The Land of Technology

Promotion schemes are concerned with the planning, implementation, and control of persuasive communication with customers. These schemes may be planned around advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, or any combination
of these. The first strategic issue affected here is how much money may be spent on the promotion of a specific product/market. The distribution of the total promotional budget among advertising, personal selling, and sales promotion is another strategic matter. The formulation of strategies dealing with these two issues determines the role that each type of promotion plays in a particular situation.

Clear-cut objectives and a sharp focus on target customers are necessary for an effective promotional program. In other words, merely undertaking an advertising campaign or hiring a few salespeople to call on customers may not suffice. Instead, an integrated communication plan consisting of various promotion methods should be designed to ensure that customers in a product/market cluster get the right message and maintain a long-term cordial relationship with the company.
Promotional perspectives must also be properly matched with product, price, and distribution perspectives.
In addition to the strategic issues mentioned above, this chapter discusses strategies in advertising and personal selling. The advertising strategies examined are media strategy and copy strategy. Strategic matters explored in the area of personal selling are those concerned with designing a selling program and supervising salespeople. The formulation of each strategy is illustrated with reference to examples from the literature.

Tags: promotional