In marketing, promotion refers to any type of marketing communication used to inform target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or issue, persuasively. It helps marketers to create a distinctive place in customers' mind, it can be either a cognitive or emotional route. The aim of promotion is to increase brand awareness, create interest, generate sales or create brand loyalty. It is one of the basic elements of the market mix, which includes the four Ps, i.e., product, price, place, and promotion.
Promotion is also one of the elements in the promotional mix or promotional plan. These are personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, publicity, word of mouth and may also include event marketing, exhibitions and trade shows. A promotional plan specifies how much attention to pay to each of the elements in the promotional mix, and what proportion of the budget should be allocated to each element.
Promotion covers the methods of communication that a marketer uses to provide information about its product. Information can be both verbal and visual.
Etymology and usage
The term promotion derives from the Old French, promocion meaning to "move forward", "push onward" or to "advance in rank or position" which in turn, comes from the Latin, promotionem meaning "a moving forward". The word entered the English language in the 14th century.
The use of the term promotion to refer to "advertising or publicity" is very modern and was first recorded in 1925. It may be a contraction of a related term, sales promotion, which is one element in the larger set of tools used in marketing communications. In turn, it is often further abbreviated to 'promo' as a verb or a noun, as in "Barbara Stanwyck cancelled out her Chicago movie promo date here, announced for mid-month"
The terms, promotion and marketing communications can be used synonymously, but in practice, the latter is more widely used.
Purpose
There are three objectives of promotion. These are:
- To present information to consumers and others.
- To increase demand.
- To differentiate a product.
The purpose of a promotion and thus its promotional plan can have a wide range, including: sales increases, new product acceptance, creation of brand equity, positioning, competitive retaliations or creation of a corporate image. and at trade shows. Campaigns may also use promotional merchandise as complementary giveaways to support awareness and recall.
Digital media
Digital media, which includes Internet, social networking and social media sites, is a modern way for brands to interact with consumers as it releases news, information and advertising from the technological limits of print and broadcast infrastructures. Digital media is currently the most effective way for brands to reach their consumers on a daily basis. Over 2.7 billion people are online globally, which is about 40% of the world's population. 67% of all Internet users globally use social media.
Mass communication has led to modern marketing strategies to continue focusing on brand awareness, large distributions and heavy promotions.
Personalizing advertisements is another strategy that can work well for brands, as it can increase the likelihood that the brand will be personified by the consumer. Personalization increases click-through intentions when data has been collected about the consumer.
Brands must navigate the line between effectively promoting their content to consumers on social media and becoming too invasive in consumers' lives. Vivid Internet ads that include devices such as animation might increase a user's initial attention to the ad. However, this may be seen as a distraction to the user if they are trying to absorb a different part of the site such as reading text. Additionally, when brands make the effort of overtly collecting data about their consumers and then personalizing their ads to them, the consumer's relationship with the advertisements, following this data collection, is frequently positive. However, when data is covertly collected, consumers can quickly feel like the company betrayed their trust.