Promotions
The promotional mix describes a blend of promotional variables chosen by marketers to help a firm reach its goals. The primary elements of a promotional mix are advertising, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion. In class we will also be discussing the promotional elements of guerrilla marketing, e-marketing and direct marketing. We will be creating promotional plans for our own businesses as well as those shown on the television show Shark Tank.
What is sales promotion?
Sales promotion relates to short term incentives or activities that encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service.
What are the major sales promotion activities?
Sales promotion activities can be targeted toward final buyers (consumer promotions), business customers (business promotions), retailers and manufacturers (trade promotions) and members of the sales force (sales force promotions). Below are some typical sales promotion activities:
What is sales promotion?
Sales promotion relates to short term incentives or activities that encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service.
What are the major sales promotion activities?
Sales promotion activities can be targeted toward final buyers (consumer promotions), business customers (business promotions), retailers and manufacturers (trade promotions) and members of the sales force (sales force promotions). Below are some typical sales promotion activities:
Consumer promotions
- Point of purchase display material (end caps, floor stickers, aisle ads, coupon machines, POP displays)
- In-store demonstrations, samplings and celebrity appearances
- Competitions, coupons, sweepstakes and games
- On-pack offers, multi-packs and bonuses
- Loyalty reward programs
- Seminars and workshops
- Conference presentations
- Trade show displays
- Telemarketing and direct mail campaigns
- Newsletters
- Event sponsorship
- Capability documents
- Reward incentives linked to sales (manufacturer offers prizes for people who sell large quantities of their goods)
- Trade allowances
- Free in-store displays
- Cooperative Advertising - Manufacturer pays for local ads of their product
- Commissions
- Sales competitions with prizes or awards (you pay your own staff money for reaching a quota)
Links to Success!
Click here to see some fantastic suggestions regarding how to promote your product
Click here for a list of the top 10 marketing strategies as suggested by the Houston Chronicle.
Click here for a list of the top 10 marketing strategies as suggested by the Houston Chronicle.
PUSH POLICY
When manufacturers use a mix of personal selling, buying discounts and advertising directed towards retailers, they are instituting a PUSH policy. This means that they are pushing the product to the retailer and giving them incentives to sell their product. The retailer makes sure that they make the customers aware of the benefits of the product.
PULL POLICY
If a manufacturer decided to spend its money using a PULL policy, then they are trying to get the customer to come to a store to seek their product. In doing so, they may run a mix of local and national ads, positive public relations messages and in-store displays to get customers to decide for themselves that they want to buy the product.
Need help understanding this push-pull concept? Click here to view an easy to understand article about the concept.
When manufacturers use a mix of personal selling, buying discounts and advertising directed towards retailers, they are instituting a PUSH policy. This means that they are pushing the product to the retailer and giving them incentives to sell their product. The retailer makes sure that they make the customers aware of the benefits of the product.
PULL POLICY
If a manufacturer decided to spend its money using a PULL policy, then they are trying to get the customer to come to a store to seek their product. In doing so, they may run a mix of local and national ads, positive public relations messages and in-store displays to get customers to decide for themselves that they want to buy the product.
Need help understanding this push-pull concept? Click here to view an easy to understand article about the concept.
It's Your Turn
After viewing a Shark Tank episode, discuss your promotional strategy for selling the product shown. Pretend that the product is sold online as well as in stores. Be sure to include the following in your strategy:
Who is your target market?
Let's pretend that the company has a small call center and opens up internet security stores around the country.
Who is your target market?
- Segment your market as far as possible. For example, "I am targeting new moms who live in the southeastern U.S. that have an annual household income of at least $55,000. My typical client enjoys the outdoors, likes to workout, and leads a busy lifestyle. They watch reality shows and the nightly news and enjoy reading Parent magazine and Healthy Mom magazine. A main goal in their life is to get back to their pre-baby weight without having to sacrifice family time."
- Include specific, measurable things you will do to promote your item. Include dates and costs.
- Percentage of sales, all you can afford, per-unit expenditure, competitive parity
- If people don't buy your product, what ARE they buying? How is your competitor advertising their product? How much are they spending on promotions? Can you beat their methods or should you copy them?
- Will you sell to retailers, directly to the public, or both? List a few push and pull strategies that you cna do when advertising your product.
- If you believe that people simply don't know about your product and if you could inform them of it's features, they would buy it, then you may consider an infomercial type form of promotion or store demonstrations. If you need to persuade somebody about the benefits (because another competitor currently owns the market), you may need to do a lot of persuasive promotions.
- What will your promotions do? Persuade? Inform? Do both? Explain.
Let's pretend that the company has a small call center and opens up internet security stores around the country.
- Discuss how you will train your sales staff in regards to personal selling efforts (Hint, there are 7 steps to it)
- What type of promotions, signage, customer service would you expect to have in your store?