Table of Contents:-
Nature of Promotion
The nature of promotion refers to those inherent qualities and fundamental aspects that define how promotional activities function in the marketing context. The success of promotional efforts relies on understanding the purpose, strategies, methods, and overall dynamics of a specific target audience. By understanding the nature of promotion, businesses can make informed decisions and effectively use promotional techniques to reach their marketing and business objectives.
The nature of promotion is as follows:Â
- Drives Action
- Creates Awareness
- Attention Grabbing
- Creates Interest
- Informative
1. Drives Action
The primary aim of all marketing activities is to generate sales. An effective promotional strategy grabs the attention of potential consumers, creates interest in their minds, provides enough information about the product to help them make a purchase decision, and ultimately induces them to take action, i.e., purchase the product.
2. Creates Awareness
Promotional activities aim to expose enough target consumers to the messages, creating awareness about the product. To achieve this goal, marketers choose promotion media capable of reaching the desired number of target consumers. Marketers can use print, electronic, outdoor, or online media based on the product’s nature and the target audience’s characteristics.
3. Attention Grabbing
Promotional campaigns capture the potential customers’ attention and introduce them to the product. Customers often need to be made aware of new products, and it’s through promotional activities that they can learn about the new product, its features, and its utility.
4. Creates Interest
More than capturing the customer’s attention is needed; the objective of promotion is to cultivate interest among potential customers, encouraging them to delve deeper into the product. Promotional messages should underscore the product’s capacity to fulfill customer needs, thus capturing and maintaining their interest.
5. Informative
To establish a connection between the product and its needs, the target markets should receive information about the product’s functions and characteristics. The primary purpose of promotion is to provide prospective product buyers with the necessary information and details. The information provided to the customers should also enable them to distinguish the product from those of competitors.
Some more nature of promotion are as follows:
- Customers
- Message
- Sensory Appeal
- Persuasion
1) Customers
Promotion without an audience either does not exist or lacks logic. The purpose of company or product promotion is to appeal to the targeted customers. Promoters not only need an audience for a promotional message, but they also need to efficiently reach the right people. This makes choosing the right promotional option and the right media critical to success. For example, paying for advertisements allows one more control over who sees or hears the message than relying on PR opportunities like feature stories.
2) Message
Promotions are, by definition, messages. Whether one pays for the delivery or uses other means, they convey a message to the audience. In an advertisement, the goal is generally either to enhance the brand’s value by highlighting company or product benefits or to immediately attract customers through sales promotions and incentives. PR is used to foster goodwill with the public and to announce new events or activities to the community.
3) Sensory Appeal
Effective promotions have sensory appeal. The more senses the message appeals to, the greater impact it generally has. For example, in television ads, one can not only describe benefits but also showcase products through demonstrations and stories. Using social media or direct marketing, promoters can interact directly with customers to understand their problems and needs and address them with tailored messages. In-store promotions can even engage the sense of taste and smell, such as by offering food samples.
4) Persuasion
Promotions, especially those that are paid for, such as advertising, are used to persuade customers to take action. Initially, businesses aim to create awareness and encourage customers to take their product or service offerings seriously. As time progresses, promoters transition to building favourable associations with their brands, attracting buying activity, and ultimately fostering loyal, emotional attachments from core customers. Persuasion is important for success in competitive markets where all companies are competing for the attention of customers with their value propositions.
Objectives of PromotionÂ
Objectives of Promotion are as follows:
- Leads to Behaviour Modification
- Objective to Inform
- Objective to Persuade
- Objective To Remind
- Specific Objectives
1) Leads to Behaviour Modification
Promotion seeks to:
i)Â Modify behaviour and thoughts (for example, persuading others to choose Coca-Cola over Pepsi).
ii)Â Reinforcing existing behaviour, such as persuading customers to continue consuming Coca-Cola once they have started.
The marketer hopes to create a favourable image for itself and also to motivate purchases of the company’s goods and services.
2) Objective to Inform
All promotional communications are crafted to disseminate information about the company’s products or services to the broader market. Informative promotion is more common in the early stages of a product’s life cycle. It is necessary to boost primary demand. The initial requirement for the customer is information about the product, its features, etc. This helps the customer in making a more informed purchasing decision.
3) Objective to Persuade
It is designed to encourage purchases. However, firms aim to create a positive long-term image rather than an immediate purchase. The persuasion objective becomes the primary focus when the product reaches the growth stage of its product life cycle because, at that time, both consumer acquisition and consumer retention objectives must be addressed simultaneously.
4) Objective to Remind
Promotion is used to maintain the product brand name in the public’s consciousness and is employed during the maturity stage of the product life cycle. It is used to refresh the memory of the target customers, assuming that they are already familiar with the product.
5) Specific Objectives
The promotion aims to change the product demand pattern by behaviour modification, informing, persuading, and reminding. In Economic terms, the primary objectives of promotion is to modify the location and shape of the demand curve, which means shifting the demand curve upward or effecting a temporary change.
You May Also Like: