Promotion

Promotion is tool with which public will be informed about the availability of a particular product or service and the uses of such product. Production decides the increase in demand for a product, promotion will make the prospective buyers to know about the want, satisfying characteristics of the product, its price and place of availability. This term includes advertisement, personal selling sales promotion and other selling tools which are increasing the sales volume.

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Sales Promotion

Sales promotion is different promotion, Sales promotion refers to those marketing activities other than personal selling, advertisement and publicity, which stimulate consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness, such as displays, shows and expositions, demonstrations and various non-recurrent selling efforts not in the ordinary routine. Its purpose is to increase the desire of salesman, distributors and dealers to sell a certain brand and to make consumers more eager to buy that brand. This includes sales activities which supplement both personal selling and advertising.

Sales promotion is only a part of promotion. Promotion includes sales promotion, advertising, personal selling etc. Promotion helps to make all other marketing activities more effective and efficient, but sales promotion helps only to sales activity. Sales promotion may be done with the help of tools like displays, exhibitions, free sample coupons, premium etc. Sales promotion acts as a link between advertisement and personal selling.

To sum up, promotion is to make the demand inelastic, while there is change in the price. So promotion must stimulate the consumers to buy more.

Communication and promotion

Marketing communication involves, sharing of meaning, information, concepts, about the products and services by buyers and sellers. Such communications are conveyed with the help of advertisement, salesmanship and sales promotion. A communication will be treated as effective only when it is properly responded by the buyer. The communication must have identical meaning for both sender and receiver. If the communication does not properly reach the receiver or the message received is not the same as the message sent, then that will be called Break down at the message stage. In the market communication, feed back means a response, a reaction over the message sent back by a customer to the sender. In the case of effective communication feed back will be always present.

Need for Product Promotion

a) To introduce a new product in the market.
b) To influence the public with the help of new uses of the product.
c) To increase the frequency of purchase by each buyer.
d) To encourage dealers to stock more goods.
e) To withstand in the competitive field.
f) To increase the sales by imparting special training to salesmen and by window display.

Effects of Promotion

1. The present day market is very competitive due to the large number of rivals and substitutes. With the help of promotion producer must create product differentiation in the minds of consumers.
2. Promotion is very essential to communicate the use of the product and the nature of the product to consumers and middlemen
3. Nowadays most of the consumers market their products in wider area and the consumers are also very large in number. In such cases personal selling alone cannot be used and so all the steps for promotion are to be followed.
4. During the periods of depression it is essential to maintain at least some minimum market. Therefore it is very essential to use promotion.

Promotional Strategy

1. Deciding Promotional Mix

Personal selling, advertisement and sales promotion are some of the promotional methods. During most of the situations two or more promotional methods are to be used for each campaign. Generally with the help of a single method it is not possible to succeed. Advertising needs the support of personal selling or display to increase the sales. Sometimes even the personal selling alone cannot be successful without the support of advertisement.

An ideal promotion mix is that situation where the total expenditure incurred for various promotion methods is minimum and sales by such mix is maximum. Promotion mix means finding out the proper ratio of usage of different methods of promotion. The management must find out, how much amount should be spent on each promotional activity. Promotional mix is influenced by the following factors.

(a) Nature of the product

Nature of the product will be decide the promotional mix. For consumer goods advertisement and dealer display will have more effect. Industrial goods with high technology will need much of personal selling and cosmetics, blades etc, will require more of advertisement than personal selling and displays

(b) Nature of the Customer

If the communications are mostly to middlemen, then personal selling will be more effective and very little spending on advertisement will do. If information are to be passed to consumers and when the number of consumers is large, it is better to advertise. Especially if customers are scattered, then advertisement alone can be successful.

(c) Nature of the Market

If market for a product is only local then personal selling alone will be sufficient. If the market for a product is available at national level, then advertisement is more suitable.

(d) Availability of Funds

The amount of funds available for promotion will decide the promotional mix. The companies having huge funds for promotion will favor advertisement and try to cover wider market. If the funds are available are less than maximum portion of such funds will be allocated for personal selling in a limited area. These funds may be used for window display also.

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