy of reminding
people of the product to slow the inevitable
Integrated Marketing Communications

Integrated Marketing Communications is a term used to describe a holistic approach to

marketing communication. It aims to ensure consistency of message and the complementary use
of media. The concept includes online and offline marketing channels. Online marketing
channels include any e-marketing campaigns or programs, from search engine optimization
(SEO), pay-per-click, affiliate, email, banner to latest web related channels for webinar, blog,
micro-blogging, podcast, and Internet TV. Offline marketing channels are traditional print
(newspaper, magazine), mail order, public relations, industry relations, billboard, radio, and
television. A company develops its integrated marketing communication programme using all
the elements of the marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion).

Integrated marketing communication is integration of all marketing tools, approaches, and

resources within a company which maximizes impact on consumer mind and which results into
maximum profit at minimum cost. Generally marketing starts from "Marketing Mix". Promotion
is one element of Marketing Mix. Promotional activities include Advertising (by using different
medium), sales promotion (sales and trades promotion), and personal selling activities. It also
includes internet marketing, sponsorship marketing, direct marketing, database marketing and
public relations. An integration of all these promotional tools along with other components of
marketing mix to gain edge over competitor is called Integrated Marketing Communication.