UNIT :5 PROMOTION DECISIONS

Promotion Mix
Company's total marketing communications mix - also called promotion mix

“A specific blend of advertising, personal stilling, sales promotion, public

relations and direct marketing tools that the company uses to pursue its
advertising and marketing objectives”.
 ADVERTISING

Advertising includes any paid form of non-

personal presentation and promotion of ideas,
goods or services by an identified sponsor.
Features of Advertising
Advertising can reach masses of geographically dispersed buyers at a
low cost per exposure.
Consumers tend to view advertised products as standard and
legitimate - buyers know that purchasing the product will be
understood and accepted publicly.
Advertising enables the seller to repeat a message many times, and it
lets the buyer receive and compare the messages of various
competitors.
Large-scale advertising by a seller says something positive about the
seller's size, popularity and success.
• Advertising is also very expensive, allowing the company to
dramatize its products through the artful use of print, sound and
colour.

• Advertising can be used to build up a long-term image for a product

(such as Coca-Cola ads).

• Advertising can trigger quick sales (as when a department store

advertises a weekend sale).

• Advertising can reach masses of geographically spread-out buyers

at a low cost per exposure.
Shortcomings/Criticism of Advertising
• Although it reaches many people quickly, advertising is impersonal and
cannot be as persuasive as company salespeople.

• Advertising is only able to carry on a one-way communication with the

audience, and the audience does not feel that it has to pay attention or
respond.

• Advertising can be very costly, some advertising forms, such as newspaper

and radio advertising, can be done on smaller budgets, other forms, such as
network TV advertising, require very large budgets.
 SALES PROMOTION

Sales promotion to provide short-term incentives to encourage the

purchase or sale of a product or service. Sales promotion includes a wide
assortment of tools -coupons, contests, price reductions, premium offers,
free goods and others.
Features of Sales Promotion
Attract consumer attention and provide information that may lead to a
purchase.

Offers strong incentives to purchase by providing inducements or

contributions that give additional value to consumers,

Sales promotions invite and reward quick response. Whereas advertising says
'buy our product', sales promotion offers incentives to consumers to 'buy it
now’.

Companies use sales promotion tools to create a stronger and quicker

response. Sales promotion can be used to dramatize product offers and to
boost sagging sales.
Shortcomings of sales promotion

Sales promotion effects are usually short-lived.

Not effective in building long-run brand preference.

To work, manufacturers must carefully plan the sales promotion campaign
and offer target customers genuine value, only then will they enhance
perceived brand image, build sales and maintain customer loyalty.
 PERSONAL SELLING

Personal selling is the most effective tool at certain stages of the

buying process, particularly in building up buyers' preferences,
convictions and actions.
Features of personal selling
It involves personal interaction between two or more people, so each
person can observe the other's needs and characteristics and make quick
adjustments.

Personal selling also allows all kinds of relationships to spring up, ranging
from a matter-of-fact selling relationship to a deep personal friendship.

The effective salesperson keeps the customer's interests at heart in order

to build a long-term relationship.

With personal selling the buyer usually feels a greater need to listen and
respond, even if the response is a polite 'no thank you'.
 Shortcomings of personal selling

• A sales force requires a longer-term commitment than does

advertising - advertising can be turned on and off, but sales force
size is harder to change.

• Personal selling is also the company's most expensive promotion

tool, costing industrial companies heavy amount.
 PUBLIC RELATIONS

It focuses on building good relations with the company's various publics by

obtaining favourable unpaid publicity. Public relations or PR offers several
unique qualities, It is all those activities that the organization does to
communicate with target audiences which are not directly paid for.
Features of public relations
PR is very believable: news stories, features and events seem more real and
convincing to readers than ads do.

Public relations can reach many prospects who avoid salespeople and
advertisements, since the message gets to the buyers as 'news' rather than as
a sales-directed communication.

PR can dramatize a company or product. The Body Shop is one of the few
international companies that have used public relations as a more effective
alternative to mass TV advertising-
Setting the Advertising Budget

After determining its advertising objectives, the company next sets its advertising budget for
each product. The role of advertising is to create demand for a product. The company wants to
spend the amount needed to achieve the sales goal.

Here we describe some specific factors that should be considered when setting the advertising
budget:

 Stage in the product life cycle. New products typically need large advertising budgets to
build awareness and to gain consumer trial. Mature brands usually require lower budgets as
a ratio to sales.

 Market share. High-market-share brands usually need more advertising spending as a

percentage of sales than do low-share brands. Building the market or taking share from
competitors requires larger advertising spending than does simply maintaining current
share.
Competition and clutter. In a market with many competitors and high
advertising spending, a brand must advertise more heavily to be heard above
the noise in the market.

Advertising frequency. When many repetitions are needed to present the

brand's message to consumers, the advertising budget must be larger.

Product differentiation. A brand that closely resembles other brands in its

product class (coffee, laundry detergents, chewing gum, beer, soft drinks)
requires heavy advertising to set it apart. When the product differs greatly from
competitors, advertising can be used to point out the differences to consumers
Copy designing
Advertising copy can be said as text of a print, radio, or television advertising message that
aims at catching and holding the interest of the prospective buyer, and at persuading him or her
to make a purchase all within a few short seconds. A copy in essence describes the
advertisement in words irrespective of the medium of advertising. A copy employee the use of
words to promote a product, business, idea or person.
Components of advertising copy.
1.Headline. headlines may be a label, may be informative, provocative, selective, direct command or
question.
2. Sub headline. smaller to headline but effective several times.
3. Slogans.
4. Illustrations.
5. Text or body of the copy.
6. Closing of the copy.
7. Logo or identification mark.
Advertising copy designing.
• Advertising copy designing means arrangement of various components to make
effective advertisement.

• The right place of headline, sub headline, slogans, text, illustrations, closure and
logo are important here.

• In the audio-visual commercials, advertisement design is also known as story

board or timeline which is a series of pictures with audio to run on the screen in
a coordinated manner to make the full video feel.

• Selecting theme is very important for any advertisement copy. Themes can be
humour, tragedy, pity, pride, beauty, sex, ethnocentrism etc..
Copy testing.
The set of nine principles, called PACT (Positioning Advertising Copy Testing), defines copy testing as
research which is undertaken when a decision is to be made about whether advertising should run in the
marketplace. Whether this stage utilizes a single test or a combination of tests, its purpose is to aid in the
judgment of specific advertising executions.

Positioning Advertising Copy Testing (PACT) principles.

1. Provide measurements that are relevant to the objectives of the advertising.

2. Require agreement about how the results will be used in advance of each specific test.

3. Provide multiple measurements (because single measurements are not adequate to assess

ad performance).

4. Be based on a model of human response to communications—the reception of a stimulus, the

comprehension of the stimulus, and the response to the stimulus.
5. Allow for consideration of whether the advertising stimulus should be exposed more than
once.

6. Require that the more finished a piece of copy is, the more soundly it can be evaluated and
require, as a minimum, that alternative executions be tested in the same degree of finish.

7. Provide controls to avoid the biasing effects of the exposure context.

8. Take into account basic considerations of sample definition.

9. Demonstrate reliability and validity.

Selecting Advertising Media

The advertiser must next decide upon the media to carry the message. The main steps in media
selection are:

1. Deciding on reach, frequency and impact:

• To select media, the advertiser must decide what reach and frequency are needed to achieve advertising
objectives.

• Reach is a measure of the percentage of people in the target market who are exposed to the ad
campaign during a given period of time.

• Frequency is a measure of how many times the average person in the target market is exposed to the
message. For example, the advertiser might want an average exposure frequency of three.

• The advertiser must also decide on the desired media impact - that is. the qualitative value of a
message exposure through a given medium.
2. Choosing among chief media types.

• The media habits of target consumers will affect media choice: for example, radio and television
are the best media for reaching teenagers.

• Nature of the product: fashions, for example, are best advertised in colour magazines and Nikon
cameras are best demonstrated on television.

• Different types of messages may require different media: for instance, a message announcing a
big sale tomorrow will require radio or newspapers; a message with a lot of technical data might
require magazines or direct mailings or an online ad and Web site.

• Cost is also an important consideration in media choice: whereas television is very expensive,
newspaper advertising costs much less.
3. Selecting specific media vehicles.

• The media planner must now choose the best media vehicles - that is, specific media within each general
media type.

• For radio and television, and in any one country, there are numerous stations and channels to choose from,
together with hundreds, even thousands, of programme vehicles - the particular programmes or shows
where the commercial should be broadcast,

• Prime-time programmes are the favourites; the costs, however, tend to escalate with the popularity of the
programme.

• In the case of magazines, the media planner must look up circulation figures and the costs of different ad
sizes, colour options, ad positions and frequencies for specific magazines.

• The media planner ultimately decides which vehicles give the best reach, frequency and impact for the
money. Media planners have to compute the cost per thousand persons reached by a vehicle.
4. Deciding on media timing.

• Another decision that must be made concerns timing: how to schedule the advertising over the
course of a year.

• Suppose sales of a product peak in December and drop in March. The firm can vary its
advertising to follow the seasonal pattern, to oppose the seasonal pattern, or to be the same all
year.

• Most firms do some seasonal advertising. : for example, many department stores advertise —
usually their seasonal sales - in specific periods in the year, such as Christmas, Easter and
summer.

• Advertiser has to choose the pattern of the ads, Continuity means scheduling ads evenly within
a given period Pulsing means scheduling ads unevenly over a given time period.
Sales Promotion Tools

Many tools can he used to accomplish sales promotion objectives. The promotion planner should consider
the type of market, the sales promotion objectives, the competition and the cost-effectiveness of each tool.
Descriptions of the main consumer and trade promotion tools are as follows:

Consumer Promotion Tools

 The main consumer promotion tools include samples, coupons, cash refunds, price packs, premiums,
advertising specialities, patronage rewards, point-of purchase displays and demonstrations, and
contests, sweepstakes and games.

• Samples are offers of a trial amount of a product. Some samples are free; for others, the company
charges a small amount to offset its cost. Sampling is the most effective, but most expensive, way to
introduce a new product.

• Coupons are certificates that give buyers a saving when they purchase specialized products. Coupons
can be mailed, included with other products or placed in ads in newspapers and magazines.
• Cash refund offers (or rebates) are like coupons except that the price reduction occurs after
the purchase rather than at the retail outlet. The consumer sends a 'proof of purchase' to the
manufacturer, which then refunds part of the purchase price by mail.

• Price packs or reduced prices offer consumers savings off the regular price of a product. The
reduced prices are marked by the producer directly on the label or package. Price packs can be
single packages sold at a reduced price (such as two for the price of one) or two related
products banded together (such as a toothbrush and toothpaste). Price packs are very effective
even more so than coupons, in stimulating short-term sales.

• Premiums are goods offered either free or at low cost as an incentive to buy a product. A
premium may come inside the package (in-pack) or outside the package (on-pack) or through
the mail. If reusable, the package itself may serve as a premium, such as a decorative biscuit
container. Premiums are sometimes mailed to consumers who have sent in a proof of purchase,
such as a box top.
END