What are the four main promotional activities?

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What is Promotion? There are four basic types of promotion: 1) Advertising 2) Sales Promotion 3) Personal Selling 4) Publicity

Promotion is any form of communication a business or organization uses to inform, persuade, or remind people about its products and improve its public image. Product Promotion: 1) Explains the major features and benefits of its products (especially in relation to competitors), 2) tells where the products are sold, 3) advertises sales on those products, 4) answers customer questions, and 5) introduces new products.

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Institutional promotion is used to create a favorable image for itself. It does not directly sell a product. What do you think is the intended result of institutional promotion?

Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Its three distinguishing features are that the time or space devoted to it is paid for it uses a set format to carry the message rather than personal one-on-one selling it identifies the sponsor of the message

Publicity involves placing newsworthy information about a company, product, or person in the media. *The principal function of publicity is to build an image.

Sales Promotion: All other marketing activities other than personal selling, advertising, and publicity. It has three unique characteristics: 1) It usually involves short term activities (as opposed to advertising and publicity which ten to be longer in length). 2) It usually offers some type of incentive to make a purchase. 3) It can be successfully used in all channels of distribution with manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers.

Sales Promotions can be either consumer or trade oriented. Types of Trade Promotions: Slotting Allowances: A cash premium paid by the manufacturer to the retailer for the costs involved in placing a new product on its shelves. The allowance covers the space, retailer’s cents-off specials, charges for store shelves, penalties if the product does not sell, and store advertising and display costs.

Types of Trade Promotions….. Buying allowances: Price discount given by manufacturers to wholesalers and retailers to encourage them to either buy a product or buy a larger quantity of a product. Trade Shows and Conventions: Designed to reach wholesalers and retailers.

Types of Trade Promotions….. Sales Incentives: Awards given to managers and employees who successfully meet or exceed their company’s set sales quota for a particular product or line of products.

Consumer Sales Promotions Licensing: Organizations, such as manufacturers, movie makers, sports teams, and celebrities, may license for a fee their logo, trademark, trade characters, names and licenses, or personal endorsements to a business to be used in promoting the business’s products.

Consumer Sales Promotions… Promotional Tie-ins: Involve sales promotional arrangements between one or more retailers or manufacturers. They combine their resources to do a promotion that creates additional sales for each partner.

Consumer Sales Promotions… Visual Merchandising and Displays: The coordination of all physical elements in a place of business so that it projects the right image to its customers. The visual and artistic aspects of presenting a product to a target group of customers. (window, floor, counter display)

Consumer Sales Promotions… Premiums and Incentives: Designed to increase sales by builing product loyalty and attracting new customers. There are four types of popular premiums: coupons factor packs, or in-packs (cereal boxes) traffic builders (pens, calendars) coupon plans (proof of purchase, soup labels)

Consumer Sales Promotions… Product Samples: A free trial size of a product that is sent through the mail, distributed door-to-door, or through retail stores and trade shows.

Personal Selling: Is the most flexible and individualized of the promotion devices available to business. What are some obvious disadvantages? Promotional Mix: A combination of different types of promotion.

Choose your own ADventure…. Teams of three

An effective promotional mix starts with a plan. It must be tailored to your business and consider the needs of customers, products or services, promotions tools (e.g., advertising), and media channels.

Promotions can be categorised as being either short-term promotions such as coupons or discounts on items available in stores, long-term promotions such as prizes awarded through contests which may last several months, or more general promotion strategies like public relations campaigns designed to generate goodwill among audiences by communicating with the media on behalf of an organisation.

1. Consider your target audience

The promotions that work best are those targeted to the right audience. People respond better when you offer something of value they want and need, such as a chance to win an expensive prize or get free shipping on orders over $50.

2. Set clearly defined goals

It’s important to set clear goals for promotions before you start. You need to know what purpose the promotion serves and whether it’s intended as a short-term, long-term or more general promotional strategy.

For example, if you want to clear your stock or get rid of odd items on the shelves, then a flash sale would be great. If you have products that are high in demand, you might want to run a competition where people can go in the draw to win them. Some promos are seasonal, e.g. Easter, Xmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and some are fixed days in the year, e.g. Black Friday, birthdays etc.

Remember that preparing, planning and executing any promotions will take time and resources away from your current marketing so you might want to use them sparsely. You also want to make sure that you are measuring the success of a campaign so you can benchmark the results year-on-year and learn from your experience.

3. Create a promotion budget

Before you start a promotional activity it’s important to know how much money is available for promotions. Your promotional budget will come under your general marketing budget and needs to cover for the planning, execution and reporting of your campaign.

4. Choose your channels

Once you have set clearly defined goals for your promotions and know how much money is available, it’s important to choose the right channels. For example, when looking at promotions designed primarily as short-term promotions such as coupons or discounts on items available in stores then this might be best handled through social media like Facebook. While long-term promotions, which may last several months, using prizes awarded through contests may require a more traditional advertising campaign.

5. Define your message

It’s important to define your message. To do so, you need a clear idea of who your audience is to create promotions which will appeal to their wants and needs. Your tone of voice needs to be adjusted to the audience but also to the channel you chose for your promotion. Make sure you have a clear and concise call to action and inclusive messaging for your promo campaign.

6. Implement your promotional plan

We recommend using a project or task management tool to map out what’s needed to implement your promotional plan. You might want to consider hiring some freelancers or the Four Drunk Parrots team to help you with some aspects of your promotions campaign. We often assist with graphic design for creatives and the management of digital advertising.

In conclusion

When you’re looking to grow your business, it can be hard to know where to start. The four pillars of promotion will get you started on the right path and help you focus on what matters most when trying to promote your product or service.

If one of these tools sounds appealing but isn’t quite working for you yet, don’t worry! We have a team of experts ready and waiting to partner with you to create an effective promotions mix that will build your business, contact us today!

The four Ps are the key considerations that must be thoughtfully considered and wisely implemented in order to successfully market a product or service. They are product, price, place, and promotion.

The four Ps are often referred to as the marketing mix. They encompass a range of factors that are considered when marketing a product, including what consumers want, how the product or service meets or fails to meet those wants, how the product or service is perceived in the world, how it stands out from the competition, and how the company that produces it interacts with its customers.

Since the four Ps were introduced in the 1950s, more Ps have been identified, including people, process, and physical evidence.

• The four Ps are the four essential factors involved in marketing a product or service to the public.
• The four Ps are product, price, place, and promotion.
• The concept of the four Ps has been around since the 1950s. As the marketing industry has evolved, other Ps have been identified: people, process, and physical evidence.

Neil Borden, an advertising professor at Harvard, popularized the idea of the marketing mix—and the concepts that would later be known primarily as the four Ps—in the 1950s. His 1964 article, "The Concept of the Marketing Mix," demonstrated the ways that companies could use advertising tactics to engage their consumers.

Decades later, the concepts that Borden popularized are still being used by companies to advertise their goods and services.

Borden's ideas were developed and refined over a number of years by other key players in the industry. E. Jerome McCarthy, a marketing professor at Michigan State University, refined the concepts in Borden's book and named them the "four Ps" of marketing. McCarthy co-wrote the book Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, further popularizing the idea.

At the time the concept was introduced, it helped companies breach the physical barriers that could hamper widespread product adoption. Today, the Internet has helped businesses to overcome some of these barriers.

People, process, and physical evidence are extensions of the original Four Ps and are relevant to current trends in marketing.

Any successful marketing strategy should be revisited from time to time. The marketing mix you create is not intended to be static. It needs to be adjusted and refined as your product grows and your customer base changes.

Creating a marketing campaign starts with an understanding of the product itself. Who needs it, and why? What does it do that no competitor's product can do? Perhaps it's a new thing altogether and is so compelling in its design or function that consumers will have to have it when they see it.

The job of the marketer is to define the product and its qualities and introduce it to the consumer.

Defining the product also is key to its distribution. Marketers need to understand the life cycle of a product, and business executives need to have a plan for dealing with products at every stage of the life cycle.

The type of product also dictates in part how much it will cost, where it should be placed, and how it should be promoted.

Many of the most successful products have been the first in their category. For example, Apple was the first to create a touchscreen smartphone that could play music, browse the Internet, and make phone calls. Apple reported total sales of the iPhone to be $71.6 billion in Q1 2022. In 2021, Apple hit the milestone of 2 billion iPhones sold.

Price is the amount that consumers will be willing to pay for a product. Marketers must link the price to the product's real and perceived value, while also considering supply costs, seasonal discounts, competitors' prices, and retail markup.

In some cases, business decision-makers may raise the price of a product to give it the appearance of luxury or exclusivity. Or, they may lower the price so more consumers will try it.

Marketers also need to determine when and if discounting is appropriate. A discount can draw in more customers, but it can also give the impression that the product is less desirable than it was.

UNIQLO, headquartered in Japan, is a global manufacturer of casual wear. Like its competitors Gap and Zara, UNIQLO creates low-priced, fashion-forward garments for younger buyers.

What makes UNIQLO unique is that its products are innovative and high-quality. It accomplishes this by purchasing fabric in large volumes, continually seeking the highest-quality and lowest-cost materials in the world. The company also directly negotiates with its manufacturers and has built strategic partnerships with innovative Japanese manufacturers.

UNIQLO also outsources its production to partner factories. That gives it the flexibility to change production partners as its needs change.

Finally, the company employs a team of skilled textile artisans that it sends to its partner factories all over the world for quality control. Production managers visit factories once a week to resolve quality problems.

Place is the consideration of where the product should be available, in brick-and-mortar stores and online, and how it will be displayed.

The decision is key: The makers of a luxury cosmetic product would want to be displayed in Sephora and Neiman Marcus, not in Walmart or Family Dollar. The goal of business executives is always to get their products in front of the consumers who are the most likely to buy them.

That means placing a product only in certain stores and getting it displayed to the best advantage.

The term placement also refers to advertising the product in the right media to get the attention of consumers.

For example, the 1995 movie GoldenEye was the 17th installment in the James Bond movie franchise and the first that did not feature an Aston Martin car. Instead, Bond actor Pierce Brosnan got into a BMW Z3. Although the Z3 was not released until months after the film had left theaters, BMW received 9,000 orders for the car the month after the movie opened.

The goal of promotion is to communicate to consumers that they need this product and that it is priced appropriately. Promotion encompasses advertising, public relations, and the overall media strategy for introducing a product.

Marketers tend to tie promotion and placement elements together to reach their core audiences. For example, In the digital age, the "place" and "promotion" factors are as much online as offline. Specifically, where a product appears on a company's web page or social media, as well as which types of search functions will trigger targeted ads for the product.

The Swedish vodka brand Absolut sold only 10,000 cases of its vodka in 1980. By 2000, the company had sold 4.5 million cases, thanks in part to its iconic advertising campaign. The images in the campaign featured the brand's signature bottle styled as a range of surreal images: a bottle with a halo, a bottle made of stone, or a bottle in the shape of the trees standing on a ski slope. To date, the Absolut campaign is one of the longest-running continuous campaigns of all time, from 1981 to 2005.

The four Ps provide a framework on which to build your marketing strategy. Think through each factor. And don't worry when the factors overlap. That's inevitable.

First, analyze the product you will be marketing. What are the characteristics that make it appealing? Consider other similar products that are already on the market. Your product may be tougher, easier to use, more attractive, or longer-lasting. Its ingredients might be environmentally-friendly or naturally sourced. Identify the qualities that will make it appealing to your target consumers.

Think through the appropriate price for the product. It's not simply the cost of production plus a profit margin. You may be positioning it as a premium or luxury product or as a bare-bones lower-priced alternative.

Placement involves identifying the type of store, online and off, that stocks products like yours for consumers like yours.

Promotion can only be considered in the context of your target consumer. The product might be appealing to a hip younger crowd or to upscale professionals or to bargain hunters. Your media strategy needs to reach the right audience with the right message.

Product, price, promotion, and place form the four Ps of the marketing mix. These are the key factors that are involved in introducing a product or service to the public.

The focus on the four Ps—product, price, place, and promotion—has been a core tenet of marketing since the 1950s. Three newer Ps expand the marketing mix for the 21st century.

• People places the focus on the personalities that represent the product. In the current era, that means not only sales and customer service employees but social media influencers and viral media campaigns.
• Process is logistics. Consumers increasingly demand fast and efficient delivery of the things they want, when they want them.
• Physical evidence is perhaps the most thoroughly modern of the seven Ps. If you're selling diamond jewelry on a website, it must be immediately clear to the consumer that you are a legitimate established business that will deliver as promised. A professionally-designed website with excellent functionality, an "About" section that lists the principals of the company and its physical address, professional packaging, and efficient delivery service, all are critical to convincing the consumer that your product is not only good, it's real.

• Place refers to where consumers buy your product, or where they discover it. Today's consumers may learn about products and buy them online, through a smartphone app, at retail locations, or through a sales professional.
• Price refers to the cost of the product or service. Determining product price properly includes an analysis of the competition, the demand, production costs, and what consumers are willing to spend. Various pricing models may be considering, such as choosing between one-time purchase and subscription models.
• The product a company provides depends on the type of company and what they do best. For example, McDonald's provides consistent fast food in a casual setting. They may expand their offerings, but they wouldn't stray far from their core identity.
• Promotion refers to specific and thoughtful advertising that reaches the target market for the product. A company might use an Instagram campaign, a public relations campaign, advertising placement, an email campaign, or some combination of all of these to reach the right audience in the right place.

The model of the 4Ps can be used when you are planning a new product launch, evaluating an existing product, or trying to optimize the sales of an existing product.

A careful analysis of these four factors—product, price, place, and promotion—helps a marketing professional devise a strategy that successfully introduces or reintroduces a product to the public.

The four Ps of marketing—product, price, place, promotion—are often referred to as the marketing mix. These are the key elements involved in planning and marketing a product or service, and they interact significantly with each other. Considering all of these elements is one way to approach a holistic marketing strategy.