Promotion Strategy

Lecture Outline for Promotion Strategy

• Promotion Strategy involves effectively communicating to the intended audience
• Strategic goals of marketing communication include: 1. Create awareness, 2. Build a positive image, 3. Identify prospects, 4. Build channel relationships, 5. Retain customers, 6. Inform customers, 7. Remind customers, and 8. Persuade customers.
• Promotion Strategy includes developing plans around the promotion mix: advertising, sales promotion, public relations, & direct marketing.
• Advertising – Paid non-personal communication.
• Sales Promotion – Direct incentives to buy.
• Public Relations (PR) – Non-paid non-personal communication.
• Direct Marketing – Direct communication (e.g. telemarketing, direct mail, online, catalogs, direct response advertising, and personal/direct selling).
• Integrated Marketing Communications
• Stages/Process potential buyers go through: AIDA – Attention, Interest, Desire, & Action
• Advertising – Has long term effects. Should be viewed as an investment, not just a cost. Difficulty linking ad expenditure with sales. Advertising builds brand equity. Advertising may be measured by its effectiveness in many ways (AIDA) and/or through specific ads or campaigns.
• Advertising Budgeting Methods: 1. Percent of Sales, 2. All You Can Afford, 3. Competitive Parity, Task Approach (best-based on goals and tasks needed).
• Model of Communication: Sender (source), Message, Encoding, Receiver, Decoding, Channel, Noise, and Feedback.
• Sales Promotion – May be oriented to end user (Pull Strategy) or channel intermediaries such as middle men or retailers (Push Strategy).
• Pull Strategy Examples – Coupons, contests, samples, POP, Premiums.
• Push Strategy Examples – Price Deals, Promotion Allowances, Sales Contests.
• Sales Promotion Advantages – Increase sales in short term
• Sales Promotion Disadvantages – May hurt image, may create entitlements among customers, may spur competitor retaliation
• Sales Promotion Objectives: 1) Consumer trial, repeat purchase, increase store traffic, increase users; 2) Motivate & Educate Salesforce, stabilize demand fluctuations, 3) Incentivize Resellers, obtain shelf space, obtain displays, improve distribution.
• Public Relations – May take the form of a news release, news conference, or mention by objective source such as the media or third-party.
• Other Forms of PR – Sponsorship (e.g. All State Scholarships) or PSA.
• Direct Marketing – Communications directly with customers. Becoming more pervasive with technology advances (e.g. social media, email, cell phones).

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