Marketing Promotion Strategies: Driving Sales and Brand Image

Posted on Sep 5, 2025 in Marketing

Topic 6: Promotion in Marketing

Promotion is one of the 4 P’s of marketing. It encompasses activities designed to inform, persuade, and convince individuals to purchase a product, subscribe to a belief, or support a cause. The primary goal is to translate a company’s value proposition into compelling messages that modify the brand image.

Communication Program Components

  • Strategic Intent: Mission and Market
  • Strategic Execution: Message and Media
  • Strategic Impact: Money and Measurement

The overarching goal of promotion is to influence consumer behavior, ultimately leading to a purchase.

Mission: The Path to Purchase

The promotional journey follows these stages: Awareness, Knowledge, Liking, Preference, Conviction, and Purchase. This can be summarized as influencing consumers to Think, Feel, and Do.

The company always acts as the sender of the promotional message. Sender credibility is built upon both cognitive and affective factors.

Market: Understanding Your Audience

Key market characteristics include age, sex, lifestyle, media exposure, and psychographic information.

Message: Crafting Persuasive Communication

Messages can be emotional, humorous, traditional, informational, or transformational. Key considerations include:

  • What to Say: The theme or argument of the message.
  • Structure: Whether the message is explicit or implicit, and the attention span it requires.
  • Format Code: How the message is conveyed is crucial for persuasion.

Media: Channels for Reaching Consumers

Promotional messages are delivered through various channels:

  • Personal Channels: Direct communication between two or more people, such as company personnel, word-of-mouth (WOM), and buzz marketing.
  • Impersonal Channels: Messages transmitted without direct contact, including mass media, online platforms, in-store media, merchandise, and public relations events.
  • Conventional Media: Television, radio, and print.
  • Unconventional Media: Direct marketing, promotional games, street marketing, and point-of-sale displays.
  • Outbound Marketing: TV, radio, websites, and printed advertisements.
  • Inbound Marketing: Digital marketing and social media.
  • Push Strategies: Directly approaching the customer through direct selling and showrooms.
  • Pull Strategies: Attracting customers through WOM and media advertisements.

Money: Budgeting for Promotion

This refers to the financial investment in promotional activities.

Measurement: Assessing Promotional Impact

Return on Investment (ROI) is calculated using two primary metrics: the cost of the promotional activity and the outcomes generated. Outcomes are typically measured in profit, but for this discussion, we will use revenue.

Marketing Communications Mix

  • Advertising: A non-personal, paid form of communication by an identified company to present and promote ideas, products, or services.
    Positive Effects: Short-term acceptance of offers, stabilization or increase of sales, anticipation of growth, or delay of decline.
    Negative Effects: Promotion may not be profitable, can deceive or abuse consumers, and techniques may be used repeatedly.
  • Sales Promotions: A collection of mostly short-term incentive tools designed to stimulate quicker or greater purchase of particular products or services (e.g., free trials, samples, coupons).
  • Public Relations: Programs designed to promote or protect a company’s image or its products, managing successful relations with key publics (e.g., sponsorships, magazines, foundations, social events, VIPs).
  • Personal Selling: An interpersonal tool of marketing communication aimed at creating and transmitting customer value by attracting and maintaining customer relationships.
  • Product Placement: The inclusion of brands, products, or logos within media content like TV shows. Placement can be integrated into a scene or passive (simply shown without interaction).
  • Direct Marketing: A promotional method that presents information about a company, product, or service directly to the target customer without an advertising middleman. It is a targeted form of marketing presenting information of potential interest to a likely buyer (e.g., brochures, catalogs, flyers, newsletters, postcards, messages).
  • Digital Marketing: The marketing of products or services using digital technologies, primarily on the internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and other digital mediums. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is necessary for online brand exposure and competitive positioning. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) increases visibility and drives targeted traffic through sponsored links. Influencer marketing and social media are key components.
  • Unconventional Marketing: Guerrilla marketing involves creative, low-cost methods used by small businesses for temporary product or service promotion.