Promotion is one of the 4 P’s of the marketing mix. Each of the 4 P’s (Price, Product, Place and Promotion) must be covered effectively in order to successfully promote a product. In basic terms, promotion is the term related to any activity that is done to make people aware of a certain product or service. Due to the depth of the word and its various uses in marketing, promotion has many aspects. Therefore, in order to better understand the act of promotion, it is necessary to cover in detail each of its individual aspects.
Below are all aspects of promotion or tools that marketers use to promote:
1. Advertising:
Advertising is one component of the promotional mix. It is the act of spreading the word about a company’s products and services. Advertising also involves the use of certain strategies related to the placement of advertisements and the frequency with which these advertisements are served. Advertising is usually done through the use of channels such as newspaper ads, radio ads, television ads, and internet ads. Far from being a new phenomenon, advertising dates back to the 19th century.
2. Personal selling:
Personal selling involves the use of personalized, individually tailored messages to potential leads by sellers. These messages often take the form of face-to-face communication, telephone correspondence, or personal correspondence. Unlike advertising that focuses on uniform messages to the masses, messages delivered through personal selling can change based on individual behavior. Furthermore, these messages can also be altered if they are unsuccessful. Unlike advertising, however, personal selling is quite time-consuming and therefore only suitable for products that cater to niche markets.
3. Sales promotion:
Sales promotion refers to an initiative taken by a company to force an increase in the number of sales made by its products or simply to get people to try the product by giving out free samples or trials. Since different companies use sales promotion in unique ways, it is quite difficult to pinpoint any one sales promotion technique that is universal. However, buy one get one free schemes and discount coupons are the common sales promotion techniques.
4. Advertising:
Advertising is the use of certain tactics to alter or manage the public perception of certain products or services. A common example of advertising is event sponsorship. Companies can sponsor events of all kinds to increase their publicity. This act of promotion is generally profitable in nature and creates great credibility. Also, the possibility of reaching large numbers of people by sponsoring large-scale events, such as football matches, is ever-present.
