Principles of marketing/PMKT103/Leveraging promotion tools/Overview
The fourth "P" is Promotion. Promotion (and promotional tools) are focused on raising customer / stakeholder awareness of a product or brand's unique value; put in place a 'call to action'; generate sales; create brand loyalty and satisfaction with purchase and adoption.
Promotion is also defined as one of five pieces in the promotional mix or promotional plan. These are personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, and publicity.[2] A promotional mix specifies how much attention to pay to each of the five factors, and how much money to budget. Purpose
Fundamentally, there are several basic objectives of promotion. These are to present information to consumers about the product; to increase demand; and distinguish it from competitors' offerings, by highlighting its differences and distinctiveness. The purpose of a promotion and thus its promotional plan can have a wide range, including: sales increases, new product acceptance, creation of brand equity, positioning, competitive retaliations, or creation of a corporate image.[2]
The term promotion is usually an "in" expression used internally by the marketing company, but not normally to the public or the market, where phrases like "special offer" are more common. Examples of a fully integrated, long-term, and large-scale promotion are My Coke Rewards in the U.S. or Coke Zone in the UK and Pepsi Stuff.
The final and arguably most vital aspect of marketing is the actual promotion of the product. This can take for the form of giveaways, competitions, advertising, sales, and anything else a creative manager can think of. Marketers must take a number of aspects into consideration, however.
If you employ a sales staff to promote the product, how do you compensate them? If you pay a commission, how much commission will be paid per unit? Will the sales staff be given discretion on price, or do you want to send a uniform message that the price is locked in? If a new company has limited funds available for advertising campaigns, might they use public relations tactics to gain free media coverage?
