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Digital Library > Defining and Serving a Market > Market strategy"How to Establish a Promotional Mix" You drive sales by promoting the benefits of your company's goods or services to pools of potential buyers. The ways you promote your organization will largely determine whether you successfully plant the right messages in the minds of your target audience. This module explains how you can establish a promotional mix best suited to your company's needs and resources WHAT TO EXPECT Even a superior product doesn't sell itself. Your customers need information about your product or service before they buy it. The ways you communicate features and benefits to your potential customers is called a promotional mix. This Business Builder will explain how you can maximize your company's promotional mix for best results. WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE GETTING STARTED [top] When you promote your business, you're engaging in persuasive communication: You want to convince others to buy from you. You must select the right promotional strategy to:
A promotional mix is an allocation of resources among five primary elements:
How you integrate these elements depends on what you're promoting, the biases and preferences of the potential customers you're courting, general market conditions and your promotional budget. The communications process will succeed if:
UNDERSTANDING THE MAIN COMMUNICATION CHANNELS [top]
WHY YOU NEED A PROMOTIONAL MIX [top] If you deliver your message in many different ways, you increase your odds of reaching your target market. Hundreds of messages a day bombard your target market, but only a select few penetrate their consciousnesses. Of those, an even smaller percentage eventually lead them to act. You may want to communicate a range of messages to different markets. If you have a product, such as spot remover, that's used by general consumers but that auto mechanics apply in a more specialized way, you should communicate different messages to each market via different media and methods. You might air a TV commercial to reach consumers and place an ad in an auto magazine to reach mechanics. Without the proper promotional mix, you may squander your limited resources by taking a scattershot approach. Promotion must advance your overall marketing plan and reinforce the dialogue you want to establish with the segments of the marketplace you covet most. Beware: In their rush to expand, some fast-growth entrepreneurs fail to coordinate their marketing strategies with their specific promotional efforts. A common trap: You invest heavily on advertising or sales promotion, but you overlook quality control for your product or price it improperly. ESTABLISHING YOUR PROMOTIONAL MIX [top] Establishing the promotional mix that's right for your company involves seven steps:
Is an unpaid form of communication that calls attention to your business through media coverage?Publicity. Public relations often aims to generate publicityUnpaid communication about an organization that appears in the media., which is unpaid communication about an organization that appears in the media.
Is a paid and non personal communication by a sponsor to an audience?Advertising is paid, nonpersonal communication regarding goods, services, organizations, people, places, and ideas that is transmitted through various media by business firms, government and other nonprofit organizations, and individuals who are identified in the advertising message as the sponsor.
Is a paid form of communication sent out by a business about a product or service?Advertising - A paid form of communication and promotion involving a product and its attributes.
Is the only direct form of communication between a buyer and a representative of a company?Customer service is the direct one-on-one interaction between a consumer making a purchase and a representative of the company that is selling it.
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