CHAPTER FIVE:

•MARKETING MIX: PROMOTION

( MARKETING COMMUNICATION)
 5.1. WHAT IS PROMOTION?
Promotion, also called marketing communication, is defined as the element of
marketing mix that assists and/or persuades a prospective customer to buy a product or
to act favorably up on and that has commercial significance to the seller.

It is a firm’s marketing activity used to inform, persuade, or remind people about its
products, services, image, ideas, community involvement, or impact on society.

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 5..2. THE IMPORTANCE OF PROMOTION

some of the advantages of promotion can be listed as follows:

creating awareness for new products
keeping existing products popular
locating where products can be purchased
justifying prices
providing after sales service for consumers

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 Advertising

Sales Promotion

Promotion
Promotion Public Relations
Mix
Mix Elements
Elements

Personal Selling

Direct Marketing
 A. Advertising
Advertising is any paid form of non-personal, oral and / or visual openly
sponsor-identified message concerning goods, services or ideas.
The message disseminated is called advertisement.
• Objectives of advertising
• The real goal of advertising is effective
communication.
• Depending on the purpose of the message advertising objectives
can be:
• informing,
• persuading, or
• reminding something
• Comparative

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How much to spend?
Depends on the product
• What stage in the PLC
• Market share and the consumer base
• Competition and clutter
• Ad frequency
• Product substitutability
 Advertising Decisions
• It is controlled, identifiable information and persuasion by means of mass
communication.
• It is used for several purposes
1. To sell or help sell a product
2. To reassure and retain customers
3. To improve channel member or employee relations
4. To project a useful image to one or more of the company publics
• To carry out these purposes, the marketing manager has several decisions to make
about
• The appropriate target market
• Advertising objective
• Size of the advertising budget
• Advertising message
• Media selection
• Media scheduling and
• evaluation
TYPES OF ADVERTISING
1. Pioneering or Informational: used in the
introductory stage of the life cycle
it tells people what a product is
what it can do
where it can be found.
The key objective of these ads is to inform the target
market
2. Competitive or Persuading: It promotes a specific brands’
feature and benefits.
Its objective is to persuade the target market to select the
firms brand rather than that of a competitor.
An increasingly common form of competitive ads is
comparative ads, which shows one brand’s strengths relative
to those of competitors.
3. Reminder Advertising: Is used to reinforce previous knowledge
of a product.
It is good for products that gave achieved a well recognized
position and are in the mature phase of their product life cycle.
Another type of reminder ads is, Reinforcement, is used to
assure current users they made the right choice.
 THE ADVERTISING MANAGEMENT PROCESS
• In developing an advertising program, marketing managers must always make five
critical decisions, known as the five Ms:
1. Mission: What are the advertising objectives?
• WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW OFTEN
2. Money: How much can be spent?
consider the following five factors when setting the advertising budget:
• Product Life Cycle Stage
• Market share and consumer base
• Competition and clutter
• Advertising frequency
• Product substitutability
3. Message: What message should be sent?
• Message Generation and Evaluation
• Creative Development and Execution
• Social Responsibility Review
4. Media: What media should be used?
• Desired reach, Frequency and Impact
• Choosing among major media types
• Selecting specific media vehicles
• Deciding on media timing; and
• Deciding on geographical media allocation
• How should you select media?
• Reach (R): The number of different persons or households that
are exposed to a particular media schedule at least once during a
specified time period.
• Frequency (F): The number of times within the specified time
period that an average Person or household is exposed to the
message.
• Impact (I): The qualitative value of an exposure through a given
medium (thus a food ad in Good Housekeeping would have a
higher impact than the same ad in the Police Gazette).
5. Measurement: How should the results is evaluated?
• Advertisers should try to measure the communication effect of an ad -
that is, it’s potential effect on awareness, knowledge, or preference—
as well as the ad’s sales effect
 B. Personal Selling
Personal selling can be defined as a direct person-to person
communication with one or more prospective customers for the
purpose of making sales.
Personal selling consists of individual
its great advantage over the other forms of promotion is its flexibility.
it is personal selling that result in the actual sale
personal selling has a major limitation that its cost is high.

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• Personal selling has three notable qualities:
• 1. Personal interaction: Personal selling creates an immediate and
interactive episode between two or more persons. Each is able to
observe the other’s reactions.
• 2. Cultivation: Personal selling also permits all kinds of relationships to
spring up, ranging from a matter-of-fact selling relationship to a deep
personal friendship.
• 3. Response: The buyer is often given personal choices and encouraged
to directly respond.
 Steps in Completing a Sale

1. Prospecting and Qualifying

• Prospecting and qualifying involve locating potential customers
and finding out if they are in a position to buy.
2. Pre approach
• This step involves researching the prospective customer—often
another company.
3. Approach
• A salesperson meets the customer for the first time.
• it is crucial for a salesperson to make a positive first impression
while introducing himself or herself, the company represented,
and the product or service being offered.
4. Demonstration and presentation
• A salesperson tells the “value story” to the buyer, showing
how the company’s offer solves the customer’s problems.
• Presentations and demonstrations may involve any number of
visual aids, such as flip-charts, or samples of the products
themselves.
• The qualities that buyers dislike most in salespeople include being
pushy, late, deceitful, unprepared, disorganized, or overly talkative
5. Over Coming Objections
• Objections- opposition , resistance to the presentation
• Objections reflect the prospect’s view.
• Almost every customer will present objections to making a
purchase. A good salesperson is not flustered by these
objections and handles them in a positive, confident manner.
Objections
1. Psychological ( hidden ) – includes:
 pre-determined ideas or beliefs,
preference for established brands,
dislike of making decisions ,
anxiety or resistance to spend money ,
suspect about quality etc.
2. Logical or practical or real –
delivery schedule,
high price ,
product availability,

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6. Closing Sales
• The next step in the process of completing a sale - closing, or asking
the buyer to make a purchase—is often identified by novice
salespeople as the toughest step.
7. Follow up
• The follow-up, which can be done in person or by telephone, gives the
customer the chance to ask questions and reinforce his or her buying
decision.
 C. Sales promotion 21

Sales promotion consists of short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or

sales of a product or service.
Sales promotion includes discounts, coupons, displays, and
demonstrations…………………….
Sales promotion can be directed to five different groups:
 final consumers,
industrial users,
wholesalers,
retailers, and
a firm’s own sales-force.

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Objectives of Sales promotion
1. Building Product Awareness  
2. Creating Interest – It is very effective in creating interest in a product.  In the
retail industry an appealing sales promotions can significantly increase customer
traffic to retail outlets.
3. Providing Information – They are designed to move customers to some action
and are rarely simply informational in nature. 
4. Stimulating Demand - Special promotions, especially those that lower the cost of
ownership to the customer (e.g., price reduction), can be employed to stimulate
sales.
5. Reinforcing the Brand – Once customers have made a purchase sales promotion
can be used to both encourage additional purchasing and also as a reward for
purchase loyalty
 
 Major Decisions in Sales Promotion
1. Establishing objectives.
2. Selecting Promotion Tools
• Samples: an Offer of a free amount of a product or service
• Cash Refund Offers (rebates): Provide a price reduction after purchase
• Coupons: They are certificates offering a stated saving or price reduction on the
purchase of a specific product.
• Price packs (cents-off deals): Promoted on the package or label, these offer
savings off the product’s regular price.
• Premiums (gifts): These are articles of merchandise or services (e.g.
travel) offered by manufacturers to induce action on the part of the
sales force, trade representatives, or consumers
• Free Trials: Inviting prospects to try the product free in the hope that
they will buy the product onwards
• Product Warranties: Explicit or implicit promises by sellers that the
product will perform as specified or that the seller will fix it or
refund the customer’s money during a specified period.
• Trade Allowance: are offered to wholesalers and retailers simply for
purchasing the manufacturer’s brand
 D. Publicity and Public Relation
 A public is any group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on a company’s
ability to achieve its objectives.
Public relations (PR) involves a variety of programs that are designed to promote or
protect a company’s image or its individual products.
 Public relations activities include
 publicity,
 news conferences,
 seminars,
 exhibitions,
 anniversaries,
 publications-
 annual reports,
 brochures,
 articles,
 company newsletters and
 magazines;
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 • Public relations can accomplish many objectives:
• Prestige and reputation
• Promotion of products
• Overcoming misconceptions:
• Publicity
• It can be defined as the communication about a product or organization by placing of news
about it in the media without paying for the time or space directly.
• Three key tasks of publicity
• 1.Responding to requests from the media
• 2.Supplying the media with information on events and
occurrences relevant to the organization.
• 3.Stimulating the media to carry the information and view point
of the organization
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 E. Direct Marketing
• Involves making direct connections with carefully targeted
individual consumers to both obtain an immediate response and
cultivate lasting customer relationships.
• Connecting directly with carefully targeted segments or individual
consumers, often on a one-to-one, interactive basis.
• Many forms: Telephone marketing, direct mail, online marketing, etc.
 • Benefits of direct marketing to Buyers
•convenient, easy, and private
•ready access to a wealth of products
•access to a wealth of comparative information about companies, products, and competitors.
•immediate and interactive
•Benefits to Sellers
•powerful tool for building customer relationships
•offers sellers a low-cost, efficient, speedy alternative for reaching
their markets.
•results in lower costs, improved efficiencies, and speedier handling of channel and logistics
functions, such as order processing, inventory handling, and delivery
•offer greater flexibility
•gives sellers access to buyers that they could not reach through other channels
Forms of Direct Marketing

• The major forms of direct marketing include:

• personal selling,
• direct-mail marketing,
• catalog marketing,
• telephone marketing,
• direct-response television (DRTV) marketing,
• kiosk marketing,
• new digital direct marketing technologies, and
• online marketing.
• Email marketing
• Direct-mail marketing
• Direct marketing by sending an offer, announcement, reminder, or other item
to a person at a particular physical or virtual address.
• E-mail marketing
• Direct marketing uses E-mail to send marketing messages to targeted
audience
• Catalog marketing
• Direct marketing through print, video, or digital catalogs that are mailed to
select customers, made available in stores, or presented online.
• Telephone marketing
• Using the telephone to sell directly to customers.
• Direct-response television (DRTV) marketing
• Direct marketing via television, including direct-response television
advertising (or infomercials) and home shopping channels.
• Kiosk Marketing
• Is a small, temporary, stand-alone booth used in high traffic areas for
marketing purpose.
• kiosks (good old-fashion vending machines but so much more)—in stores,
airports, hotels, college campuses, and other locations.
• New Digital Direct Marketing Technologies
• Mobile Phone Marketing
• Is a direct marketing through which mobile phone applications used to interact with prospective
customers
• Podcasts and Vodcasts
• Podcasting and vodcasting are on-the-go, on-demand technologies.
• The name podcast derives from Apple’s now-everywhere iPod.
• With podcasting, consumers can download audio files (podcasts) or video files (vodcasts) via the
Internet to a handheld device and then listen to or view them whenever and wherever they wish.
• Interactive TV (iTV)
• Interactive TV (iTV) lets viewers interact with television programming and advertising using their
remote controls.
•Online marketing
• Efforts to market products and services and build customer relationships over the Internet
 5.3.4. DETERMINATION OF PROMOTIONAL MIX
•Companies thus consider the factors described below in developing their promotional
mix.
i. Funds available
ii. Nature of the market
Geographical scope of the market-
Type of customers
Concentration of the market
Composition of buyers
iii. Nature of the product
consumer goods
industrial goods.

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 Reflection
• Which form of marketing communication is highly
dominant in producing sale in Ethiopia?
•END OF
CHAPTER
FIVE