Brand promotion mix is the company’s total marketing communication programme. It consists of certain promotion tools that company uses to inform, persuade, remind and influence its customers. The four major tools are used for brand promotion are Advertising, Personal Selling, Sales Promotion and Publicity. We explain two tools, i.e., Sales Promotion and Publicity, (i) Sales Promotion : Sales promotion refers to those short-term incentives that encourage or attract customers to buy the brand without any delay. Advertising provides reasons why to buy a particular brand.
Whereas, sales promotion offers reasons to buy a brand “now”, i.e., immediately and without any delay. Because if you do not buy “now”, then you lose the incentives which are, in fact, available only for a specified short period. Of all the methods of brand promotion, sales promotion is the only method that makes use of offering incentives. It is a type of non personal selling that supports the advertising. All brand promotion activities which do not clearly fall into advertising personal selling or publicity, are included in sales promotion.
The basic goal of sales promotion is to increase the volume of “immediate” sales or to clear the stocks lying for sometime in the shop or store. The various types of incentives used for this purpose are : percent-off, special discount, free gifts, free extra quantity in the pack, three for two offer (take three, pay for two), coupons, contest etc.
(a) Public Relations and Publicity : Public relations means firm’s communication and good relations with its various publics. Good relations are built in several ways, such as: by obtaining favourable publicity, building a good ‘corporate image’, handling or keeping off unfavourable rumors or events, etc. The various publics of a firm include : customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, government and its agencies, investors, financiers, the society in which it operates etc.
Public relations activities are typically designed by the firm to build or maintain a favourable image for the firm and favourable relationship with its various publics. Use of media is not necessary for good public relations. Quick and correct disposal of customer complaints may be an effective tool for creating customer relations.
