BAA 120
9. Promotion: Communicating Customer Value
Building ‘good customer-relationships’ means more than just developing a good
product, attractive price, and making it available to target customer. Companies
must also communicate that value to customers.
Promotion is the activity of communicating with the customer, the value of the
product or service that a company is offering.
These communications must be planned and blended into a carefully
integrated marketing communications program called the Promotion Mix.
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The Promotion Mix
Promotion Mix: The specific mix of advertising, personal selling, sales
promotion, public relations, and direct marketing that a company uses to
persuasively communicate customer value and build customer relationships.
If 4Ps are the elements of the Marketing-Mix, the above five are the elements
of the Promotion Mix.
Characteristics and Nature of each promotion tool
1. Advertising: any paid form of non-personal
presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or
services
by
an
identified
sponsor,
includes:
broadcast (TV, Radio), print, internet, outdoor
(signs), and other forms.
Advantages:
1. Can reach a very high number of buyers at low cost per exposure.
2. Enables the seller to repeat the message many times.
3. Large-scale advertising can give
positive
image
company’s
size,
about
popularity,
the
and
success on the long term. E.g.
Coca-Cola
4. Because
of
advertising’s
public
nature, consumers tend to view
advertised
products
as
more
legitimate.
5. Advertising is very expressive by using visuals, print, sound, etc.
6. Can be used to trigger quick sales such as Eid special sales,
weekend sales.
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Disadvantages:
1. Advertising is impersonal and not directly persuasive.
2. Advertising is a one way communication with audience.
3. Some of the advertising tools can be very expensive such as TV.
2. Personal selling: Personal presentation by
a firm’s sales force for the purpose of
making
sales
and
building
customer
relationships, includes: sales presentations,
trade shows, and incentive programs.
Advantages:
1. It is the most effective tool at certain stages of the buying process.
2. It two-ways communication as it involves personal interaction
between two or more people.
3. It allows all kinds of building long term customer relationships.
4. The buyer usually feels a greater need to listen and respond, even
if the response was “No thanks”.
Disadvantages:
1. Sales force requires long term commitment.
2. It is the MOST expensive promotion tool. Companies spend up to
three times as much on personal selling as they do on advertising.
3. Sales promotion short-term incentives to
encourage the purchase or sale of a product
or service,
includes: discounts, coupons,
displays, and demonstrations.
Advantages:
1. Sales promotions have wide kinds of tools with unique qualities.
2. They attract consumers and offer strong incentives to purchases.
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3. Sales promotions encourage and reward quick response as it
says “buy it now” while advertising says “buy our product”.
Disadvantages:
1. Sales promotions effects are often short-lived.
2. It is not effective in building long-run brand preference and
relationship.
4. Public Relations Building good relations with
the company’s various publics by obtaining
favorable
publicity,
building
up
a
good
“corporate image”, and handling or heading
off unfavorable rumors, stories, and events.
Example: Batelco sponsors Syro Malaber
Society.
includes:
press
releases,
sponsorships, special events, and web pages.
Advantages:
1. Public Relations is very believable as it seems more real than
ads do (news stories, features, sponsorship, and events).
2. Can reach prospects who avoid salespeople and ads as the
message gets to the buyers as “news”.
Disadvantages:
1. Marketers tend to under use public relations or use it as an
afterthought, although Well-thought-out public relations campaign
combined with other promotion mix elements can be very effective
and economical.
5. Direct Marketing Direct connections with carefully targeted individual
customers to both obtain an immediate response and cultivate lasting
customer relationships-the use of telephone, mail, fax, e-mail, the
internet, and other tools to communicate directly with specific customers,
includes: catalogs, telephones marketing, kiosks (stands), the internet,
and more.
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Direct marketing characteristics:
1. Direct marketing is nonpublic tool as the interaction is personal.
2. Direct marketing is immediate, flexible and customized as the
message can be tailored very quickly to specific consumers.
3. Direct marketing is interactive as it is two-way communication.
Promotion-Mix Strategies:
Marketers can choose from two basic promotion mix strategies:
PUSH Strategy: A promotion strategy that calls for using the sales force and
trade promotion to push the product through channels.
• The
producer
marketing
uses
its
activities
(usually personal selling
and
trade
towards
promotions)
channel
members to induce them
to carry the product and
to promote it to final
consumers.
PULL Strategy: A promotion strategy that calls for spending a lot on
advertising, so that consumer demand will pull the product through channels.
• Producer directs its marketing activities (usually advertising and consumer
promotions) towards final consumer to encourage them to buy the
product.
• Consumers will then demand (pull) the product from channel members,
who will in turn demand it from producers.
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