Promotion Mix

Marketers have at their disposal four major methods of promotion. Taken together these comprise the promotion mix. In this section a basic definition of each method is offered while in the next section a comparison of each method based on the characteristics of promotion is presented.

• Advertising – Involves non-personal, mostly paid promotions often using mass media outlets to deliver the marketer’s message. While historically advertising has involved one-way communication with little feedback opportunity for the customer experiencing the advertisement, the advent of computer technology and, in particular, the Internet has increased the options that allow customers to provide quick feedback.
• Sales Promotion – Involves the use of special short-term techniques, often in the form of incentives, to encourage customers to respond or undertake some activity. For instance, the use of retail coupons with expiration dates requires customers to act while the incentive is still valid.
• Public Relations – Also referred to as publicity, this type of promotion uses third-party sources, and particularly the news media, to offer a favorable mention of the marketer’s company or product without direct payment to the publisher of the information.
• Personal Selling – As the name implies, this form of promotion involves personal contact between company representatives and those who have a role in purchase decisions (e.g., make the decision, such as consumers, or have an influence on a decision, such as members of a company buying center). Often this occurs face-to-face or via telephone, though newer technologies allow this to occur online via video conferencing or text chat.

• Promotion Summary Table

  The table below compares each of the promotion mix options on the eight key promotional characteristics. The summary should be viewed only as a general guide since promotion techniques are continually evolving and how each technique is compared on a characteristic is subject to change.
  

  
  

  Characteristics	Advertising	Sales Promotion	Public Relations	Personal Selling
  Directed Coverage	mass & targeted	mass & targeted	mass	targeted
  Message Flow	one & two-way	one & two-way	one-way	two-way
  Payment Model	paid limited non-paid	paid	non-paid	paid
  Interaction Type	non-personal	personal & non-personal	non-personal	personal
  Demand Stimulation	lagging	quick	lagging	quick
  Message Control	good	good	poor	very good
  Message Credibility	low-medium	low-medium	high	medium-high
  Cost of Promotion	CPI - Low CPTI - Varies CPA - Varies	CPI - Medium CPTI - Varies CPA - Varies	CPI - None CPTI - None CPA - None	CPI - High CPTI - High CPA - High

  Promotion Choice: Marketing Issues

  Marketing issues that affect the choice of promotional method include:
  

  • Target Market – As one might expect, customer characteristics dictate how promotion is determined. Characteristics such as size, location and type of target markets affect how the marketer communicates with customers. For instance, for a small marketer serving business markets with customers widely dispersed, it may be very expensive to utilize a sales force versus using advertising.
  • Product – Different products require different promotional approaches. For the consumer market, products falling into the convenience and shopping goods categories are likely to use mass market promotional approaches while higher-end specialty goods are likely to use personalized selling. Thus, products that are complex and take customers extended time to make a purchase decision may require personal selling rather than advertising. This is often the case with products targeted to the business market. Additionally, as we briefly discussed in the Managing Products tutorial and will later see in the The PLC and Marketing Planning tutorial, products pass through different stages in the Product Life Cycle. As a product moves through these stages the product itself may evolve and also promotional objectives will change.