The promotion mix and its contribution to marketing strategy

Advertising

Personal Selling

Sales Promotions

Public Relations

ADVERTISING: Any paid for non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or service by an identified sponsor

PERSONAL SELLING: Oral presentation in a conversion with one or more prospective purchasers for the purpose of making sales

SALES PROMOTION: Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase ir sale of a product or service (adds value, and encourages brand switching)

[DRIP promotion: spreading campaign over long periods]

[BURST promotion: concentrated periods of heavy promotion]

PUBLIC RELATIONS: Building good relations with the company's various publics by obtaining favourable publicity; building up a good corporate image and handling of unfavourable rumours/stories/events

In developing the communication programme, the marketing planner needs to take account of 8 areas:

• The nature of the target audience
• The short-term and long-term communications objective(s)
• The messages that are to be used
• The communication channels that will carry the message
• The budget
• The promotions mix
• The ways in which the elements of the promotions mix are to be integrated and how in turn, the promotions mix is to be integrated with the overall marketing mix
• How the results of the campaign are to be measured

 The analogy SMART needs to be applied (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely (or testable))

 Steps towards purchase and the communication tools

  Awareness

Knowledge

  Liking

Preference

Conviction

Purchase

 Seven Questions need to be considered (with the promotion mix):

1. What are we trying to achieve?
2. How might we achieve it?
3. How much will we need to spend?
4. Where will we need to spend it?
5. When will we need to spend it?
6. What creative appeal is most likely to work?
7. How can we best measure the results, feed these back into the decision making process, and improve strategy?

 Promotional Objectives

SALES-RELATED

• increase sales from a to b
• strengthen the competitive positions
• generate 'n' enquires/coupon responses
• reduce the sales impact of a competitors advertising

COMMUNICATION-RELATED

• improve the image
• help in repositioning
• raise levels of awareness
• change perceptions (or improve perceptions)
• Measures of:
• awareness levels
• attitudes towards the product
• the extent to which repositioning has been achieved
• image measures

• sales levels
• enquiry levels
• market share

• ALL AVAILABLE FUNDS
• Small companies -limited funds. Budget not related to promotional objectives
• PERCENTAGE OF SALES
• Rigid. Leads to over-spending (when sales high) or under-spending (when sales low)
• COMPETITION MATCHING
• Assumes competition is correct and decisions are good for your company
• OBJECTIVE & TASK
• Determines the tasks involved. Effective if tasks accurately identified
• ARBITRARY
• Spend what you think!

BRAND IMAGE APPROACH: Emphasising the product as a means of self-fulfilment (follows the thinking of David Ogilvy)

UNIQUE SALES PROPOSITION/USP: Highly specific and tangible benefit that the product is capable of delivering.

Rosser Reeves says the theory of USP is based on three rules:

• Advertisement must make definite proposition to consumer 'buy this product and you will get this specific benefit'
• Unique proposition, it must be one competitors either can't or do not offer
• The proposition must be sufficiently strong and attractive to persuade people to switch from the competing products they are presently using to your product

 The consumer and industrial communications mixes

(based on PIMsLetter, 1992)

% of the marketing budget

Industrial Consumer

Markets Markets

Advertising 3% 25%

Sales Promotions 7% 33%

Sales Forces 70% 32%

Other 20% 10%

(adapted from Fill, C. (1995), this source Wilson and Gilligan (1997))

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