Supermarkets commonly use sales promotions.
Promotion includes a business' activities to communicate with prospective customers about a product to convince them to use it. This includes newspaper, radio and television advertising, press releases, billboards and websites. What matters the most in promotion is the promotional objectives, available resources and the company's philosophy. Effective promotion persuades the customer to relate to the product being marketed.
Sales Promotion
There is a sales promotion in almost every shop you enter. That promotion technique is not only intended to give value for your money, but to make you leave the store happy and return later, possibly with family or friends. Sales promotion involves short-term techniques -- incentives -- to encourage customers to use a product. One technique commonly used in sales promotion is the use of time-limited coupons to woo customers to purchase a product while the offer is valid. This technique, according to Inc. Magazine, introduces new products, clears out inventories, attracts traffic, and aims to lift sales temporarily.
Advertising
Advertising aims to generate increased consumption of a product or service through branding. Mostly, it involves paid promotions through television and radio, print publications, the Internet and other media outlets. The promotion technique includes the name of the product and the value it offers the targeted customer. The name or image of the product appears repeatedly in a bid to woo consumers to the product or service. Businesses will spend about $760 billion on promotions by 2020, according to a Jack Myers "Media Business Report" released in February 2011. This includes all Internet display ads, search tools, interactive TV, video, digital assets of traditional media and mobile and social media.
Public Relations
This is publicity using third-party sources -- particularly the news media -- to spread information about a product. You can issue a press release that will promote your product in the media when quoted favorably. Public relations is almost free advertising because you do not pay the news media directly to report on your product. PR aims to generate positive publicity for your company as well as your product. The integrity of your company plays a central role in marketing. For instance, consumers are increasingly shopping with concern for the planet. Was the environment taken into account when manufacturing your product? If not, a customer might decide to shop elsewhere. You should not only care about profit, but the welfare of the environment and the community as well.
Personal Selling
A sophisticated product or service might require personal selling. This technique involves personal contact between sales representatives and those who make purchasing decisions, or consumers. It involves face-to-face or telephone promotion. The advantage of personal selling is that the sales person instantly clears any doubts the prospective customer might have. The other advantage of this technique is that the message can be altered if the desired behavior from the targeted customer does not occur. The drawback is that it is far more costly than other promotion techniques, based on high cost per action. CPA is a yardstick of success for promotion spending. Person-to-person contact is expensive because of the money required to support sales staff. According to knowthis.com, it costs around $300 in some industries each time a salesperson contacts a potential customer.
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