Promotion

‘Other types’
Personal selling
 A member of the sales staff communicates with one consumer with the aim of
selling the product and establishing a long term relationship between company
and consumer
 It is an expensive method and thus used for expensive items with a high profit
margin e.g. car
 Can be successful if high bonus or commission is attached with staff pay
 Also skilled staff will improve success rate
 However, reluctant customers might find this irritating and lead to negative
word of mouth
 Very useful for industrial products

Direct mail:
 Mail shots send to potential customers, identified by market research
 These are customers who have interest in these products
 The mails contain detailed information
 They are well focused on potential consumers (on the basis of database) and
filters out non target consumers groups thus cost effective
 However, mailshots can suffer from image problem and passed on as junk mail.

Trade fair and exhibition:

 Used for selling product to the trade (i.e. retailers and wholesalers)
 Through trade fair they increase awareness and makes contact with the retailers
and wholesalers
 After trade fair they can stock up the products as there is an increased chance of
sales
 Firms seldom sale in the trade fair, they rather increase awareness
 Also end consumers might buy from trade fair

Sponsorships:
 Payment by a company to the organizers of an event so that the company name
becomes associated with the event
o A football match will show a sponsor brand’s name more than a TV
advertisement
 Growth of global TV and internet have increased the scope for sponsorship
 Expenditure in this form of promotion can lead to dramatic results in sale.

Public relations (PR):

 Deliberate use of free publicity provided by newspapers, TV and other media to
communicate with and achieve understanding by the public
 It is thus opposite of advertisement where payment is made for media
 All large firms have PR department they arrange positive press abd TV coverage
of their business
 It might involve press conference, where journalists are provided with details
about the product with the hope it will appear as an article on paper or TV news
 Donation or sponsorship of a huge event may also bring in publicity too
 Public Relation department can also put forward a company’s view regarding
any fault of the company to reduce the negative impact.