Promotion

Video Transcription

Hello and welcome to this tutorial on promotion. Now as always with these tutorials, please feel free to fast forward, pause, or rewind as many times as you need to get the most out of the time that you'll spend here. So let me ask you a question about promotion. How do I tell people about my product? What are the ways that manufacturers and sellers and companies promote products to you? How do you find out about a product that you are willing or want to buy that fulfills one of those wants or needs?

Well, during this lesson we're going to be looking at promotion and its place in the marketing mix. We're also going to be looking at the media mix. The key term for this lesson is going to be "media mix."

So let's look at promotion and its place in the marketing mix. Now it's part of the four P's-- the promotion, price, place, and product-- that marketing mix we use to sell a product. What we're doing is promoting that product, that good or service or idea. And it's done through what's called a promotion mix. Now promotion mixes can be things like direct selling, where I'm selling it directly to the consumer, or through merchandising or point of sale displays. And point of sales displays are those impulse items that we see right next to the register, or merchandising those sales activities that we use in order to promote a product, to convince people that it fulfills that need better at a given price than our competitors.

And some of the ways we might promote could be simply knowledge about the product. Or we may tell our consumers that hey, there's been a change in price, look at the new price and how much better or how much more value I'm offering you for this particular product. These are all types of promotion.

And we're going to hit several different ones. We're not going to rely on just one type of promotion. We're going to mix that promotion with a lot of different things.

So media mix, how do I define media mix? Media mix are the various communication forms that can be used by an organization to inform or promote its offerings. So let's take a look at this a little more deeply.

With media mix, we're primarily concerned with advertising or advertising media. And there's lots of different types of media-- internet for instance, or radio ads, television ads, point of sales displays, signs, direct calling, or cold calling-- at the house that telemarketing thing we all love so much. These are all ways to advertise a different product. And you'll see companies typically hit a variety of different advertising media in order to get their product message out.

We talked about mix and matching a little bit, but one of the things that's been on the rise a lot lately is the internet and something called data mining. Now data mining is simply understanding who it is that's looking at my product or buying my product. If I can define who is buying my product through things like rewards cards that track what I purchase and some of my demographic data, I can then target my promotion or my media and the internet in order to hit that target market specifically the people who I'm going to want to sell to.

Also browser history, one of the reasons why you see companies collect browsing data. You ever notice that those pop up ads just miraculously suddenly appear for things that I've searched for recently in order to let me know about a product that's out there? That's kind of how that works. We also have personal selling in the media mix, that face to face selling, getting someone or a salesperson out to your door or to you on the sales floor in order to sell and inform you about a particular product or service that I want to tell you about.

Some other things within the media mix are sales promotions. Hey, we're having a sale this week. And you'll see it in the paper, these newspaper ads that tell me about these sales that are coming up, coupons to get me to come into the store and try it. Or sampling a product in order to get me to try and see just how good it really is and hopefully get me to actually buy that.

Other things you'll see are point of purchase. Hey, have you signed up for our rewards cards? I can save you more. Have you signed up for our special discount club? It's only $20 a year and you get these wonderful coupon books. Rebates if I buy something, other displays within a store to tell me about a particular item that's on sale or I want to promote and sell to you.

Also trade shows or premiums, getting that product out there in a very, very public way. First it's at a trade show. An auto show, all of the car companies come out with their newest and greatest concept cars and latest models in order to get the media buzz started about that particular product and hopefully generate interest within the marketplace.

Now PR, or public relations, remember we defined that as where we're not really worried so much about paying for a product, we're looking to develop good will. This can be a big part of the marketing mix. And typically it's going to fall under promotions for some companies. So when I'm talking about doing that PR or getting my brand, or my particular product out there, getting it under promotions and the four P's can give me simply one more tool in my media mix or my promotion mix in order to tell the customer about my product, people that I may not have reached before, or simply reinforcing those people that I've already contacted about my product.

So what did we talk about today? Well, we looked at promotion and its place within the marketing mix. We also looked at the media mix, that mix of different media and advertising, all the different things that I want to put together to hit as wide a market as I can for my target audience. And also to repeat that message that this product is for sale and it's a great price, hopefully generating interest and ultimately sales.

I want to thank you, as always, for spending some time with me today. And I hope you folks have a great day.