Contents
Meaning of Promotion Mix
Promotion mix refers to the combination of all marketing efforts employed by company for doing mass scale promotion of its products. It is a mix of various tools and techniques which aims at enhancing sales of company’s products by advertising and reaching among the target market. It creates awareness about products in market and explains its feature to peoples for persuading them to purchase it. Promotion mix comprises of all types of communication with customers that is of both personal or impersonal type and also include all distribution middlemen. It is very crucial element of marketing mix. Promotion mix need to be properly designed by managers and require proper understanding of market field. It must include effective tools of promotion that provide optimum results to organization as all promotional tools are not equally effective.
Concept of Promotion Mix
Promotion mix is a part of marketing mix which determines the success of all marketing efforts of company. All promotional programmers and advertising campaigns carried out by organization are included and performed in accordance with its promotion mix. It includes various marketing approaches designed by marketers with better experience and aims at optimizing the overall promotional efforts of business organizations. Promotion mix of a company is created after a lots of research and collecting data about a particular company, its target audience to involve effective tools of marketing in it. It is all the efforts of promotion mix that enables a brand to develop its better image in market and differentiates itself from other competitors. Promotion carried out by business enables in informing public about its products and impart them all required information. It is served as a communication channel in between company and its customers which helps in building trust.
Elements of Promotion Mix
Advertising
Advertising is a paid form of promotion of company goods and services that is of non-personal nature. It is carried out by identified sponsor who charges fees in return for his promotional services. Advertising is a one-way communication done for creating awareness among public and bring their attention towards the company’s products. It is a vital tool for reaching out to mass group of people for informing them about the brand existence in the market. Here, company representatives do not interact directly with customers but carries out promotion using distinct sources such as television, newspaper, radio, magazines, social media and direct mail.
Personal Selling
Personal selling is a tool of promotion mix where representatives of company interacts directly with people. It is a traditional form of promotion where face to face interaction is done in between the customer and company agents. It is a type of promotion where salesman directly visits customers in a door to door campaign and define all details about product for motivating them to buy it. Personal selling is most expensive method of promotion which leads to enhance the buyer and seller relationship.
Sales Promotion
Sales promotion comprises of all promotional activities which aims to stimulate sales and purchase by providing incentives to customers. These incentives are provided by company for a short-term basis. Sales promotion activities enable companies in attracting both existing and new customers which leads to increase the short-term profits. The incentives are offered during festive periods or end seasons in the form of discounts, coupons, product samples and payback offers. Sales promotional activities are carried out by business for a limited time-period for bringing a large amount of audience.
Public Relations
Public relation is one that aims at developing a favorable image of company among public. It is sharing of information by organization about itself in market for attracting its target audience. Public relation is a promotional method which determines how people treat a particular brand. Many public relation campaigns are carried out by organization to get support of all peoples that are connected with it either directly or indirectly. Public for an organization includes employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers, distributor, government and society as a whole. Publicity is one of the widely used type of public relation for sharing newsworthy information in market.
Direct marketing
Direct marketing is a promotional tool where company interacts directly with target audience without any intermediary. It is unpaid form of promotion intended to reach prospect customers in place of mass audience. Direct marketing is a one-way communication in between company and customer that is done for product announcements, bulletins, order confirmations and special promotions. It is of various forms such as text messages, fax, e-mail, online alerts, websites and promotional letters.
Advantages of Promotion Mix
Build awareness
Promotion mix is an important tool available with organization for create wide awareness about its products in market. All news about new product launching, innovative techniques, offers and other inside detail of organization are provided through the promotional tool. It serves as a communication medium for information flow in-between customers and company.
Reaches mass audience
It enables corporation in reaching out to more and more numbers of people. Various promotional tools like advertising, sales promotion and direct marketing facilitate in grabbing the attention of mass audience with less efforts. People are also interested in knowing about brand using attractive promotional messages for connecting with public in market.
Higher sales growth
Promotion mix has an efficient role in enhancing the overall sales of business organization. Companies incur heavy expenditure on advertising and promotional activities with the aim to raise their sales level. With the use of distinct promotion tools, organization come in contact with large peoples and induce them for taking buying decision for brand products.
Increase market share
Companies using effective tools of promotion are able to capture a good share in market. People gives good response towards brand using robust methods to remain dominant in market using mass scale promotion. They are more interested to buy products of such brand that are famous in market and enjoys better goodwill. Advertising leads to build better reputation of brand over its competitors in market.
Enhance customer experience and satisfaction
Promotion mix enable companies in serving its customer in a better way. It provides a medium through which customers and company are easily able to interact with one another. Companies run various promotional campaigns where they give complete details about their products which clears all confusion in people’s mind. Availability of all information leads to right buying decisions by consumer thereby enhancing their satisfaction level.
Disadvantages of Promotion Mix
Costly
Promotion mix bring heavy expenses for the business organizations. They need to hire a large number of salesforce and various media houses for doing promotion of their products and services. Many times these promotional activities do not yield as much return as their investment amount in the form of expenditures incurred.
Impersonal
Promotional activities are mostly impersonal in nature which are ineffective in clearing all doubts of people. These activities spread a common message about company and is not specific to what customer wants to know. Many times various questions of customers remain unanswered which are not effective in influencing their purchase decisions.
Spoil brand image
Companies excessively using promotional methods for stimulating quick sales may spoil their brand image. When there are huge incentives and discount on brand products, customer may feel that a product is an of low quality that’s why it is offered at low prices.
Risk of losing control
Another major drawback of doing promotion is that organization may lose its control over what is circulating about it in market. Promotion tool like public relation is not always under the company’s control as what other says about a brand and its products is uncontrollable. Public may also spread negative words about a brand in market.
