There are five forms of promotion: personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and publicity. Each has distinct features that determine in what situations it will be most effective.

Personal selling Is the direct presentation of a product to a prospective customer

by a representative of the organization selling it. Personal selling takes place face to face or over the phone, and

it may be directed to a middleman or a final consumer. Across all businesses, more money is spent on personal selling

than on any other form of promotion.

Promotional Methods

Advertising Is impersonal mass communication that the sponsor has paid for

and in which the sponsor is clearly identified. The most familiar forms of ads are found in the broadcast (TV

and radio) and print (newspapers and magazines) media. However, there are many other advertising alternatives, from

direct mail to billboards and the telephone directory yellow pages.

Sale Promotion Is demand-stimulating activity designed to supplement

advertising and facilitate personal selling. It is paid for by the sponsor and frequently involves a temporary

incentive to encourage a purchase. Many sales promotions are directed at consumers. The majority, however, are designed to encourage the

company’s sales force or other members of its distribution channel to sell its products more aggressively.

This latter category is called trade promotion. Included in sales promotion are a wide spectrum of activities,

such as contests, trade shows, in-store displays, rebates, samples, premiums, discounts, and coupons.

Public Relations Encompasses a wide variety of communication efforts to

contribute to generally favorable attitudes and opinions toward an organization and its products.

Unlike most advertising and personal selling, it does not include a specific sales message.

The targets may be customers, stockholders, a government agency, or a special-interest group.

Public relations can take many forms, including newsletters, annual reports, lobbying, and sponsorship of charitable or civic events.

The Goodyear and Fuji blimps and the Oscar Mayer Wiener mobile are familiar examples of public relations devices.

Good Year Blimp

Publicity 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. But several things distinguish publicity from advertising:

it is not paid for the organization that is the subject of the publicity has no control

over it and it appears as news and frequently provide the material for it in

the form of news releases, press conferences, and photographs. There is, of course, also bad publicity, which organizations try to

avoid or deflect.

Promotion and Marketing

Promotion serves three essential roles—it informs, persuade, and reminds prospective customers about a company and its products. The relative importance of these roles varies according to the circumstances faced by a firm.

The most useful product or brand will be a failure if no one knows it is available!

Determining The Promotional Mix

An organization’s combination of personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and publicity to help in achieving its marketing objectives is its Promotional Mix.

An effective promotional mix is a critical part of virtually all marketing strategies.

Product differentiation, market segmentation, and branding all require effective promotion.

Designing an effective promotional mix involves a number of strategic decisions.

Factors Influencing The Promotional Mix

These four factors should be taken into account when determining the promotional mix: (1) the target market, (2) the nature of the product, (3) the stage of the product’s life cycle, and (4) the amount of money available for promotion.

Target Market

As in most areas of marketing, decisions on the promotional mix will be greatly influenced by the audience or target market. At least four variables affect the choice of a promotional method for a particular market:

Readiness to buy. A target market can be in any one of six stages of buying readiness. These stages—awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, and purchase—are called the hierarchy of effects because they represent stages a buyer goes through in moving toward a purchase and each defines a possible goal or effect of promotion.

Geographic scope of the market. Personal selling may be adequate in a small local market, but as the market broadens geographically, greater emphasis must be placed on advertising. The exception would be a firm that sells to concentrated pockets of customers scattered around the country. For example, the market for certain plastics is heaviest in Ohio and Michigan, because these plastics are used by component suppliers to the auto industry. In this case, emphasis on personal selling may be feasible.

Type of customer. Promotional strategy depends in part on what level of the distribution channel the organization hopes to influence. Final consumers and middlemen sometimes buy the same product, but they require different promotion.

Nature of the Product

Several product attributes influence promotional strategy. The most important are:

Unit Value. A product with low unit value is usually relatively uncomplicated, involves little risk for the buyer, and must appeal to a mass market to survive. As a result, advertising would be the primary promotional tool.

Degree of customization. If a product must be adapted to the individual customer’s needs, personal selling is necessary.

Presale and post-sale service. Products that must be demonstrated, for which there are trade-ins, or that require frequent servicing to keep them in good working order lend themselves to personal selling.

Nature And Scope of Advertising

All advertisements have four features:– A verbal and/or visual message.– A sponsor who is identified.– Delivery through one or more media.– Payment by the sponsor to the media carrying the message.

Advertising, then, consists of all the activities involved in presenting to an audience a non-personal, sponsor-identified, paid-for message about a product or organization. Advertising in one form or another is used by most organization.

Developing an Advertising Campaign

An advertising campaign consists of all the tasks involved in transforming a theme into a coordinated advertising program to accomplish a specific goal for a product or brand.

Know who the target audience is. Establish the overall promotional goals. Set the total promotional budget. Determine the overall promotional theme.

Defining Objectives

Support personal selling. Advertising may be used to acquaint prospects with the seller’s company and product.

Improve dealer relations. Wholesalers and retailers like to see a manufacturer support its products.

Introduce a new product. Consumers need to be informed even about line extensions that make use of familiar brand names.

Counteract substitution. Advertising reinforce the decisions of existing customers and reduces the likelihood that they will switch to alternative brands.

Establishing a Budget

Once a promotional budget has been established, it must be allocated among the various activities comprising the overall promotional program.

Creating a Message

Whatever the objective of an advertising campaign, the individual ads must accomplish two things: – get and hold the attention of the intended

audience– influence that audience in the desired way. – Remember that the ultimate purpose of

advertising is to sell something, and that the ad itself is a sales message.

If the ad succeeds in getting the audience’s attention, the advertiser has a few seconds to communicate a message intended to influence beliefs and/or behavior. The message has two elements, the appeal and the execution. The appeal in an ad is the reason or justification for believing or behaving.

Health (food, nonprescription drugs) Social acceptance (cosmetics, health and

beauty aids). Material success (automobiles, investments). Recognition (clothing, jewelry). Sensory pleasure (movies, candy). Time savings (prepared foods, conveniences

stores). Peace of mind (insurance, tires).

Execution is combining in a convincing, compatible way the feature or device that gets attention with the appeal.

An appeal can be executed in different ways. Consider the ways you could communicate the benefit of reliable performance in a home appliance—presenting operating statistics, obtaining the endorsement of a respected person or organization, collecting testimonials from satisfied owners, or describing the meticulous manufacturing process.

Selecting Media

In describing the steps in developing an advertising campaign, we have discussed creating an advertising message before describing the selection of advertising media in which to place the ad.

1. Which type of medium will be used—newspaper, television, radio, magazine, or direct mail? What about the less prominent media of billboards, specialty items, and yellow pages?

2. Which category of the selected medium will be used? Television has network and cable; magazines include general-interest (Newsweek, People) and special-interest (Popular Mechanics, Runner’s World) categories; and there are national as well as local newspapers.

3. Which specific media vehicles will be used? An advertiser that decides first on radio and then on local stations must determine which stations to use in each city.

Objectives of the ad. The purpose of a particular ad and the goals of the entire campaign influence which media to use.

Audience coverage. The audience reached by the medium should match the geographic area in which the product is distributed. Furthermore, the selected medium should reach the desired types of prospects with a minimum of wasted coverage.

Requirement of the message. The medium should fit the message. For example, food products, floor coverings, and apparel are best presented visually.

Time and location of the buying decision. The medium should reach prospective customers when and where they are about to make their buying decisions.

Media cost. The cost of each medium should be considered in relation to the amount of funds available to pay for it and its reach or circulation. For example, the cost of network television exceeds the available funds of many advertisers.

Newspapers. flexible and timely. Ads can be inserted or canceled on very short notice, and can vary in size from small classifieds to multiple pages.

Television. combines motion, sound, and special visual effects. Products can be demonstrated as well as described on TV. It offers wide geographic coverage and flexibility in when the message can be presented. However, television is a relatively expensive medium.

Direct Mail. Direct mail, also known as direct marketing, is the most personal and selective of all media. Kraft General Foods has created a data base that includes the names and addresses of 25 million users of its 140 products.

Radio. Over the past decade, radio has enjoyed a rebirth as an advertising and cultural medium.

Magazines. Magazines are the medium to use when high-quality printing and color are desired in an ad. Magazines can reach a national market at a relatively low cost per reader.

Outdoor Advertising. Spending on outdoor advertising remains fairly constant, at about 1 percent of all advertising.

And now lets break into groups