What is included in the promotional mix?

Ever tried preparing a hamburger following an online tutorial before?
Firstly, you watch videos to understand the grilling techniques and ingredients required. And if all the ingredients are not handy, you go grocery shopping.

After crushing all the crushable, slicing all the sliceable, and mixing all the mixable, you allow for grilling.

A few minutes or hours later, your hamburger is ready; but after taking your first bite, you realize it’s not yet servable over a bun.

Something is off. You begin to wonder, what’s wrong? Maybe I didn’t use the right ingredients, or the blend was off, or I over grilled it…

Regardless of where or how you made a mistake, please don’t beat yourself up; it happens to the best.

Nobody gets a perfect score from their first hamburger grilling experience.
And so too with marketing.

The promotion mix is all about promoting your products or services over multiple communication channels, repeatedly adding and eliminating unnecessary elements until you get the perfect marketing blend.

Promotion mix marketing combines multiple marketing tools to attract sales and build relationships.

Imagine for a minute that you just launched your ecommerce store. You intend to market your product to as many people as possible.

But on launching the store, you discover that your target audience is everywhere— from the stockbroker with two kids to feed to the priest with parishioners to tend to—meaning you can’t promote your store with one-size-fits-all marketing strategies.

Won’t you pause to rethink? Sure, you will.

Marketers use promotion mix marketing when considering;

  • Whom to target,
  • Highlighting what to say about a product,
  • And identifying suitable marketing channels.

Promotion mix marketing refers to the different marketing tools, strategies, and platforms used to target a particular demographic and influence buying decisions.

Importance of Promotion Mix

If you want to capture the attention of your target audience, educate them about the unique characteristics of your products & services, or call them to action through a swift combination of communication strategies, try promotion mix marketing.

Five Reasons Promotion Mix Marketing is Essential

1. Promotion mix marketing allows business owners to run targeted ads.  

2. It streamlines simple and cost-effective marketing strategies.

3. It eliminates the possibility of your marketing effort falling flat.

4. It helps niche-specific businesses gain more exposure and grow their customer base speedily.

5. Put your marketing in front of the right people at the right time.

NB: Promotion mix is one of the seven P’s in the marketing mix {Product, Price, Promotion, Place, People, Process, and Physical evidence}. The primary objective is to help you market your product quickly and cost-efficiently.

Elements of Promotion Mix

Promotion mix elements are the promotion tools you can use to communicate customer value and build long-lasting customer relationships persuasively. The five most sought out promotion mix elements include;

  • Advertising
  • Personal Selling
  • Sales Promotion
  • Public Relations
  • Direct Marketing

NB: You can use one of these promotion elements or a combination of multiple components to promote and market your brand to a broad audience.

Advertising

Advertisements function as an impersonal, one-way marketing strategy used to create brand awareness publicly. Ads depend on paid promotion outlets like newspapers, radios, television, pamphlets, etc.

Advertisements are economical ways to reach a wide range of potential clients. Plus, it gives your business a certain amount of legitimacy—making it easier for ideal customers to trust you.

On the downside, ads cannot assess the effectiveness of a message or get feedback from clients.

 Also read: 6 Free Advertising Newsletter Examples

Personal Selling

Personal selling involves direct contact from sales reps to potential clients—more of a face-to-face, door-to-door method of creating awareness and influencing sales.

The personal selling concept allows sales representatives to get direct feedback and help serve clients better. However, on the downside, good sales reps require a huge marketing budget.

Overall, if you need a promotion strategy that personalizes your sales message or customizes your marketing material to fit a client’s needs, don’t hesitate to add personal selling to your promotion strategy.

Sales Promotion

Sales promotion uses both media and non-media platforms to stimulate and increase the demand for a product or brand. You can use sales promotion to create immediate traffic for purchase and boost short-term sales.

Sales promotion supports the use of incentives like coupons, discounts, gifts, sales contests, buy one get one free, payback offers, etc., to create quick buzz and make customers take a break from their regular brands to try something new.

Downside: sales promotions are only effective for short-term marketing. Plus, frequent use of this promotion element eases the impression that your company cannot create a natural demand for its goods and services.

Public Relations

As a type of promotional element, public relation allows you to create a good image of your company among public members. Its promotion outlets include radios, newspapers, press releases, television, social media, and magazines.

Public relation through definable media attracts secondary exposure from additional mentions, especially if the subject is newsworthy.

But at the same time, since you cannot always control what people write or say about your product, you stand the risk of losing control.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing involves direct interaction from your brand to its potential client. This promotion tool is not meant for a mass audience—deploy when targeting a subset of the market.

Primarily, direct marketing serves as a one-way promotion strategy for special promotions, product announcements, and order confirmations. It’s built around newsletters, text messages, emails, online alerts, fax, promotion letters, etc.

Direct marketing is economical, easy to measure, and fosters intuitive customer relationships. However, on the downside, direct advertising emails, promotion letters, and fax are sometimes unsolicited.

Also read: What is Email Marketing Strategy: A Data-Driven Guide for 2022

5 Promotion Mix Marketing Best Practices and Tips

Are you wondering how you can create a combination of communication strategies that conveys brand benefits to customers and influence them to buy? Drop the thought and read on!

Identify Your Target Audience

Before you begin promotion mix marketing, you need to identify the folks you intend to sell your product and services. Then, create a buyer persona; it will help you put suitable marketing material in front of an ideal audience, saving you costs and maximizing profits.

Establish Your Marketing Message

Be clear and precise about your brand and what it stands for; your target audience needs a reason to do business with you. For example, creating well-thought-out messages in line with brand value and customer desires can do the magic.

Set Measurable Promotion Goals

Defining your goals highlights where you expect your promotional mix strategy to take you. Determine what you wish to accomplish with marketing—not just in theory—set the metrics straight. Goal setting enhances determination, gives you direction, and eliminates unnecessary variables.

Set a Budget for Your Promotion Mix Marketing

In as much as all these promotions mix elements are helpful, they require many resources; it’s too expensive to try all of them. Setting a budget helps you separate obtainable achievements from wishful thinking.

Identify the Channels for Promotion

Settle for channels or platforms conveniently accessible by your target audience. For example, if you want to connect with Gen Z, opt for promotion mix elements that support social media interactions.

Also read: What is Multichannel Marketing? Definition +6 Strategies

Enhance Promotion Mix Marketing 

Promotion mix marketing relates to the different marketing tools, strategies, and platforms used to target a particular demographic and influence buying decisions.

If looking for an easy-to-use, more effective, and affordable email marketing option, look no further than Sender. It features a user-friendly yet powerful dashboard that combines sending out both emails and SMS messages. Emails and SMSes go into a tightly-knit automation sequence to create the perfect high-conversion engine for your business.

What is included in the promotional mix?

Not ready to jump in yet? Try out the FREE Forever plan that allows you to send out a maximum of 15,000 emails every month and includes every top-tier feature such as marketing automation.

Promotion Mix Marketing Example

Let us look at Pepsi’s promotion mix marketing strategy, highlighting each element’s role.

What is included in the promotional mix?

Source: original Pepsi logo

Advertising

Pepsi ads connect with a larger audience via television, radio, magazines, and newspapers. Plus, Pepsi uses celebrities with a large following to influence purchasing decisions.

Personal Selling

Pepsi sells its products in supermarkets and suggests them to customers in bars and restaurants—their products are accessible and easy to get.

Sales Promotion

Pepsi offers discount prices for products, especially during festive and sporting seasons, attracting loyal customers and creating superfans.

Public Relations

Pepsi knows how influential sporting activities are to its target audience, so they put in due effort in making contributions to sporting magazines.

Direct Promotion Marketing

Pepsi promotes its brand by using direct promotion marketing strategies among colleagues, restaurants, schools, seminars, etc.

Also read: 5 Powerful Promotional Email Examples 

Content Contributor – Tobi Cyprain

Like what you read?

Apply it in practice with Sender.net - the most cost-effective email marketing solution in the market.

Try Sender for free

What are the 7 elements of the promotional mix?

The 7 elements of the marketing mix include the following:.
Product (or Service) Your customer only cares about one thing: what your product or service can do for them. ... .
Price. Many factors go into a pricing model. ... .
Promotion. ... .
Place. ... .
People. ... .
Packaging. ... .
Process..

What are the 4 components of the promotional mix and explain each briefly?

The 4 Ps of marketing are product, price, place and promotion. All four of these elements combine to make a successful marketing strategy. Promotion looks to communicate the company's message across to the consumer. The four main tools of promotion are advertising, sales promotion, public relation and direct marketing.

What are the 4 activities involved in the promotional mix?

Product, price, promotion, and place form the four Ps of the marketing mix. These are the key factors that are involved in introducing a product or service to the public.

What are the 6 elements of promotional mix?

Elements of Promotion Mix – Personal Selling, Sales Promotion, Public Relations, Direct Marketing, Sponsorship and Publicity.