Promotion and sales and marketing techniques

Promotion and Sales:- The term Promotion and Sales are totally interdependent on each other. Promotion is a communication link between buyers and sellers. It is a function of informing, persuading, and influencing a consumer’s purchase decision. Promotional activities include: media advertising, direct mail, personal selling, sales promotion and public relations.

A sale consists of marketing activities other than personal selling, advertising and public relations that stimulate consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness. Sales promotion is a subset of promotion. In other words, sales promotion is not the same thing as promotion. Promotion is a much broader term.

Promotion Mix:- The Combination of promotional activities an organization uses is called promotion mix .

Integrated marketing communications (IMC):- Coordination of all promotional activities to produce a unified, customer-focused promotional message.

Aim:-The main role of this assignment is to examine the role of Promotion and Sales and to find out market technique. In this assignment we are analyzing the following techniques:

1. Traditional elements of the promotion mix.

2. Advertising media.

3. Steps in Business to Business Selling.

4. Steps involved in setting up a public relations programme

5. Promotional techniques used to reach customers.

Traditional elements of the promotion mix:

Advertising Personal Selling Sales Promotion public

relations

Product

Product

Traditional Promotional Mix

The Promotional mix works like a subset of the marketing mix, with its product, distribution, promotion, and pricing elements. With the promotional mix, the marketers attempt to create an optimal blend of various elements to achieve promotional objectives. The promotional mix requires a carefully designed blend of variables to satisfy the needs of a company’s customers and achieve organizational objectives.

Promotional Mix: Subset of the marketing mix in which marketers attempt to achieve the optimal blending of the elements of personal and non personal selling to achieve promotional objectives.

I. Personal Selling :- is the oldest form of promotion. It is conducted on a person-to-person basis with the buyer. It involves the search for new prospects and follow up service after the sale. It is mainly face to face presentation and promotions of goods and services. It’s more accurately described today as helping others satisfy their wants and needs. This direct form of promotion may be conducted:

a. Face-to-face

b. Telephone

c. Videoconferencing

d . Interactive computer links between buyer and seller

Benefits of Personal Selling :- The benefit of personal selling is that there is a person there to help you complete a transaction. The sales person should listen to your needs, help you reach a solution and do all that is possible to make accomplishing that solution smoother and easier.

2. Non-personal Selling

a. Advertising:- is any paid, non personal communication through various media

about a business firm, not-for-profit organization, product, or idea by a sponsor

Identified in a message that is intended to inform or persuade members of a

particular audience.

Advertising primarily involves the mass media, such as newspapers, television, radio, magazines, and billboards, but also includes electronic and computerized forms of promotion such as Web commercials, CDs and DVDs, and video screens in supermarkets.

b. Product Placement:- a form of non personal selling in which the marketer pays a motion picture or television program owner a fee to display his product prominently in the film or show.

Through their product gets so much popularity and they get the benefit from this.

So this type of non personal selling is very good for their product placement.

C. Sales Promotion:- consists of marketing activities other than personal selling, advertising and public relations that stimulate consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness.

Sales promotion is a subset of promotion. In other words, sales promotion is not the same thing as promotion. Promotion is a much broader term.

Sales promotion provides a short-term incentive, usually in combination with other f forms of promotion, to emphasize, assist supplement, or otherwise support the objectives of the promotional program. For example, Restaurants, including fast food establishments, often place certain items on the menu at a lower price “for a limited time only.” Movie promotional tie-ins are a classic example. Movies are tied into food, drinks and restaurants.

Sales promotion includes the following activities: 1) Displays, 2) trade shows, 3) coupons, 4) contests, 5) samples, 6) premiums, and 7) product demonstrations.

Sales Promotion can be achieved both internally ( with in the company) and externally (outside the company)

Public Relations and Publicity:- Public relations refer to a firm’s communications and relationships with its various publics. These publics include customers, suppliers, stockholders, employees, the government, the general public, and the society in which the organization operates. It is the management function that evaluates public attitudes and procedures in response to public request.

Publicity is the marketing-oriented aspect of public relations. It can be defined as non personal stimulation of demand for a good, service, person, cause, or organization through unpaid placement of significant news about it in a published medium or through a favorable presentation of it on the radio, television, or stage. Of course, bad publicity can damage a company’s reputation and diminish brand equity.

Public Relations has three steps:-

Listen to the public

Change Policies and procedures

Inform people that you’re being responsive to their needs.

Comparison of the Four Promotional Mix Elements

Personal

Selling

Advertising

Sales Promotion

Public Relations

Advantages

Permits measurement of effectiveness

Elicits an immediate response

Tailors the message to fit the customer

Reaches a large group of potential consumers for a relatively low price per exposure

Allows strict control over the final message

Can be adapted to either mass audiences or specific audience segments

Produces an immediate consumer response

Attracts attention and creates product awareness

Allows easy measurement of results

Provides short-term sales increases

Creates a positive attitude toward a product or company

Enhances

credibility of a product or company

Disadvantages

Relies almost exclusively upon the ability of the salesperson

Involves high cost per contact

Does not permit totally accurate measurement of results

Usually cannot close sales

Advertising media

Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to purchase or take some action upon products, ideals, or services. It includes the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade a target market to purchase or to consume that particular brand. These brands are usually paid for or identified through sponsors and viewed via various media.

It is any paid, non personal communication through various media

about a business firm, not-for-profit organization, product, or idea by a sponsor

Identified in a message that is intended to inform or persuade members of a

particular audience.

Advertising primarily involves the mass media, such as newspapers, television, radio, magazines, and billboards, but also includes electronic and computerized forms of promotion such as Web commercials, CDs and DVDs, and video screens in supermarkets.

Various types of Advertising media

1 Newspapers

2 Television

3 Radio

4 Magazines

5 Outdoors

6 Direct mail

7 Internet

The above described media are classified according as retail advertising, trade advertising, business to business advertising ,institutional advertising, product advertising ,comparison and online advertising.

Advantages of Advertising media

It reaches a large group of potential consumers for a relatively low price per exposure.

Allows strict control over the final message.

Can be adapted to either mass audiences or specific audience segments.

Disadvantages of Advertising media

Does not permit totally accurate measurement of results

Usually cannot close sales.

Global advertising

Advertising has gone through five major stages of development: domestic, export, international, multi-national, and global. For global advertisers, there are four, potentially competing, business objectives that must be balanced when developing worldwide advertising: building a brand while speaking with one voice, developing economies of scale in the creative process, maximizing local effectiveness of ads, and increasing the company’s speed of implementation. Born from the evolutionary stages of global marketing are the three primary and fundamentally different approaches to the development of global advertising executions: exporting executions, producing local executions, and importing ideas that travel.[24]

Advertising research is key to determining the success of an ad in any country or region. The ability to identify which elements and/or moments of an ad that contributes to its success is how economies of scale are maximized. Once one knows what works in an ad, that idea or ideas can be imported by any other market. Market research measures, such as Flow of Attention, Flow of Emotion and branding moments provide insight into what is working in an ad in any country or region because the measures are based on the visual, not verbal, elements of the ad.

Steps in business to business Selling

In business to business-selling, it is critical for the sales person to known the product well to know how the product compares to competitors’ s products. Such product knowledge is needed before the salesperson begin the selling process.

Example of this is customer relationship management software (CRM).It is useful for establishing long term relationships with customers imagining you are a software sales person showing business user the advantages of various programs .It consists of

Prospect and Quality

Pre approach

Approach

Make Presentation

Answer Objectives

Close Sale

Follow up

1.Prospect and Quality

The first step is of prospecting. Prospecting involves researching potential buyers and choosing those most likely to buy. That selection process is called qualifying. To qualify people means to make sure that they have need for product, the authority to buy and the willingness to listen to a sales message. A person who meets these criteria is called a prospect.

2.Pre approach

In this approach you must learn as much as possible about customers and their wants and needs. In this gathering the information before you approach the customer is critical. As we said an example of CRM selling you would know which people are likely to buy or use it.

Approach

In this the main idea is to give an impression of friendly professionalism, to create rapport,, to build credibility, and to start a relationship. Often the decision of whether to use a software package depends on reliable service from the salesperson.

Make Presentation

In the actual presentation of the CRM software, the idea is to match the benefits of your value package to the clients needs. Various companies provide sales proposal software that include everything from power point presentations to competitive analysis. During the presentation is a great time to use testimonal to

Show potential buyers that they are joining leaders in others firms in trying this software.

5 Answer Objections

You should anticipate any objections the prospect may raise and determine proper responses. Think of questions as opportunities for creating better relationships, not as challenges to what you’re saying. Customers may have legimate doubts and you are there to resolve those doubts. Relationships are based on trust, and trust comes from successfully and honestly working with others. it.

Close Sale

As a salesperson, you have limited time and can’t spend forever with one potential customer answering questions and objectives. A trial close consist of a question or statement that moves the selling process towards the actual close.

As you can see, salespeople must learn to close many times before a long term

Relationship is established. or relationships, not as challenges to what you’re saying. Customers may have legimates doubts and you are

7.Follow Up

The selling process isn’t over until the order is approved and the customers is happy. The sales relationship may continue for years as you respond to new request for information. Salesperson realy needs to be providers of solutions to their customers and also needs to think about happen after the sale. The follow up step includes handling customer’s complaints ,making sure the customers questions are answered and quickly supplying what the customers wants.

Steps involved in setting up a public relations programme

Public relations refer to a firm’s communications and relationships with its various publics. These publics include customers, suppliers, stockholders, employees, the government, the general public, and the society in which the organization operates. It is the management function that evaluates public attitudes and procedures in response to public request.

Public relation is defined as the management function that evaluates public attitudes ,request and procedures in response to the public ‘s request, and executes a program of action and information to earn public understanding

And acceptance.

Publicity is the marketing-oriented aspect of public relations. It can be defined as non personal stimulation of demand for a good, service, person, cause, or organization through unpaid placement of significant news about it in a published medium or through a favorable presentation of it on the radio, television, or stage. Of course, bad publicity can damage a company’s reputation and diminish brand equity.

Public Relations has three steps:-

Listen to the public: Public relation start with good marketing research.

Change Policies and procedures : Businesses don’t earn understanding by bombarding the public with propaganda, they earn understanding by having programs and policies and practices in their public interest .

Inform people that you’re being responsive to their needs: It’s not enough to simply have programs in the public interest. You have to tell the public about those programs so that they know you’re being responsive Public relations has more power to influence consumers because the message comes from source that is perceived as being more trustworthy.

Advantages of Publicity:

Creates a positive attitude toward a product or company

Enhances credibility of a product or company

Disadvantages of Publicity:

May not permit accurate measurement of effect on sales

Involves much effort directed toward non-marketing-oriented goals

5.Promotional techniques used to reach customers

There are several Promotional techniques that encourage/stimulate customers to patronize a specific retail store or to try a specific product. These promotional techniques give various benefits/bonuses to customers and these are mainly classified as

1.Coupons:

This is the most common technique which usually reduce the purchase price or offered as cash. Need to state the offer clearly and make it easy to recognize.

2. Handout…Awash in Coupons…

Looks at the volume of coupons (323 bn) and the poor redemption rate (less than 3%). Looks at more innovative media to deliver coupons (currently over 80% are delivered via the Sunday paper)….in store by the products, as customers exit the store based on purchases…discussed delivering coupons to customers as they enter the store, using a card that swipes to indicate past purchases. Past buying behavior is the best predictor of future buying patterns

Users only redeem coupons they would ordinarily purchase. 75% of the coupons are redeemed by consumers who would buy the brand already.

.

3 Demonstrations:

Excellent attention getters. Labor costs are usually high.

4. Frequent User Incentives:

Major airlines, helps foster customer loyalty to a specific company. Credit card companies. Trading stamps-Co-ops back in England, foster retail loyalty.

5. Point of Purchase Display:

Outside signs, window displays, counter pieces, display racks. 90% of retailers believe that point of purchase materials sell products.

Essential for product introductions. Also with 2/3 of purchasing decisions made in the store, they are important.

6. Free Samples:

Stimulate trial of product. Increase sales volume at the early stage of the product life cycle and obtain desirable distribution .Most expensive sales promotion technique. Not appropriate for mature products and slow turnover products.

7. Money Refunds/Rebates:

Submit proof of purchase and mail specific refund, usually need multiple purchase for refund. Helps promote trial use, due to the complexity of the refund, it has little impact. Customers have a poor perception of rebate offered products. Used extensively in the Auto and Computer industry.

8. Premium Items:

Offered free or at minimum cost as a bonus. Used to attract competitors customers,different sizes of established products. McDonalds Last summer the following tie-in premium programs.

Casper with Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Choice Hotels

Congo with Taco Bell

Batman Forever with McDonalds, Kelloggs , Six Flags, Sears

Pocahontas with Chrysler, Nestle, General Mills, Burger King

Mighty Morphin with McDonalds

Cents-off Offer:

Strong incentive for trying a product-very similar to coupons, but are a part of the package.

Consumer Contests and Sweepstakes:

Consumers compete based on their analytical or creative skills. Must be accurate or you will anger customers/retailers.

Sweepstakes are prohibited in some states.

Conclusion

From the above discussion of various Promotion and sales technique we conclude that promotion with advertising is a part of total system approach that lead to maketing principles. Promotion and sales are interdependent on each other. It helps to increase demand for the product with a view to increase the company’s sale and profit.