# Distributing and Promoting Products and Services

## Promotion Strategy

1. What is promotion, and what are the key elements of a promotional mix?
Promotion is an attempt by marketers to inform, persuade, or remind consumers and B2B users to influence their opinion or elicit a response. Most firms use some form of promotion. Because company goals vary widely, so do promotional strategies. The goal is to stimulate action from the people or organizations of a target market. In a profit-oriented firm, the desired action is for the consumer to buy the promoted item. Mrs. Smith’s, for instance, wants people to buy more frozen pies. Not-for-profit organizations seek a variety of actions with their promotions. They tell us not to litter, to buckle up, to join the military, or to attend the ballet. (These are examples of products that are ideas marketed to specific target markets.)
Promotional goals include creating awareness, getting people to try products, providing information, retaining loyal customers, increasing the use of products, and identifying potential customers, as well as teaching potential service clients what is needed to “co-create” the services provided. Any promotional campaign may seek to achieve one or more of these goals:
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Large companies often use catchy slogans to build brand awareness. For example, Dodge’s wildly successful ads where a guy in a truck yells over to another truck at a stoplight, “Hey, that thing got a Hemi?” has created a huge number of new customers for Dodge trucks. Hemi has become a brand within a brand. Now, 
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People typically will not buy a product or support a not-for-profit organization until they know what it will do and how it may benefit them. Thus, an informative ad may stimulate interest in a product. Consumer watchdogs and social critics applaud the informative function of promotion because it helps consumers make more intelligent purchase decisions. 
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Firms can also help keep customers loyal by telling them when a product or service is improved. 
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### The Promotional Mix

The combination of traditional advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, social media, and e-commerce used to promote a product is called the promotional mix. Each firm creates a unique promotional mix for each product. But the goal is always to deliver the firm’s message efficiently and effectively to the target audience. These are the elements of the promotional mix:
1. Traditional advertising: Any paid form of nonpersonal promotion by an identified sponsor that is delivered through traditional media channels.
2. Personal selling: A face-to-face presentation to a prospective buyer.
3. Sales promotion: Marketing activities (other than personal selling, traditional advertising, public relations, social media, and e-commerce) that stimulate consumer buying, including coupons and samples, displays, shows and exhibitions, demonstrations, and other types of selling efforts.
4. Public relations: The linking of organizational goals with key aspects of the public interest and the development of programs designed to earn public understanding and acceptance. Public relations can include lobbying, publicity, special events, internal publications, and media such as a company’s internal television channel.
5. Social media: The use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and various blogs to generate “buzz” about a product or company. The skills and knowledge needed to generate information as well as to defend the company against problems (such as incriminating videos “going viral”) are separate skills from those related to traditional advertising. Even promotional strategies such as paying celebrities to wear a specific line of clothing and posting these images on Twitter or Instagram (a form of advertising) requires different types of planning and expertise than traditional advertising.
6. E-commerce: The use of a company’s website to generate sales through online ordering, information, interactive components such as games, and other elements of the website. Website development is mandatory is today’s business world. Understanding how to develop and utilize a website to generate sales is imperative for any marketer.
Ideally, marketing communications from each promotional-mix element (personal selling, traditional advertising, sales promotion, public relations, social media, and e-commerce) should be integrated. That is, the message reaching the consumer should be the same regardless of whether it comes from an advertisement, a salesperson in the field, a magazine article, a blog, a Facebook posting, or a coupon in a newspaper insert.

### Integrated Marketing Communications

This disjointed approach to promotion has propelled many companies to adopt the concept of integrated marketing communications (IMC). IMC involves carefully coordinating all promotional activities—traditional advertising (including direct marketing), sales promotion, personal selling, public relations, social media and e-commerce, packaging, and other forms of promotion—to produce a consistent, unified message that is customer focused. Following the concept of IMC, marketing managers carefully work out the roles the various promotional elements will play in the marketing mix. Timing of promotional activities is coordinated, and the results of each campaign are carefully monitored to improve future use of the promotional mix tools. Typically, a company appoints a marketing communications director who has overall responsibility for integrating the company’s marketing communications.
Southwest Airlines relied on IMC to launch its “Transfarency” campaign. The campaign integrated and promoted the concept on its website, as well as through advertising and airport signage. The campaign has resonated with consumers because most competitors add extra fees for baggage and premium seats. One of the taglines Southwest uses is “Reward seats only on days ending with the letter ‘y.’” The integrated marketing campaign was created in collaboration with Southwest’s advertising agency, GSD&M, based in Dallas, Texas.
The sections that follow examine the elements of the promotional mix in more detail.

### Summary of Learning Outcomes

1. What is promotion, and what are the key elements of a promotional mix?
Promotion aims to stimulate demand for a company’s goods or services. Promotional strategy is designed to inform, persuade, or remind target audiences about those products. The goals of promotion are to create awareness, get people to try products, provide information, keep loyal customers, increase use of a product, identify potential customers, and even teach clients about potential services.
The unique combination of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, social media, and e-commerce used to promote a product is called the promotional mix. Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal promotion by an identified sponsor. Personal selling consists of a face-to-face presentation in a conversation with a prospective purchaser. Sales promotion consists of marketing activities—other than personal selling, advertising, and public relations—that stimulate consumers to buy. These activities include coupons and samples, displays, shows and exhibitions, demonstrations, and other selling efforts. Public relations is the marketing function that links the policies of the organization with the public interest and develops programs designed to earn public understanding and acceptance. IMC is being used by more and more organizations. It is the careful coordination of all of the elements of the promotional mix to produce a consistent, unified message that is customer focused.