Review of Promotion Mix Elements - Research Paper Example

Honey and Honey Products of the of the Contents Review of Promotion Mix Elements 3 Advertisement 4 Public Relations 5 Sales promotion 5 Promotion Management 5 Interpersonal Relationship 6 Sales strategy 6 Hiring and recruiting policies 7 Web Strategy 7 Direct marketing Strategy 8 Direct Marketing Campaign and follow-up plan 8 References 9 Review of Promotion Mix Elements An effective promotion mix is a strategic combination of promotional elements, which includes advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion (Rafiq & Ahmed, 1995). The major USP of Honey and Honey Products is its wide assortment of honey variants as well as strategic pricing that is affordable to all target segments. Overall goal of the promotional strategy is to increase brand equity among consumers and increase sales and revenue for short-term as well as brand trust in long-term. The various phases of promotion can be related to those stages through which customers make purchase and repurchase decisions (Ferrell & Hartline, 2010). The popularly used model is AIDA model, which includes four stages, namely awareness, interest, desire and action. These four stages occur when a consumer is confronted with some form of advertisement. Honey and Honey Products are basically in their introduction phase. This provides a good opportunity for the honey company to make a long-term impression on their consumer’s mind through positive brand building activities. Advertising and media relations will focus on building awareness and long-term relationship with consumers, while sales promotions and direct marketing activities will help in generating sales and revenues. Table 1: Promotional elements in AIDA model (Source: Author’s Creation) Advertisement Advertisement will consist of print, television and outdoor advertisements. Print advertisement will be included in popular cooking and home magazines, targeting women. Television advertisement will include a 30 second ad, which will be featured during prime time on popular local channels. The ad will be a combination of testimonies as well as information, where features and USP of the products and brand will be discussed. Outdoor advertisement includes billboards and flyers of Honey and Honey Products at different strategic places, such as, malls, shopping centres, food market as well as health and fitness gyms. According to the diagram above, it is evident that advertisement plays a significant role during initial stages of consumer decision making, i.e. awareness and interest. Also, good and effective advertisement will help in establishing positive brand equity and brand recognition. Public Relations Public relation tools will be used for the publicity of new products. It will help in placing products among target consumers through press and media, thereby increasing consumer awareness and knowledge about Honey and Honey Products. Another strategy adopted by the company is customer satisfaction through 24x7 phone lines. This will not only solve consumer complaints and queries, but will also help in generating useful and critical feedback from customers. Public relations tactics, also, includes issue sponsorship and event sponsorship, which will boost overall brand strength among consumers. Online public relations will include frequent promotions of annual reports, newsletters, AV presentations and magazines. As depicted in the diagram, public relations are also a long-term strategy for brand building. However, regular press releases and publications in various magazines and newspapers will act as a constant brand reminder and will boost overall promotional strategies. Sales promotion Sales promotion is a short-term promotional strategy, implemented to boost sales and revenue as well as maintain a constant customer flow in grocery departments and retail outlets. This will include discounts and freebies offer. Sales promotion will also feature providing additional discounts to regular and valued customers as well as those who refer the products to other potential customers. In order to enhance sales promotion, Honey and Honey Products will include regular contests and product samples, sweepstakes, coupons, exhibitions and trade-ins. Sales promotion techniques can be used in the last stage, when significant interest and desire has already been generated in the consumer. Thus, the company should introduce promotional activities, after the brand is established. Promotion Management Management of promotional activities is of immense importance as it ensures maximum return on investment. The promotional management will be divided into two categories: in-house promotional activities and outsourced promotional activities. In-house activities: These will include direct marketing and personal selling activities, which will be handled by the company officials. It includes tracking of the consumer feedback and trends regarding the company as well as honey products. Outsourced activities: Outsourced promotional activities will include outdoor, print and television advertisement, for which external agencies will be hired. Sales promotion activities will require the firm to introduce CRM software in its operations. The company can also hire external agencies to manage the sales operations activities. Interpersonal Relationship The objective of any marketing communication plan is to create and build awareness of a brand, business or an organisation. Every organisation wants their message to reach the target customers without being distorted, which can only be achieved through proper and effective use of communication media. Substantial research needs to be done, before creating a marketing communication plan (Parasuraman, Grewal & Krishnan, 2006). As discussed earlier, interpersonal marketing communications plays an important role for newly established companies (Marieke, 2004). In case of Honey and Honey Products, consumer awareness is low as the company is in its initial growth phase. Hence, direct marketing as well as personal communication will enhance the overall reach and penetration of the brand’s products. This will also increase interpersonal relationship between the company and its customers, thereby building a healthy relationship. Sales strategy Sales strategy of Honey and Honey Products includes personal as well as secondary selling. Personal selling will include a set of sales professionals involved in door-to-door marketing. Sales professionals will be given a daily and monthly target and external distributors will be hired to distribute products in various target regions. Sales Structure: The sales departments are handled by a country head, who controls overall sales for the entire country. Under the country head, eight zone sales managers will work to supervise the various regions. They are followed by regional sales managers, handling sales in various regions. Area sales managers handle smaller areas with one region and control a set of sales officers, sales executives and sales professionals. Hiring and recruiting policies In order to hire and recruit effective sales team, external HR can be hired. The recruitment policies include job advertisements in various job portals, company websites as well as social websites. Selected candidates will go through various stages of hiring, such as, written test, group discussion, psychometric test and personal interview. Finally, selected candidates will undergo training for a month, before starting their field work. The company plans to hire a mix of new talents as well as experienced professionals in order to facilitate fast and strategic growth in organisational goals. Web Strategy In this current social environment, technology and digital media has taken an important spot. Online marketing has, thus, become an integral and necessary part of any communication strategy. For Honey and Honey Products, a strategic website will be developed. Keywords will help to recognize exact requirements from the customer. The site view will help in navigating the entire website. In order to increase traffic, the website will be connected to various social media sites, such as, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Authentic information as well as attractive and vibrant colours of the website will draw attention. The website will also consist of catalogues with all product information and can be downloaded freely. The overall objective of this website strategy is to drive customer traffic for increased brand awareness. This will supplement the ongoing promotional plan for Honey and Honey Products as well as increase the level of penetration among potential and future customers. Inspite of containing information about all major products and services offered by the company, the website will foreground a clean look. Any customer query or feedback will be handled either through direct mail or telephonic calls. The overall communication objective is to build positive brand equity among current and potential customers and web communication strategy will aid the alignment of organisational as well as marketing communication objectives (Baker, Jones & Nichols, 1994). Direct marketing Strategy Direct marketing can be considered as an important promotional step, while establishing a new company. The budget for direct marketing strategy will be 25 percent of the total marketing strategy. The major advantage of direct marketing, in overall marketing plan, is maximum reach and penetration into the target market. Direct Marketing Campaign and follow-up plan It also ensures that the organizational message is communicated without being distorted. The major direct marketing tools used by the company are personal mails, flyers as well as personal interaction with consumers. Honey and Honey Products can launch monthly interaction programs through video conferencing on various social media sites, such as, Facebook. The company can also introduce a regular feedback process, either through questionnaire surveys or telephonic calls. Catalogue distribution to customers, visiting various retail outlets and hyper markets, will also help in maintaining constant awareness about the brand (Williams & Cutis, 2012). Apart from the above, constant monitoring and inspection activities will be introduced to ensure smooth flow of direct marketing activities. Budget optimization will be evaluated by calculating the return on investment at regular intervals. In order to enhance productivity of the internal members, regular training programs will be conducted in areas such as, operations and service management. References Baker, H., Jones, W & Nichols, M. (1994). Using core competences to develop new business. Long Range Planning, 27, 13-27. Ferrell, O. C. & Hartline, M. D. (2010). Marketing strategy. 5th ed. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Marieke, D. (2004). Consumer behaviour and culture: Consequences for global marketing and advertising. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Parasuraman, A., Grewal, D. & Krishnan, R. (2006). Marketing Research. Stanford: Cengage Learning. Rafiq, M. & Ahmed, P.K. (1995). Using the 7Ps as a generic marketing mix: An exploratory survey of UK and European marketing academics. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 13(9), 4 – 15. Williams, J. & Cutis, T. (2012). Marketing management in practice. London: Routledge. Read More