Importance of Promotional Mix

Question: Discuss about the Importance of Promotional Mix. Answer: Introduction: Promotion as a term is commonly used in the field of marketing and it is one of the significant elements of the marketing mix theory (De Mooij, 2013). It deals with increasing the awareness of the customers about the particular brand of product, triggering of its sales and generating loyalty for the specific brand. Marketing mix fundamentally includes four Ps: Price, Promotion, Place and Product and hence, promotion is a crucial part of it. Promotion entails diverse kinds of advancement such as promotion through advertising or offering discount in price of that particular brand or service. Promoting Purpose of the Product: As per the requirements of the company, Promotion may have a numerous different purposes. For instance, it increases the brand awareness of the product, draws attention to the advantages or benefits of it so that its sale rapidly boosts and the image of the organization improves. Promotion includes an array of techniques with the help of which the firm communicates with the consumers and prospective customers. Such communications may possess different patterns and composition that become easily comprehensible to the target consumers. Analysis Strategy of Promotional Mix: A business becomes successful only when its target customers are properly communicated about the benefits of the service or product offered. The strategy for promotion involves several tools such as advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations, sponsorship and personal selling as well (De Mooij, 2013). To sell the laser keyboard, the most worthwhile promotional tool will be advertising since advertising facilitates to reach a large number of consumers in a short period within a low cost. Advertising through television gives the consumers opportunity to review it a multiple times as the messages in television commercial keep repeating. Therefore, advertising through television commercials along with billboards and further alternative forms of advertising is apt for raising consumer interest about this product. The other significant promotional tool public relations also can be used by the organization building a good relationship with public and media. Public relations aim at establishing favorable publicity with the help of media as well as reducing the impact of unenthusiastic situations. Public relation involves sponsorships, events, news stories, features that seem more convincing to the customers; specially it is helpful to those who deliberately avoid advertising and salespeople. Public relation can be proved a very important tool to promote laser keyboard by creating an attractive image of it and an overall approving opinion about it. The next tool Sales Promotions helps to generate a short-term sales raise. The instances of sales promotion includes discount coupons, flash sales and discount codes as well. These promotions act as high incentive for the customers as they increase their supposed value. To promote laser keyboards, the plan is to provide offers of free shipping and education discounts. The offer of free shipping is for wholesale and education discount of around 15% is exclusively for students. Another tool of Direct Marketing involves direct promotion through catalogs, mails, mobile and online marketing and the like. Now, all forms of Direct Marketing share some common characteristics: immediate, interactive, customized and less public. In Direct Marketing highly customized messages are created with the aim of strengthening customer relationships. Laer keyboard itself uses email, a form of this tool to keep the consumers updated about all announcements and the latest releases that may interest them. The purpose of using the forms of this tool like email is to keep consumers aware about all the latest publications so that their interest persists. Lastly, sponsorship is another tool that needs a greater integration and association between the publisher and the advertiser. At times, it involves greatly harmonized beyond-the-banner placements. Commonly it is used in hosting events. Examining the Effectiveness of Advertising and Return on Investment in Advertising: Advertising liability and return on its investment is of importance for every company. Advertisers must evaluate two sorts of advertising outcomes at regular intervals. Estimating the communication consequences of an advertisement or advertisement campaign reveals whether the ad is performing its desired message communication with the audience well. It is hard to evaluate the effects of profits and sales of advertising since these are affected by several other factors apart from advertising. Some of these factors are price, product features and its availability. Comparing the past record of sales and benefits generated by past advertising can be one way to measure the profit and sales effects. Alternative Advertising Considerations: Arrangements for Advertising: Various companies operate advertising in various ways. In small enterprises the department of advertising is naturally handled by someone in the sales while established companies form a separate department for advertising which performs the budget of advertisement, function with ad agencies and takes care of those ads not accomplished by the agencies (Goi, 2015). The ad agencies generally hire expert specialists to execute advertising tasks rather than employing companys existing staffs. Most huge ad agencies have all the resources and staffs to perform every phase of ad campaigns smoothly for the clients, from building advertising plan to widening the campaigns as well as preparing, placing and assessing the advertisements. Decisions for International Advertisements: Advertising on international platforms is more multifaceted than doing it on domestic level. The primary issue in this regard is to which degree international advertising should be custom-made to serve the unique regional market characteristics. Standardization in advertisements generates several benefits for the firm such as lowering the cost of advertisement, greater coordination on universal level and a better reliable global image (Goi, 2015). However, there are also some drawbacks of global advertising. This kind of promotion ignores that cultures of different countries vary according to the regions, economic conditions and varied demographics. Besides, the problems of advertising costs and regulatory and availability practices diverge hugely among the countries worldwide. Additionally, the advertisers need to adapt specific programs in order to meet the regional cultures, media characteristics, consumers and advertising policies as well. Therefore, domestic advertising is prefe rred to international advertising for promoting laser keyboard. Socially Accountable Advertising: The advertiser must be responsible enough to avoid any false claim or deceptiveness while promoting the laser keyboards. Deceiving ads as well as bait-and-switch ads that give the customers false impression must strictly be eliminated from the venture of advertisers. References: De Mooij, M. (2013).Global marketing and advertising: Understanding cultural paradoxes. Sage Publications. Goi, C. L. (2015). Marketing Mix: A review of'P'.The Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce,2005.