Mitra Ferdows, Business Management graduate from the United States Loyola Marymount University and consultant in start-ups, expresses her point of view on product promotional advantages and strategies. Mitra Ferdows stated that understanding the significance of promotional and marketing strategies helps a business develop in a number of ways. Business promoting is an active process which has to be closely scrutinized for obtaining the best results. The manpower can be utilized to the fullest to come up with strategies to promote a business and let it flourish. Promotional strategies and marketing are closely linked as marketing of your brand or product entails various aspects of manufacturing, promoting and selling products. Promotion is a key element in conveying the benefits or impression of a product or service to the customers. In fact well-designed marketing and promotional strategies will ensure long-term success, draw more customers and ensure profitability for businesses.
Mitra Ferdows added that promotion is the voice through which a business is heard in the market and made clear to the audience in the ever-so-competitive market. It is the image by which a business is known. There are many platforms such as television, radio, shopping outlets, billboards, magazines and social media to promote a business or a brand. These platforms implement various promotional strategies to promote and market your business depending on the goals, objectives and priorities. Without promotions, a business would not be able to garner the attention of pre-occupied customers. Promoting a brand will help businesses in many ways. First and foremost, it helps increase brand awareness and provides appropriate information. Promoting a brand leads to spreading information about a company or brand. In addition, promoting will increase Customer Traffic as well as building sales and profits.
Mitra Ferdows pointed out the importance of promoting by focusing on customer traffic which will increase following brand promotion using various tools even by offering free samples. It helps customers know more about your product or service and be more interested. She stated that these days when social media is the most effective tool on the online platform, promotional strategies need to extend beyond conventional means of conveying messages. If a company fails to promote a product, especially a new one, it probably will not gain much attention. According to Harward Business School some 30,000 new consumer products are released annually but as many as 95% of those products will fail to make significant sales. Similarly, there are numerous cases where a product has no flaws and is a perfect fit for customers but unluckily it fails due to poor product promotion.
Mitra Ferdows outlined some product promotion strategies like contests, social media promotions, mail order marketing, product giveaway and samples, point-of-sale promotion and end-cap marketing, customer referral incentive program, causes and charity, branded promotional gifts, customer appreciation events, and after-sale customer surveys.
Mitra Ferdows redefined the concept and stated that product promotion means disseminating the information about the product line, brand and company to the perspective buyers with the intention of generating sales and developing a brand loyalty. She considered promotion as the fourth element of the marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion) being a mode of communication that a business adopts for achieving a set of objectives.
Promoting helps to provide information about the availability of features and uses of the product to the perspective buyers. Furthermore, it stimulates demand for a product by creating awareness and interest among customers. By creating the brand loyalty, promoting helps to differentiate the product from the competitor’s product and by highlighting the importance and features of the product sales stabilization will be gained.
Mitra Ferdows stressed that basically, there are four types of promotion that companies adopt: Informative promotion, persuasive promotion, reminder promotion, and buyer behavior modifications. Persuading customers to buy is the primary purpose of promotion. Advertising, personal selling and sales promotion are among the many sales activities. The importance of product promotion lies in the fact that no firm can survive in the market without reaching the customers effectively and cannot be able to win the competitions with other market players if no unique benefits are offered to the customers. There are several types of promotions such as above line promotions (like advertising, press releases, schemes, and discounts) and below the line promotions (trade discounts, freebies, awards, etc.).
Mitra Ferdows emphasized the importance of promotion mix and stated that promotion mix is the integration of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations and direct marketing. Marketers need to have a balanced blend of these promotional tools. She noticed that through advertising, the marketer makes an effort to build a pull strategy. The customer is instigated to try the product at least once. Personal selling which is the traditional form among promoting tools is targeted at influencing the customer to make a purchase by directly visiting them but in the modern world of business it seems rather unreachable. Mitra Ferdows pointed out that sales promotion-the short term incentive given to the customers to have an increased sale for a given period- focuses on the increased short-term profits and attracts both the existing and the new customers by offering discounts, coupons, payback offers, freebies, etc. she expressed that public relations is of paramount importance as the marketers try to build a favorable image by creating relations with the general public (e.g. customers, employees, suppliers, distributors, shareholders, government and society as a whole) either directly or indirectly. In addition, through publicity which is a form of public relations a company brings newsworthy information to the public.
Mitra Ferdows concluded that nowadays by virtue of technology, it has been made possible for the companies to reach customers without any intermediaries or paid medium using direct marketing tools such as emails, text messages, fax, etc. Thus, using any tool of the promotion mix based on the overall objective of the enterprise as well as the nature of the product/service, the companies can take advantage of the promotion mix to move their business forward and be able to compete in the market.
