The modern marketing requires more than developing a good product to put a price attractive and make it accessible to your target customers.
Companies must also communicate with them, and what they say should never be left to chance. For good communication, often companies hire advertising companies to develop effective advertising, sales promotion specialists who design sales incentive programs, and public relations firms that will create a corporate image. They also train their salespeople to be friendly, helpful and persuasive. But for most companies, the issue is not whether to have a communication, but how much should be spent and how.
A modern company runs a complex system of marketing communications have communication with their brokers, their customers and diverse audiences. Their intermediaries, in turn, communicate with consumers and with their audiences. Consumers have verbal communications among themselves and with other audiences. Throughout this process, each group fed back to everyone else.
The total program of marketing communications of a company – called its “promotional mix consists of the specific mix of advertising, sales promotion, public relations and personal selling the company uses to achieve your advertising and marketing objectives.
The four main promotional tools are described below:
. Advertising: Any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by a sponsor well defined.
. Sales Promotion: short-term incentives to encourage sales or purchases a product or service.
. Public relations: The creation of good relations with the various publics a company, creating a good “corporate image” and handling or denial of rumors, stories or negative events.
. Personal Selling: Oral presentation in a conversation with one or more potential buyers in order to make a sale.
Within these categories are specific instruments such as sales presentations, displays at points of sale, special announcements, business presentations, fairs, shows, catalogs, literature, press kits, posters , contests, rebates, coupons and stamps for propaganda. At the same time, communication goes beyond these specific promotional tools. Product design, price, shape, color of its packaging and stores that sell … everything communicates something to the buyers. Thus, although the promotional mix is the main communication activity of a company, all the marketing mix – promotion and the product, price and location must be coordinated to achieve the best communication impact.
The three main instruments of mass promotion are advertising, sales promotion and public relations. These marketing tools scale opposed to personal selling, targeted at specific buyers.
ADVERTISING, use of paid media by a seller to inform, persuade and remind consumers a product or organization is a powerful promotional tool. U.S. marketers spend more than $ 109 billion annually in advertising, which can be very varied and have different uses. Taking
decisions on advertising is a process consisting of
five steps:
* Setting goals
* Decisions on budget
* Adoption of the message
* Decisions on the means used,
* Evaluation.
Advertisers must have very clear objectives about what advertising is supposed to do, inform, persuade or remind.
The budget may be determined by what can be spent, a percentage of sales, as competition is spending, or in the objectives and tasks. The decision on the message requires you to select the drafters, which evaluates their work and perform effectively. In deciding on the means, you must define the objectives of scope, frequency and impact, choose the best types, select and program vehicles. Finally, it will be necessary to assess the effects on communication and sales before, during and after doing the advertising campaign.
Sales promotion covers a wide variety of incentives for the short term – coupons, prizes, contests, discounts, whose purpose is to encourage consumers to trade and sellers of the company itself.
spending on sales promotion has increased faster than advertising in recent years. The sales promotion required to be set some goals, select tools, develop and test the software before implementing it, and evaluating their results.
Types:
Promoting consumption .- promotional sales to stimulate consumer purchases.
Consumer promotional tools:
Hits: Gift of a small quantity of a product for consumers to try it.
Coupons: certificates that translate into savings for buyers of certain products.
cash refund (or rebate): Repayment of a portion of the purchase price of a product to the consumer to send a ‘test purchase’ the manufacturer.
promotional packages (or discount): Prices lowered directly by the manufacturer on the label or packaging.
Awards: Products are offered free or at low cost as an incentive to purchase a product.
rewards to customers: Cash Rewards or otherwise regulate the use of products or services of any company.
promotions at point of sale (ppv): Exhibitions and demonstrations at the point of sale or purchase.
contests, raffles and games: Promotional events that give consumers the chance to win something by blowing or with extra effort.
Trade Promotion .- sales promotion to secure support from the reseller and improve its efforts to sell.
Promotion for the sales force .- sales promotion designed to motivate the sales force and ensuring that the group’s sales efforts more effective.
Promotion to establish a franchise with the consumer sales promotion .- promoting product positioning and include a sales messages in the deal.
PUBLIC RELATIONS: Building good relationships with various publics, involving favorable publicity and creating a positive image of company is the least used tool of promotional tools, although its potential to publicize and make it prefer a product is bigger. Public relations involve the determination of objectives, the choice of the messages and vehicles, the plan implementation and evaluation of results.
Determinants of total promotion budget
How a company decides what the total promotion budget and its distribution among the main tools for creating the promotional mix? We will now study these issues.
One of the most difficult marketing decisions faced by a company is to define how much you spend on promotion. John Wanamaker, the billionaire owner of department stores, once said: “I know I wasted half my advertising, but do not know which half it is. I spent $ 2 million on ads, but do not know if half or double what it takes. ” It is therefore not surprising that there are large differences between what they spend on promoting the various industries and companies. This can add between 20 and 30 percent of sales in the cosmetics industry, but only 5 to 10 percent in the case of industrial machinery, within each branch of industry, companies are they spend a lot and others that spend little.
How companies decide your budget? Study four common methods used to establish the total advertising budget:
the method of the permissible, the percentage of sales, competitive parity and the objective and task.
The method of the permissible
Many companies use the method of the permissible: this means that define the promotion budget as they think the company can afford. One executive explained this approach as follows:
“It’s very simple. The first thing I do is go and ask the controller how much you can give me this year. Tells me that a million and a half. Then the boss comes and asks me how much to spend, and I say ‘Well, approximately a million and a half ‘.
Unfortunately, this method to define the budget completely ignores the effect of promotion on sales volumes. Moreover, just the annual budget for promotion is uncertain, which hampers long-term planning of the market. This method can cause excessive spending on advertising, but more often is that the amount is insufficient.
Percentage of Sales Method
Many companies use the sales percentage method, ie define its promotional budget as a percentage of sales, or expected. Or you can calculate the budget for a percentage of sale price. The automobile companies, for instance, often promotional budget a fixed percentage based on the price set for the car. Oil companies, meanwhile, set the budget as a fraction of a cent per gallon of gasoline sold to your brand.
He argued several advantages for the percentage of sales method. The first is that promotional spending will vary depending on what you can “afford” to spend the company. It also facilitates the administration think about the relationship between promotional spending, the sales price and profit per unit. Finally, it assumes that creates a competitive stability, since companies that are in competition tend to spend on promotion about the same percentage of their sales.
However, despite these alleged benefits, the percentage of sales method has little justification. Indeed, his mistake is that he considers sales as the cause of promoting and not as the result. The budget
is based on the availability of funds rather than on opportunities. There may even prevent cost increases required to reverse a slump in sales. Furthermore, as the budget varies with sales
each year, it is difficult long-term planning. Finally, this method provides no basis for choosing a specific percentage, beyond what has been done in the past, or what they do at the time the competitors.
Competitive parity method
Other companies use competitive parity method, which consists in defining its promotional budget so it is at the height of its competitors. They look at their advertising or obtain cost estimates in promotion within your industry in publications or associations, and then define your budget as the average of the related industries.
There are two arguments that support this method. The first is that the budget of the competitors represents the collective view of the industry.
The second is that by spending just as the competitors, promotional wars are avoided. Unfortunately, none of them is valid. For starters, there is no reason to believe that competition has a better idea of what to spend than the company itself. Indeed, companies are very different from one another, and each has its own promotional needs. Furthermore, there is no evidence that budgets based on a competitive parity promotional avoid wars.
Objective and task method
The most logical way to define a budget is the objective and task method. In it, marketers calculate their promotional budgets (1) defining specific objectives, (2) defining the tasks to be carried out to achieve, and (3) calculating the costs involved in these tasks. The sum of these three costs is the promotional budget is proposed.
The objective and task method requires that the administration specify their assumptions about the relationship between dollars spent and the results of the promotion. But it is also the most difficult to use. It is often difficult to define what specific tasks will be used to achieve specific goals. Suppose, for example, that Sony wants a 95 percent awareness for its new personal video recorder the size of a Walkman during the introductory period of six months. What are the specific messages and transmission times required to achieve this goal? How much would these messages and schedules? The management of Sony has to take into account these questions, although difficult to answer. With the objective and task method, the company sets a budget based on what you want to achieve promotion.
Factors involved in the definition of the promotional mix:
Companies take many factors into account when developing your promotional mix. The examine.
Type of product / market: The importance of different promotional tools varies according to whether a consumer or industrial market.
The consumer goods companies tend to invest their funds first, in advertising, followed by sales promotion, personal selling, and, finally, public relations. In contrast, industrial goods placed most of its budget on personal sales, followed by sales promotion, advertising and public relations. Generally, sales are used much more personal when it comes to expensive and risky assets and markets with few large sellers.
While advertising is less decisive than a personal visit from a salesman in the case of industrial markets, even they have an important role. In effect, this tool can create an awareness and a co -
nition of the product, develop sales trends and give confidence to buyers.
Similarly, personal selling can contribute much to the efforts of sales of consumer goods. That is simply not true that “the sellers place the goods on the shelves and then withdraws
advertising. “For consumer goods, a well-trained sales staff can get more contracts with distributors to sell a certain manufacturer, convince them to give you more shelf space and
encourage them to use the displays and special promotions.
Push Strategy VS. attraction strategy. The promotional mix will change substantially by choosing a push strategy or a pull. A push strategy involves the use of a sales force and a marketing promotion to “push” the product through the channels. Producers promote the product to wholesalers, they promote it to retailers, and they, in turn, to consumers. ” In contrast, a pull strategy requires spending a lot of money on advertising and consumer promotion to create consumer demand. This, then, “attracts” the product through the channel. If this strategy is effective, consumers will ask the product to their retailers, who would in turn ask the wholesalers, and these producers.
Certain small companies in industrial products using only push strategies, and some direct marketing companies use only the attraction, but most large companies use both. For example, Procter & Gamble uses advertising in mass media to attract their products, and a large sales force, along with commercial promotions to push through the channels. In recent years, consumer goods companies have decreased the percentage of attraction of their promotional mix for a bigger push.
State mood of the buyer. The effects of the tools vary among states available to buy already discussed. Advertising, along with public relations play an important role within the states of awareness and knowledge, more than they can take ‘hits cold “from vendors. In exchange, taste, preference and conviction of consumers are more influenced by personal sales, followed closely by advertising. Finally, sales were especially close with visits from vendors and promotes
sales. There is no doubt that, considering its high cost, personal selling should focus on the latter stages of the buying process.
Stage of product life cycle. The effects of different promotional tools also vary with the stage where the product is within its lifecycle. In the introduction stage, advertising and public relations serve to create greater awareness, and sales promotion which is helpful in promoting the product is tested immediately.
Personal selling must use me for distribution branch of the trade. In the growth stage, advertising and public relations continue to have strength, can be reduced while promoting look-ing, as they require fewer incentives. In the maturity stage, sales promotion is again important in relation to advertising. In effect, buyers already know the brands and advertising is only required for re -
colder product. In the period of decline, the advertising is kept to a level only reminder left public relations and sellers pay little attention to the product. However, sales promotion remains strong.
PROMOTION
- Promotional Mix: is formed by the specific mix of advertising, sales promotion, public relations and personal selling the company uses to achieve your advertising and marketing objectives.
The four main promotional tools are described below:
. Advertising: Any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by a sponsor well defined.
Decision making on advertising is a process consisting of
five steps:
* Setting goals
* Decisions on budget
* Adoption of the message
* Decisions on the means used,
- Evaluation.
. Sales Promotion: short-term incentives to encourage sales or purchases a product or service.
Types:
Promoting consumption .- promotional sales to stimulate consumer purchases.
Consumer promotional tools:
Hits: Gift of a small quantity of a product for consumers to try it.
Coupons: certificates that translate into savings for buyers of certain products.
cash refund (or rebate): Repayment of a portion of the purchase price of a product to the consumer to send a ‘test purchase’ the manufacturer.
promotional packages (or discount): Prices lowered directly by the manufacturer on the label or packaging.
Awards: Products are offered free or at low cost as an incentive to purchase a product.
rewards to customers: Cash Rewards or otherwise regulate the use of products or services of any company.
promotions at point of sale (ppv): Exhibitions and demonstrations at the point of sale or purchase.
contests, raffles and games: Promotional events that give consumers the chance to win something by blowing or with extra effort.
Trade Promotion .- sales promotion to secure support from the reseller and improve its efforts to sell.
Promotion for the sales force .- sales promotion designed to motivate the sales force and ensuring that the group’s sales efforts more effective.
Promotion to establish a franchise with the consumer sales promotion .- promoting product positioning and include a sales messages in the deal.
. Public relations: The creation of good relations with the various publics a company, creating a good “corporate image” and handling or denial of rumors, stories or negative events.
. Personal Selling: Oral presentation in a conversation with one or more potential buyers in order to make a sale.
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