Promotion Mix

The Promotion Mix
The promotion mix is the specific blend of advertising, public relations, personal selling, and direct-marketing tools that the company uses to persuasively communicate customer value and build customer relationships.

• Advertising
• Sales promotion
• Public relations
• Personal selling
• Direct marketing

Advertising

Developing Advertising Programs

Setting Advertising Objectives

• An advertising objective is a specific communication task to be accomplished with a specific target audience during a specific time.
• Informative advertising is used when introducing a new product category; the objective is to build primary demand.
• Comparative advertising directly or indirectly compares the brand with one or more other brands.
• Persuasive advertising is important with increased competition to build selective demand.
• Reminder advertising is important with mature products to help maintain customer relationships and keep customers thinking about the product.

Advertising strategy is the strategy by which the company accomplishes its advertising objectives. It consists of two major elements:

• Creating the advertising message
• Selecting the advertising media

Creating Advertising Message
Creative concept is the idea that will bring the message strategy to life and guide specific appeals to be used in an advertising campaign.
Characteristics of the appeals include

• Meaningful
• Believable
• Distinctive

Message execution captures the target market’s attention and interest, and can include the following execution styles.

• Slice of life
• Lifestyle
• Fantasy
• Mood or image
• Musical
• Personality symbol
• Technical expertise
• Scientific evidence
• Testimonial evidence or endorsement

Selecting Advertising Media
Reach is a measure of the percentage of people in the target market who are exposed to the ad campaign during a given period of time.
Frequency is a measure of how many times the average person in the target market is exposed to the message.
Impact is the qualitative value of a message exposure through a given medium.
Selecting media vehicles involves decisions that present the media effectively and efficiently to the target customer and must consider the message’s

• Impact
• Effectiveness
• Cost 

Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness

• Communication effects indicate whether the ad and media are communicating the ad message well and can be tested before or after the ad runs.
• Sales and profit effects compare past sales and profits with past expenditures or through experiments.

Personal Selling

Salespeople can include an order taker such as someone standing behind the counter or an order getter whose position demands more creative selling and relationship building.

Salespeople can be more effective than advertising

• Learn about customer problems and adjust the marketing offer and presentation accordingly to meet the special needs of each customer.

Salespeople are an effective link between the company and its customers to produce customer value and company profit by

• Representing the company to customers
• Representing customers to the company

Sales Force Structure

Territorial sales force structure

• Each salesperson is assigned an exclusive geographic area and sells the company’s full line of products and services to all customers in that territory.
• Defines salesperson’s job
• Fixes accountability
• Lowers sales expenses
• Improves relationship building and selling effectiveness

Product sales force structure

• Each salesperson sells along product lines.
• Improves product knowledge
• Can lead to territorial conflicts

Customer sales force structure

• Each salesperson sells along customer or industry lines.
• Improves customer relationships

Complex sales force structure

• A wide variety of products is sold to many types of customers over a broad geographic area and combines several types of sales force structures.

Sales Promotion

• Sales promotion is the use of short-term incentives to encourage purchases or sales of a product or service.
• Product managers are under pressure to increase current sales.
• Companies face more competition.
• Competing brands offer less differentiation.
• Advertising efficiency has declined due to rising costs, clutter, and legal constraints.
• Consumers have become more deal-oriented.

Consumer Promotion Tools

• Price packs offer consumers savings off the regular price of a product.
• Premiums are goods offered either free or at low cost to buy a product.
• Advertising specialties are useful articles imprinted with the advertiser’s name, logo, or message that are given as gifts to consumers.
• Samples offer a trial amount of a product.
• Coupons are certificates that give buyers a saving when they purchase specified products.
• Cash refunds are similar to coupons except that the price reduction occurs after the purchase.
• Contests, sweepstakes, and games give consumers the chance to win something, such as cash, trips, or goods, by luck or through extra effort.
• Contests require an entry by a consumer.
• Sweepstakes require consumers to submit their names for a drawing.
• Games present consumers with something that may or may not help them win a prize.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing consists of direct connection with carefully targeted individual consumers to obtain an immediate response and cultivate lasting customer relationships.

• No intermediaries
• An element of the promotion mix
• Fastest-growing form of marketing

Benefits to Sellers

• Tool to build customer relationships
• Low-cost, efficient, fast alternative to reach markets
• Flexible
• Access to buyers not reachable through other channels

Benefits to Buyers

• Convenience
• Ready access to many products
• Access to comparative information about companies, products, and competitors
• Interactive and immediate

Forms of Direct Marketing

Direct Marketing Tools
Direct-mail marketing involves an offer, announcement, reminder, or other item to a person at a particular address.

• Personalized
• Easy-to measure results
• Costs more than mass media
• Provides better results than mass media

Catalog direct marketing involves printed and Web-based catalogs.

• Benefits of Web-based catalogs
• Lower cost than printed catalogs
• Unlimited amount of merchandise
• Real-time merchandising
• Interactive content
• Promotional features

Telephone direct marketing involves using the telephone to sell directly to consumers and business customers.

• Outbound telephone marketing sells directly to consumers and businesses.
• Inbound telephone marketing uses toll-free numbers to received orders from television and print ads, direct mail, and catalogs.

Direct-response television (DRTV) marketing involves 60- to 120-second advertisements that describe products or give customers a toll-free number or Web site to purchase products, and 30-minute infomercials such as home shopping channels.

• Less expensive than other forms of promotion
• Easier to track results

Kiosk marketing involves placing information and ordering machines in stores, airports, trade shows, and other locations.

Digital Direct Marketing Technologies

• Mobile phone marketing
• Podcasts
• Vodcasts
• Interactive TV

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