Marketing Mix

Promotion

Promotion

• Communicating with your potential customers, to create awareness of your Brand, product and company. This will most often drive sales to you and away from your competitors.

• Advertising, Sales Promotions, Trade Fairs, sponsorship.

Promotion Objectives

• What Objectives Might a Marketing Team set for promotion?- Increase Sales by raising awareness of particular product.- Remind Consumers of existing product and its benefits.- Attract new customers to your brand.- Reinforce USP over competitors.- Reinforce your brand image and personality.

The Promotion Mix

• Combination of promotional techniques that a firm uses to sell its products.

1. Advertising2. Sales Promotion3. Personal Selling4. Direct Mail5. Trade Fairs and exhibitions6. Sponsorship7. PR

Advertising

• Paid for communication with consumers to inform or persuade eg TV, radio, print etc

• This is often referred to as above the line promotion, and marketers need to be careful that the align the strategy with there target market and select the correct medium (TV, Radio, Print, Internet) to display there product/service.

Advertising

• Informative Advertising – giving consumers specific information about your product rather then pushing brand. Often used in brochures, mail outs.

• Persuasive Advertising – Trying to give your product/service and identity so consumers will choose you over the competitors.

Advertising

• Advertising Agencies – These businesses can be expensive, but it can mean that instead of employing a fulltime worker to do your promotion, you can contract it out and possibly save money in the long run.

Which Media to use?

• With the growing amount of options to interact with your market, marketers need to consider what is the most appropriate medium with which to advertise there product.

• Is the most expensive always the most effective?

Factors to consider

• Cost – TV, Radio, Magazines, Cinema, Newspaper. They all have a cost and in some cases can be very prohibitive to a campaign.

• Size of Audience – all mediums will provide stats on the circulation or number of consumers watching/listening at a particular time. Do they match your consumer profile is the question you need to ask.

Factors To Consider

• Consumer Profile – Make sure the medium you use is where your target is looking ie you wouldn’t advertise fencing products during desperate housewives.

• The communicated Message – Is it an informative advert or image based. If it needs to be referred to by consumers would be best suited to a magazine.

Factors to consider

• The Marketing Mix – what image have you presented for your product that should match where you advertise it i.e. perfume in a car magazine does that fit?

• The Law – The BSA (Broadcasting Standards Authority) dictates what can be shown when. Ie vulgar and indecent ads can be taken of the air. The Toyota Bugger Ad is one example.

Banned Ads

When To Spend

• Old adage in business is “you have to spend money to make money” reality is when things are going well we tend to spend more and when things are struggling we cut our budget.

• Do you think spending More during recession is a good strategy?

Sales Promotion• Sales promo’s include special offers, or deals to

attract short term sales from consumers.• Considered Below the line promotion• What deals could a business offer?

- Temporary Price Reduction- Loyalty schemes- Coupons- Buy one get one free- Games and Competitions- POS displays

Personal Selling

• A sales person is hired to communicate with customers, in the aim of building a relationship between the company (Brand) and consumer.

• Very common in B2B where the product doesn’t sell its self.

• Used in Retail as well.• NOTE: The salesman/women is the face of a business

if they present a bad image all you have been working towards can be lost.

Direct Mail

• Often called ‘Junk Mail’ sent direct to consumers within a particular market. The warehouse catalogues, farmers, briscoes and rebel sport all do this regularly. Can be good for exposure but often ineffective due to cost and consumers not paying attention to your message.

Trade Fairs Exhibitions

• These are direct meetings with potential clients, can be considered a very effective form of marketing as all consumers who attend shows have an interest in the products on display. Great way to launch a new product and create brand awareness.

Sponsorship

• Sponsoring good causes or events as a way to tap into the advertising and promotional budget of an event. Also extends to sports people and radio spots and even TV segments ie Sport bought to you by LG. creates greater exposure to your brand and increases visibility amongst your consumer group.

Public Relations

• The use of editorial, and other free mediums of advertising to promote your product and to give the consumers an understanding of what you stand for as a company. This can be fantastic for a company if you can get the journalists to write about your product or service. Invite them to a launch or company event so they will write about it.

Branding

• This will drive the image of your product or service and is integral to ensuring the consumers associate with you. There are Brand specialists who can create an image for you by researching the market.

• Common benefits of a strong brand.– Increase chances of recall with your product.– Differentiates product from competitors.– Reduce price elasticity of demand as consumers choose

well known brands.– Loyalty to your brand.

Branding Exercise

• Write down everything you think/know about the below brands? (Brand image, associations etc)

Marketing/Promotion Budget

• All Businesses are provided with a certain budget on which to market/promote there products or service. All companies use different approaches to this but it is important to ensure that the budget is aligned to the overall company objectives and marketing strategy and not just ad hoc. Ie spending money without any real direction.

Marketing Budget - Approaches

1. A Percentage of Sales – the budget will increase and decrease dependent on what happens with sales. Normally a set percentage ie 10% of sales.

2. Objective based budget – based on meeting company objectives for sales and providing a promotion budget to meet these aims.

Marketing Budget - Approaches

3. Competitor Based – Trying to match the spending off a similar sized competitor, this could mean spending a lot of money on promotion.

4. Affordability – Ad Hoc marketing no real direction business will spend money on marketing if there is some available.

5. Incremental – Adding a percentage each year to last years budget, usually based on sales.

Tracking Performance

• Tracking the performance of a promotion or advertisement, is crucial in today's society as more and more managers are concerned about ROI (Return on Investment). - Sales performance before and after promotion- Consumer awareness data- Consumer Panels- Response rates to advertisements.

Packaging

• Packaging is an important aspect to consider as often it is one of the first images consumers get of your product, and therefore the perception of your product can be forever altered if you get it wrong it needs to support your promotion strategies. I.e. high class product high class packaging, environmentally friendly packaging and cost considerations

PLACE

Place

• Can be referred to the physical place in which you sell your product. Ie the supermarket. This is aligned with were your target market are. But mainly refers to your channel of distribution how does the good/service get from the producer to the final consumer.

Distribution

• “Right product, Right consumer, Right time and place”

• Getting your product to your consumers that is the most convenient and is the lowest cost option is important for the business.

Customer Service

• This can be overlooked in business but it is crucial to ensuring your products success, picking your distribution strategy should not always just be about cost, that’s important but the consumer is concerned with the ‘experience’ or being able to purchase and receive the good when they want/need it.

Channel Strategy

• Businesses need to select carefully what channel that should distribute there products. Like all other decisions they should be linked with the overall corporate objectives for the organization and they should also distribute through a channel that matches there brand image.

Distribution Channels

• Direct selling – from manufacturer to consumer. (no intermediaries) becoming very common due to the advancement of the internet.

• Single Intermediary – Manufacturer to retailer then to consumer. Supermarkets are an example of this.

• Two Intermediaries – Manufacturer to wholesale then retailer and finally consumer. A lot in B2B market.

Factors Influencing Choice of Distribution Channel

• Geographical dispersion of your market could make it difficult to direct sell.

• The level of after service required.• Technical complexity of the product.• Unit Value of the product.• Size of your market, how do you sell direct to

40 million customers?

Distribution Channels

• The advancement of the internet has seen direct selling become more popular in business, this means that some of the more traditional intermediaries have gone out of business.

• In business it can be wise to use many methods of distribution i.e. sell to the market and also retailers so you don’t miss any potential customers. Eg Hotels

Online Marketing

• This revolutionized how ‘businesses’ interacted with there market, now consumers can buy online get real time information about your products and collect data about the market which was previously costly and hard to obtain. This has made a lot of the older retail environments go out off business particularly in the music industry where downloading music online as opposed to buying CD’s has become popoular.

Advantages Disadvantages

Low Cost Low Speed internet connections can cause issues

Large Audience – Worldwide

Consumers cant touch, feel or use product

Greater Consumer interaction with business

Product returns increase due to dissatisfaction

Convenient for consumers

Website must be kept up to date

Tracking is possible enhances marketing strategies

Internet security worries

Viral Marketing

• This has become the new buzz word in marketing, it is the use of Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, My Space, You Tube) and cell phones to increase brand awareness and sell products. It is all about the consumers passing on the information through these mediums. We are in the digital age and enjoy passing interesting clips and promotions on. (Snow Ball Effect)

Evaluation

• Promotion and Place are important elements of the Marketing Mix and cannot be overlooked when making decisions. Clearly promotion creates your image and drives customers to your product, and now with the emergence of viral and online marketing Place and Promotion go hand in hand. Consumers will always have options and businesses what there product to be top of the mind.

Integrated Marketing Mix

• The Four ‘P’ s don’t stand alone we need make sure our branding and all decisions remain consistent across the board as consumers will make decisions based on what businesses present to them. So being contradictory is a sure fire way to fail in marketing. Sometimes the smallest mistake in one element can lead to a huge failure. Make sure that your marketing mix is aligned to your overall strategy and objectives as the old saying goes.