1. SALES AND PROMOTIONS Know Your Options Types of promotion

2.  Promotion is an important part of the marketing mix that communicates information to customers about: goods, services, images, and ideas  Promotion can accomplish a number of objectives: build awareness, increase demand, differentiate a product, highlight a product’s value, and change or reinforce customer attitudes  Businesses’ primary reasons for using promotional messages is to encourage customers to buy their products or to think favorably about the company  Promotional tools that marketers use to communicate with customers: advertising, publicity, personal selling, and sales promotion

3.  Two types of promotional messages: product promotion and institutional promotion  Product promotion is to persuade customers to buy a particular product or service  Product promotional activities can:  Create awareness of a good or service  Inform customers about product features  Encourage interest in a good or service  Inform customers where a product can be purchased  Build a reputation for a product  Create excitement and motivate retailers and salespeople

4.  Primary product promotion:  Aims to stimulate demand, or desire, for an entire class of goods or services  The emphasis is on the product and its uses, rather on a particular brand  Especially useful and necessary for introducing a new concept or a totally new product  Used to compete against other industries

5.  Secondary product promotion:  Used to stimulate demand for a specific brand of a product  Efforts can be focused on promoting a brand and its features or benefits  Used to compete against other makers of the same type of product

6.  Institutional promotion does not attempt to sell a good or service  The primary goal is to create a certain image of the company  Companies take positions on important issues  The company wants to create a favorable public attitude toward the company  Institutional promotion can be used to:  Change a particular attitude toward a firm  Inform customers of the company’s interest in social or environmental issues  Inform the public about the company’s future  Inform customers of the company’s name and its type of business  Show the company’s commitment to quality, technology, or research  Enhance company morale and recruit new employees  Build or reinforce a favorable company image

7.  Three kinds of promotion:  Public service – inform customers about noncontroversial issues  Public Relations – created to deal with issues that are in the public’s interest but are also related to the company or its products  Can be proactive – take the initiative to promote itself  Can be reactive – trying to fix a bad situation that already exists  One of these negative issues may be countered by confronting an issue that is controversial for the firm  Patronage – designed to promote a firm’s prestige or its features

8.  Promotional activities can be viewed as providing advantages or benefits to society and the mass media  Promotion is thought to contribute to economic growth and business activity by encouraging customers to purchase and use  Society benefits from promotional activities because of the money these activities add to our economy and the jobs they create  Customers become interested in a good or service and ultimately make a purchase  Financial support for the media would probably be passed along to customers  Influence sales positively  Promotional activities encourage a higher standard of living  Make the customers better educated

9.  The disadvantages of promotional activities:  Some promotions are deceptive  Manipulates consumers  Can be offensive  May create and reinforce stereotypes  Plays upon people’s fears  Have limited abilities