Sales Promotion

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Communication for Marketing and Selling

Effective communication about your product, services and ideas is an important key to boost the image of the company, the brand, sales and overall profitability. It is of two types:

• Mass communication or communication using mass media
• Personal communication with prospective customers

Here, in this write-up, we are going to focus only on mass media communication.

Mass Communication

Marketers can use one or more of following mass communication systems:

• Advertising
• Sales promotion
• Events
• Marketing public relations

Here, in this write up, we will focus only on “sales promotion, events and marketing public relations”. We have covered “advertising” separately on another page, the URL of which is: (Advertising) http://advertising-mass-communication.blogspot.com/

Sales Promotion

• Sales promotion is aimed at boosting the sales in shorter duration by providing effective incentives to the buyers.
• Advertising is aimed at boosting the sales by giving reasons to buy and sales promotion is aimed at boosting sales by giving incentives to customers. Sales promotion integrated or combined with advertising will be more effective than doing only one of the two alone.
• Sales promotion consists of:
  - Consumer promotion which uses free samples, free trials, discount coupons, loyalty rewards, cash paybacks, discounted prices, prizes etc.
  - Trade promotion which includes discounted prices to the retailers, advertising and display allowances to retailers, certain amount of free goods if dealer or retailer buys certain minimum quantity etc.
  - Business and sales force promotion include trade shows and conventions, sales contests among sales people of company/dealers and their recognition, specialty advertising by way of the give-aways like pens, tee shirts, bags, key chains, calendars, torches and such goodies with company’s products and company’s name etc displayed on them.

Major Factors of Sales Promotion

Marketers need to decide about four factors for effective sales promotion:

• Deciding the objective(s) of sales promotion
• Selecting appropriate sales promotion methods (from the ones described earlier under consumer promotion, trade and business and sales force promotion)
• Developing the sales promotion campaign
• Sales promotion effectiveness evaluation

Objectives of sales promotion

One could work to achieve one or more of the following objectives through various methods (mentioned earlier) of sales promotion:

• Encouraging trial by new prospective customers of the products, services and ideas offered
• Brand switching by customers
• Buying earlier than usual requirement by customers
• Buying in quantities more than usual by customers
• Encouraging off season buying by customers
• Store switching by customers
• Attracting new customers
• Establishing customer loyalty
• Offsetting competitive sales promotions

Selecting sales promotion method(s)

Various tools/methods of sales promotions have been mentioned earlier for consumer promotion, trade promotion and business and sales force promotion. The choice of these tools/methods depends on:

• Type of market/customers
• Objectives of sales promotion (see the earlier point)
• The nature of market competition
• Appropriateness of the methods/tools
• Cost effectiveness of methods/tools

Developing sales promotion campaign

Following factor need to be thought of and developed:

• Quantum of the incentives to be offered (considering its possible and expected benefits)
• Duration of sales promotion program
• Deciding the lead time of sales promotion preparation and sell-in duration (the duration within which the targeted sales will be accomplished)
• Timing of promotion campaign
• Terms and conditions of participation by the prospective/existing customers
• Mode of distribution of incentives
• Budget for the entire sales promotion plan

Sales promotion effectiveness evaluation

Evaluation of effectiveness of sales promotion can be done using:

• Sales data analysis: customer behavior- pre-promotion and post promotion, number of switches from the competitors, profile analysis of customers who participated, boost in sales etc
• Customer surveys: to gather the feedback about their assessment/reaction of the sales promotion program
• Construct experiments: around quantum of incentives, duration of incentives and incentive distribution mix/channels etc

Events

Marketers need to decide about four factors for effective sponsorship of events:

• Event objectives
• Choice of events
• Developing sponsorship campaigns
• Evaluation of sponsorship programs

Event objectives

• To identify the products with particular target customers/markets
• To increase awareness and image of the company and its products among prospective customers
• To improve image of the company in the area of corporate social responsibility by sponsoring social and human welfare events
• To confirm the image association of the products (superior quality, sophistication and style, excellent performance etc) in the minds of the customers

Choice of events

There are large numbers of event options:

• Sports and games events
• Award functions
• Festivals
• Social events
• Television shows
• Professional conferences

Developing sponsorship campaigns

It is important to carefully carve the marketing programs around the event sponsorship for its effective and success. It is also necessary to choose the right kind of event(s). Marketers must spend good amount of their time and efforts in developing the sponsorship campaigns.

Evaluation of sponsorship programs

The extent of media coverage of the brand and its exposure/impact on the audience/customers collected as customer feedback are the two ways of measuring the effectiveness of the sponsorship programs.

Marketing Public Relations

It consists of variety of ways in which company can improve the company’s image in the minds of the existing/prospective customers as well those segments of public that can have impact on fulfillment of company’s objectives.

There are many ways in which positive public relations can be established:

• Press releases
• Product awareness creation
• Seeking editorial spaces in the media to publicize the company and its products
• Internal and external corporate communication
• Being in touch with people who matter
• Gathering constant feedback and modifying public relations programs

For public relations also, the marketers need to decide about factors like: its objectives, designing and developing the public relations campaign and evaluation of its effectiveness.

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