Definition of Promotion & Methods of Promotion
Promotion: Methods of Promotion
Promotion is literally the process of communicating messages to act customers, getting information to the customers they want them to know now when communicating to customers.
One of the things we’re trying to achieve is to boost the branding of our product. When we try to communicate messages to customers, there are two different approaches that we might explore, one known as above the line methods of promotion and other numbers below the line methods of promotion as well, and you’ll see from the diagram behind me.
Above the Line Methods of Promotion.
Above the line, promotion involved making use of paid media outlets to communicate with our customers. When making use of the media like TV, radio, and newspapers, we are paying to get our message is out there into the public domain, and hopefully at customers will find them.
Below the Line Method of Promotion
Below the line method of promotion, or sometimes pray for being slightly more targeted and getting more directly to your customers.
But they’re making use of non-media, non-paid media avenues to try and reach our customers with the messages that we want them to hear.
Methods of promotion
There are two methods of promotion, above the line promotion and below the line promotion. Above the line, promotion is the promotion is using media outlets. It could be TV channels, radio stations, newspapers, and magazines could even be things like billboards as we’re moving around towns and cities and urban areas to try and pass messages about our organization to consumers.
It could be messages about new product releases. It could be about price changes that could be about other aspects of our marketing that we want customers to know about, but advertising uses those paid media outlets.
One of the biggest perks of that is, of course, that they have a mass appeal. A TV advert, for example, can be seen by millions of people. Even local radio efforts will be heard by thousands of people, potentially every 15 to 20 minutes. It does have vast coverage as a method of promotion.
One of the criticisms of advertising as a promotion method that it is not targeted, but we live in an age when many TV stations are targeting different market segments, different market niches.
Maybe that companies can advertise through radio stations through TV stations through magazines directly consumed by the customers that the business is eager to communicate with. So really is a robust promotion method, but of course, it’s also a very costly method of promotion. But lots of big organizations that are very keen to build their brand name like to use it as one of their sources of promotion.
Above the line promotions
Here are a few Above the line promotions:
Sales Promotion.
The first one is what is known as a sales promotion. Informally, we might call them special offers. Giving customers a percentage extra free knocking at the percentage of our product’s price for a limited period may be doing things like by one of our products, and you get another one-half price or another one for free.
These are short-term sales promotions we might only use for weeks or months to make our product in the short term or attractive to customers than it might ordinarily be. We’re trying, perhaps attract new customers to try the product. We’re really sending out messages to our customers that this is something that’s too tempting to turn down.
This might be something you want to try for the first time, maybe something you want to stockpile if you’re a normal purchase or of it to boost sales for a short period.
Direct Mail
The next method of below the line promotion is direct mail. Traditionally, that would be targeting consumers with things that we’d send them through the post.
- It could be letters.
- It could be fliers.
- It could be pamphlets.
- Leaflets.
- It could be anything that contains information we want our customers to know; traditionally it, could be sent through the post,
Businesses sent customers emails with data and information that we want to know and understand about our organization.
A compelling method of promotion can be personal selling. So sometimes we might send sales reps actually door to door.
Big energy companies might actually get wraps to go through different towns, cities, villages going door to door, trying, turning, and knock on customers’ doors.
Seldom the product getting to sign up for the product into switch suppliers could be a very powerful method of promotion, gives customers the chance to ask questions, and engage in dialogue with the business’s representation.
It could be a sports team or franchise that could even be something like awards and music festivals. Still, you are trying to associate your product with the success and credibility of another brand’s exposure.
Merchandising
Merchandising could be promoting your business through the production of paraphernalia with your business, logo, or name.
It could be things like golfing umbrellas, hats, clothes, and pens, or other stationery bits. But you put your business logo on there.
You put your businesses packed, contact details on there, and as people use and consume those products, it just spreads messages about your business and its existence.
A more technical explanation on a different explanation is what merchandising is: it involves promotions known as the point of sales promotions.
Some books, merchandising, are described as promotions that are usually in-store that are meant to attract customers to buy your products, actually, at the point of sale.
For example, supermarkets will think very carefully, carefully about our products they will have at the tills, trying to get consumers to make last-minute purchasing decisions, adding extra things to their shopping.
Another merchandising element is where your products are available from its store, whether they’re arranged at eye level, whether they’re harder to see, whether there is a more prominent place or whether they’re a little bit farther away.
Some large organizations strike up contracts in relationships with some big retailers to make sure that their products are sold in really prominent places in the stores.
There’s the manufacturer who likes to make sure that all of its products are sold together in one block to create what it calls a purple patch of promotion.
Below the Line Promotion
It is a public relation, frequently referred to as PR, which tries to use the media but not paid me to do this time.
It is trying to use free media, getting people to think sympathetically about the organization, getting people to think positively about the brand.
Whenever a business does something ethically corporately socially responsible, even if it’s just holding press conferences to announce new products that customers come by the media might be interested in, they don’t have to pay them to communicate this message.
Print media might be keen to fill column inches, TV Medium; Radio Meter might be keen to do news items about things that are going on in the organization because, remember, businesses are newsworthy.
People are interested in what businesses are doing, so public relations try and get the media to cover things that we are doing that will positively reflect the organization.
Like when football clubs, football teams are hosting events where they’re going into primary schools and doing sports activities with children’s classes. It just so happens that there’ll be a news crew there covering it, interviewing the players about how much they’ve loved working with the primary school children, therefore, create a positive impression. Getting people to think favorably of that organization of that brand.
Summary
There’s are different methods of above the line promotions making use of paid media but low the line promotions, making use of non-media sources.