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HowtoEstablishaPromotionalMixEdwardLoweFoundation

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How to Establish a Promotional Mix

Digital Library > Dening and Serving a Market > Market strategy How

Related Articles...
Dont Be a Pawn of
Perception
Alvin Bell Jr.,

to Establish a Promotional Mix

You drive sales by promoting the benets of your companys goods or
services to pools of potential buyers. The ways you promote your
organization will largely determine whether you successfully plant the
right messages in the minds of your target audience. This module
explains how you can establish a promotional mix best suited to your
companys needs and resources
WHAT TO EXPECT

president of Big
Pawn Inc. and Freeman
Jewelers Inc., wants to
grow his Chicago-based
businesses further, but
licensing and publicrelations obstacles stand in
his way.

Even a superior product doesnt sell itself. Your customers need

Read More ...

information about your product or service before they buy it. The
ways you communicate features and benets to your potential
customers is called a promotional mix. This Business Builder will
explain how you can maximize your companys promotional mix for

Dare to Know What You

Dont Know
Dont let pride get

best results.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE GETTING STARTED [top]
When you promote your business, youre engaging in persuasive
communication: You want to convince others to buy from you. You
must select the right promotional strategy to:
1. Capture the attention of the right group of potential customers
in a credible yet catchy way.
2. Educate them about your products or services.
3. Inuence them to buy from you.

in your way: Bridge

knowledge gaps. One of
the biggest growth barriers
that business owners face
has nothing to do with
weak sales, sloppy
strategic planning or
lackluster personnel. Its a
psychological hurdle:
knowing what you dont
know.The ability to
recognize holes in your

A promotional mix is an allocation of resources among ve primary

knowledge and nd

elements:

ways.

1. Advertising
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2. Public relations or publicity

3. Sales promotion
4. Direct marketing

$100K Payroll Tax Due

Tomorrow

5. Personal selling
How you integrate these elements depends on what youre promoting,
the biases and preferences of the potential customers youre courting,
general market conditions and your promotional budget.
The communications process will succeed if:

Once youve
settled on either a
semi-weekly or monthly
schedule with the IRS for
settling the tab on payroll
taxes, youre done, right?
Read More ...

You deliver a clear, compelling message. You may have

several important or benecial product features, but if you
dont emphasize whats most important to your target market

Successful Mingling

or you overwhelm prospects with too much data, they might

Nineteen solid

reject your message. Example: If the target-market customer

suggestions for

cares most about saving money, your message should

bringing your schmoozing

emphasize how this will happen.

skills up to snu.

You choose the most appropriate promotion method. To

Read More ...

convey your message eectively, you must understand the best

way to reach your target market. If your key customers are
manufacturers and you supply specialized equipment,
communicating through an advertisement in a general interest

Designing Success With a

Chain Concept

consumer magazine will waste time and money.

UNDERSTANDING THE MAIN COMMUNICATION CHANNELS [top]
Advertising. Advertising is any paid form of media
communication. This includes print ads in magazines, trade
journals and newspapers, radio and TV announcements, Webbased visibility-building, and billboards. Advertising is a

Jim and Michele

Evanger pioneer
franchising in interior
design.
Read More ...

nonpersonal promotional activity because the seller has no

direct contact with the potential customer during the
communication process.
Sales Promotions. In-store demonstrations, displays,
contests and price incentives (50% o, buy-one-get-one-free)
are sales promotion techniques.
Public Relations. These activities promote a positive image,
generate publicity and foster goodwill with the intent of
increasing sales. Generating favorable media coverage, hosting
special events and sponsoring charitable campaigns are
examples of public relations.
Direct Marketing. A form of advertising aimed directly at
target customers (usually in their homes or oces) that asks
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the receiver to take action, such as ordering a product, clipping

a coupon, phoning a toll-free number or visiting a store.
Catalogs, coupon mailers and letters are common forms of
direct marketing.
Personal Selling. Face-to-face communication between
buyer and seller.
WHY YOU NEED A PROMOTIONAL MIX [top]
If you deliver your message in many dierent ways, you increase your
odds of reaching your target market. Hundreds of messages a day
bombard your target market, but only a select few penetrate their
consciousnesses. Of those, an even smaller percentage eventually
lead them to act.
You may want to communicate a range of messages to dierent
markets. If you have a product, such as spot remover, thats used by
general consumers but that auto mechanics apply in a more
specialized way, you should communicate dierent messages to each
market via dierent media and methods. You might air a TV
commercial to reach consumers and place an ad in an auto magazine
to reach mechanics.
Without the proper promotional mix, you may squander your limited
resources by taking a scattershot approach. Promotion must advance
your overall marketing plan and reinforce the dialogue you want to
establish with the segments of the marketplace you covet most.
Beware: In their rush to expand, some fast-growth entrepreneurs fail
to coordinate their marketing strategies with their specic
promotional eorts. A common trap: You invest heavily on advertising
or sales promotion, but you overlook quality control for your product
or price it improperly.
ESTABLISHING YOUR PROMOTIONAL MIX [top]
Establishing the promotional mix thats right for your company
involves seven steps:
1. Determine Your Target Market
The segment of people that needs, or would benet from, your
product or service is your target market. Understanding these

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individuals attitudes and behaviors will help you design the

best message and select the right means to reach them.
Example: If you own an upscale jewelry store, you know from
your sales history or marketing research that your target
market is consumers earning more than $75,000 per year. Any
print advertising should thus appear in publications in which
readership income exceeds $75,000.
2. Determine Your Objectives
You must determine the response you want to elicit from your
target market, such as motivating them to click on your Web ad
or sign up for a free trial of your product.
Some entrepreneurs fail to dene their objectives precisely.
While you obviously want to increase sales, you need to decide
the best way to build a relationship with shoppers. If you
engage them eectively, then sales should inevitably follow.
Example: To introduce new customers to your product, a
direct-marketing technique, such as a direct-mail letter with a
money-saving oer to rst-time customers, might work. Or you
can try a sales promotion, such as two-for-the-price-of-one. If
your target market has a misconception about your product
(say, that its more expensive or less eective than rival
products), you can correct the perception by providing
comparisons or testimonials.
The following exercise can help you dene your specic goals.
Check the objectives that apply to your current business
situation:
_____ I need to introduce a new product to a new market.
_____ I have a product thats under attack by competitors
products, and I need to retain my current customer base.
_____ I need to correct false impressions or counter false claims
made about my product.
_____ I need to create greater brand awareness of my product.

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_____ I need to communicate new features to increase

consumption by present customers.
_____ I need to generate more "buzz" or word-of-mouth
business.
_____ I need to build a new image and reposition my product.
_____ I need to persuade retailers to stock my product or make
larger orders.
3. Design Your Message
The design of your communication incorporates two main
factors: content and format.
Content. The content is the words and images you use to
appeal to your target market. You must give your potential
customers reasons they should respond to your message. Think
of the most important benet a user of your product receives.
That should lead you to the central theme of your messages
content.
Benets fulll a human want or need. Examples: The desire to
enhance status, save money and time, or increase safety or
security.
In choosing your promotional mix, you must communicate how
your product produces a positive emotion or satises a
particular need. In the case of the jewelry store mentioned
earlier, the message can appeal to the target markets desire to
gain status, a likely motivator that drives jewelry shoppers. Or
your message can communicate the desire to be loved: "If you
love her, then you will buy her this elegant ring to prove it."
Format. Each element of the promotional mix has its own
format requirements. Web advertising relies on graphics, clarity
and color, while personal selling may involve structured
presentations, handouts and diagnostic tests to engage
potential customers.
To determine the best format to deliver your content, consider
the technical aspects of presenting your message. If you prefer
to demonstrate a product to sell it, you should probably include
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a broadcast medium in your advertising. That in turn will lead to

decisions about sound eects, camera angles, lighting, and so
on. Format for print advertising depends on how long or big a
headline should look, how to integrate graphics and what types
of photos reinforce your message.
4. Select Your Promotional Channels
Entrepreneurs who miss revenue goals often explain the
disappointing results by saying, "We were out-marketed." That
usually indicates a failure to plan and implement the right
promotional mix.
By choosing the best methods to convey your message and
extracting the most value from your nancial and creative
resources you can devise an integrated marketing
communications program that reinforces your companys
distinct character in your customers minds.
Weigh the pros and cons of each of the ve promotional
methods:
Method 1: Advertising
In one sense, advertising is old-fashioned. It has a long, storied
history as a device to sell products. But the way we write and
deliver ads today barely resembles the classic print, radio and
TV pitches of the past.
Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal communication
about a company, product, service or idea by an identied
sponsor. That means you must buy space or time for an
advertised message, although in rare cases you can use public
service announcements for which the media covers the cost.
Advertising involves mass media, from TV and radio to the
Internet, magazines, newspapers and billboards. Its impersonal
nature usually leaves little room for gathering instant feedback
from receivers. Thats why you must study how your target
audience will respond to your message before you send it.
Advertising can help you:

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Introduce your target market to new products, new

product features and new applications.
Persuade your audience to choose your product over a
competitors or to perceive your product in a new way,
perhaps by launching an "image" appeal.
Remind your target market of your products features,
benets and availability.
Advantages of advertising
1. Credibility. By investing in a public presentation of your
company and its products, you can enhance customers
perceptions of legitimacy, permanence and quality that
they associate with your enterprise.
2. Timing. You can repeat a message at strategic intervals.
Repeating your message increases the likelihood that
your target customer will see the message at a time
where he is open to hearing it. The right timing can

maximize your awareness-building eorts.

3. Drama. The best advertising puts a human face on a
company and its products. It can convey a sense of
adventure, challenge people to test their assumptions
about your business or entertain or enlighten your
audience. It can introduce consumers to images and
symbols that dierentiate your company from others.
4. Branding. Eective advertising enables you to create and
nurture brand equity, a vital but intangible source of
goodwill that ows from a favorable image associated
with a brand name. Once your company establishes a
distinctive trademark in the public eye, you have a
competitive advantage.
Disadvantages of advertising
1. Cost. Marketers often argue that advertising oers a
cost-eective way to reach large groups, and its true that
the cost per contact can prove lower than with other
promotional methods. Nevertheless, many
entrepreneurs lack the nances to invest heavily in
advertising. Producing and placing professional
advertisements is prohibitively expensive for many
emerging-growth companies.
2. Follow through. While attention-grabbing advertising
can attract interest, even the most innovative campaigns
can become stale over time. And entrepreneurs may

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grow to rely too much on advertising at the expense of

more personal, direct appeals to niche audiences.
3. Lack of feedback. Measuring the success of advertising
can prove impossible. Some of the best TV commercials
from a stylistic standpoint may not increase sales for the
advertiser.
4. Consumer indierence. As people get pelted with
promotional messages throughout the day, they become

better at screening out ads. Information overload and

clutter can lead your target audience to turn away from
your best eorts to engage them.
Advertising on the Web
Online advertising is soaring as more people log onto the
Internet. Over a billion people worldwide are projected to use
the Web by 2005, according to Computer Industry Almanac.
Online ad revenue after a tough year for dot-coms was still over

$4 billion in 2001 [Where the Online Ad News is Good, by Jane

Black, Business Week Online (January 17, 2002)].
Creating a Web site for your business can help you educate
consumers, solicit feedback and provide online service. But
dont expect your Web presence to build your companys
exposure.
To advertise eectively on the Internet, you may need to pay
high-trac sites or Internet publications to list your URL or link
to your home page.
The most common forms of Web advertising include:
1. Banner ads usually appear at the top or bottom of a
Web page as rectangular "virtual billboards" that link to
your home page. At their best, they draw a browsers eye
with sharp, lively graphics. You typically buy banner ads
on an average CPM basis (cost per one thousand page
views or ads shown), with rates ranging from $1 CPM to
reach broad audiences to $50 CPM for more targeted
sites. You can also pay for ads that ash onto the screen
when triggered by a keyword search. Youll need to factor
in the "click-through rate," or the number of people who
click on your ad divided by the number of page views
shown, when weighing the cost-eectiveness of banner

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ads. The industry average is about 0.5%, but it varies

considerably based on the type of business youre
promoting.
2. Paid listings. Portal sites, such as America Online, Yahoo
and Lycos, tend to attract the widest net of Web users. If
youre building a sports-memorabilia business, you may
want to pay for a listing under the "Sports" category of a
major portal. This may cost a at fee or a percentage of

sales generated from the ad. To stake out a longer-term

position on the Web, you can pay to sponsor a page on a
Web site or e-mail newsletter that targets your customer
base.
3. Pay-per-click links. Some search engines and general
Web sites sell online advertising on a per-click basis.
Example: See Overture.com (click on "Marketing") or
ValueClick.
4. Pay-per-sale advertising. A low-risk, low-cost way to
experiment with Web-based advertising is to enlist
aliates who provide a link to your companys site. If you
make a sale thanks to a customer coming through that
link, your aliate earns a commission of, say, 5% to 15%
of the total purchase. You only pay for the advertising
when you rack up a sale. Unless youre tech-savvy (in
which case you can buy software to run your own
program), farm out this advertising to a service bureau
that charges an initial set-up fee and then a chunk of the
commission you pay your aliates.
5. "Opt-in" e-mail advertising allows you to send your ad
to list members whove agreed to accept e-mail
promotions from businesses such as yours. Response
rates range from 1% to 15%, depending on the mailing
list and the appeal of your oer, according to Larry
Chase, publisher of "Web Digest for Marketers." Because
youll collect 80% of e-mail responses within 48 hours,
you can test ad campaigns quickly. And with rates of 15
cents to 35 cents per name, this approach can save
money compared to direct mail (with its postage, printing
and handling costs).
Beware: "Opt-in" lists are far superior to "opt-out" lists to
which recipients get added involuntarily and from which
they must unsubscribe to discontinue receiving your email ads.

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Method 2: Public Relations

With eective public relations, you can increase sales through
favorable, nonpaid media coverage and enhance your
companys image. Public relations builds goodwill toward your
business by raising your companys prole in the public eye.
Publicity is free advertising. You can generate publicity through
press releases, special events, sponsorships, newsletters and
community activities.
The most common form of publicity is press coverage. It ts
into the promotional mix only when theres newsworthy
information about your company such as:
Youve developed a breakthrough technology or
service that no one else oers.
Youve won a prestigious award or industry prize thats
widely recognizable.
Youve made a major investment in your community,
whether in ramping up hiring (especially if youre
aggressively courting people with disabilities, senior
citizens or implementing welfare-to-work programs),
purchasing land to build your new headquarters or
donating goods to charities.
Youve acquired another company.
Youre hiring new executives or announcing the
addition of new board members.
When publicity is not appropriate and your specic objective is
to improve your companys image with the public, then consider
sponsoring a charitable event. If your specic goal is to increase
sales through better customer service and relations, produce a
newsletter on a regular basis that provides your customers with
useful information.
Advantages of public relations
1. Believability. Most people perceive publicity as more
credible and believable than a paid advertisement. When
you run an ad, you can make any product claim you
want. Consumers know this and often react with
skepticism. But reporters dont have to feature you in
their publications or on their programs and speak
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positively about your business. You dont control the

message when you dont pay for it.
2. Employee morale. Your sta may work together to
promote your companys charitable activities or host
special events and celebrations for the community. The
resulting publicity can boost their pride and enthusiasm
for their jobs.
3. Educating visitors to your Web site. Before the
Internet, companies would issue press releases about
news designed to interest newspaper reporters. Today,
you can compose press releases and display them on
your companys Web site. While this may not reach as
many people as having a reporter integrate your press
release into a news story, you can still reap competitive
value. Web researchers may read your companys press
pages to get updates on your product releases,
expansion plans or personnel moves.
Disadvantages of public relations
1. Cost. While arranging publicity generally costs less than
advertising, it can prove surprisingly expensive. You may
need to hire a public relations rm to develop
campaigns, write press releases and follow up with
journalists. Even if you bring these tasks in-house, the
cost of developing publicity items and staging events can
stretch your budget and divert workers from their
primary responsibilities.
2. Lack of control. While you can invite the media to
preview your new product or tour your new facility,
theres no guarantee that a glowing article will result. Or
information might be improperly reported or key details
omitted. Whats worse, publicity can backre if it
downplays the positives and harps on negatives.
3. Failure to hit target. You can do everything right in
generating the kind of favorable publicity you seek. But
the message may not reach your desired audience. A
newscast can run your segment at a time when fewer
viewers are watching, or a newspaper can mention your
company in a short article buried in a back section thats
often discarded.
Method 3: Sales Promotions

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Sales promotions are marketing activities that provide extra

value or incentives to your sales force, distributors or
consumers.
Consumer-oriented sales promotion targets individual
customers. It engages and motivates potential buyers.
Examples include free samples, coupons, contests, rebates,
premiums, point-of-sale displays and other incentives intended
to stimulate immediate sales. For retailers, visual
merchandising is especially important. Attractive window and
interior displays and eye-catching exterior signs can lure
shoppers and reinforce the unique theme or character of your
store.
Trade-oriented sales promotion targets intermediaries, such as
wholesalers, distributors and retailers. You can use promotional
and merchandising allowances, price deals, sales contests and
trade shows to persuade the trade to stock and promote your
companys products.
Sales promotions tend to lose their luster after a few weeks or
months. Theyre typically woven into a promotional mix to:
Encourage customers to use the product more
frequently and to attract users of a competing brand.
Transform potential customers into actual customers.
Encourage retailers to carry more inventory.
When weighing whether to use a sales promotion, ask yourself
two questions:
"Will this promotion reach my targeted customers?" and "Will it
make a lasting impression on them, or will it be tossed away
and forgotten?"
Sales promotions must complement your overall strategic
planning. For instance, avoid oering a coupon unless it ts in
with your larger plan to lure consumers to switch brands.
Experimentation helps you determine the most eective sales
promotion tools. Pre-testing is vital to avoid costly mistakes.
Example: Before producing and distributing 50,000 product
samples with coupons on a consumers rst purchase at 100
regional grocery stores, run a test. Go to ve of the stores and
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distribute samples. Determine how many coupons you actually

get back, and then decide whether to expand to the full sales
promotion.
Advantages of sales promotions
1. Build relationships. Trade-oriented promotions give
marketing intermediaries a nancial incentive to support
your companys products. By oering discounts to
retailers in exchange for prominent shelf space or endof-the-aisle displays, for instance, you can strengthen
relationships with key players who can help stimulate
sales.
2. Stir excitement. Many consumers love contests and
sweepstakes. You can turn a drab purchase into a more
lively event by promising cash prizes to lucky winners. At
its best, a sales promotion adds alluring incentives for
buyer action.
3. Gauge price sensitivity. Using coupons or rebates can
help you measure to what extent your shoppers base
their buying decisions on price. You can also collect their
addresses and other consumer prole data that can
prove valuable in subsequent marketing campaigns.
Disadvantages of sales promotions
1. Risk of misre. Many fast-growth entrepreneurs rush to
try some form of sales promotion, only to declare such
eorts a waste. But problems often result from poor
planning. You must rst identify and develop specic
strategies to boost sales before you target customers
and choose sales promotion tools, rather than plunging
into sales promotions without laying the groundwork
rst.
2. Risk of dependency. Business owners can grow to rely
on sales promotion and dwell on short-term marketing
ploys, at the expense of more coordinated long-range
plans. Realize that sales gains from promotions often
sputter after an initial spike and you can sacrice longterm brand equity in the pursuit of short-term goals.
3. Risk of trivializing your brand. Giving out coupons or
samples can undermine the image of exclusivity or
prestige that you wish to associate with your product or

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company. Price-conscious consumers may also withhold

purchases in the absence of sales promotions.
Method 4: Direct Marketing
Direct marketing enables you to communicate with your
customers in a more personalized way than advertising, such as
greeting them with a letter or telephoning them directly.
Telemarketing, direct mail, catalogs and coupon mailers are all
examples of direct-marketing techniques.
Successful direct marketing depends on whether you can
acquire and maintain a database of your target market. Some
marketers nd this alone justies the cost of advertising in a
national consumer publication instead.
Consider using direct marketing in your promotional mix if:
Your primary means of distributing your product is
through the mail or directly to customers. With the
growth of the Internet, many companies dont use retail
outlets at all. Others supplement their retail eorts by
selling through the Web, the mail or telephone.
Companies that distribute products through the mail
must assemble and maintain databases and mailing lists.
Direct mail is a particularly cost-eective communication
vehicle for them.
You are selling products with many benets. Your
product may have multiple benets to the user, but
space limitations in an advertisement may prevent you
from mentioning all but the most prominent ones. A
direct-mail letter lets you communicate all your benets.
Its also a good way to announce sales promotions or
special discounts.
Your advertising eorts fail to reach your target
market. As the upscale jewelry store owner, you may
feel that the ad you placed in a high-end magazine isnt
increasing your business. You can try buying a list by ZIP
code in an exclusive residential area. This assures you
that youre concentrating on your actual target market.
You are selling an expensive product or service.
When youre engaging in high-ticket sales, you must
expend more eort to convince potential customers to
buy. A direct-mail letter gives you more opportunity to
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expand your appeal than an advertisement with limited

space.
Your business depends on reorders and/or volume.
Magazine publishers use telemarketing because
subscribers often put o renewing their subscriptions. A
sales reps reminder call often spurs a renewal sale.
Advantages of direct marketing
1. Predictability. By staging initial tests and measuring the
results, you can roll out a direct-marketing campaign to a
wider universe of potential customers with a strong
likelihood that it will succeed. You can mitigate your risk
by strategic sampling.
2. Eectiveness in reaching the right target. Through
direct marketing, you can contact narrow market
segments and customize your message to appeal to
them.
3. Ease of measurement. Evaluating direct-marketing
campaigns is straightforward because you can measure
outcomes with quantiable data, such as number and
size of orders, leads generated or requests for more
information.
Disadvantages of direct marketing
1. Saturation. Many consumers are rebelling against the
onslaught of direct marketing. Theyre more apt to
discard direct mail, resent telemarketing calls, turn away
door-to-door salespeople and laugh o TV infomercials.
2. Reliance on obsolete direct-mail lists. In this transient
society, increasing numbers of people relocate more
frequently or use two addresses. Despite advances in
technology that update mailing lists, it remains dicult to
buy reliable lists that reach the market segment you
want. Incorrect list selection can wipe out the appeal of a
great product, a great package or a great oer.
3. Heightened need for customer service. If you rely on
direct-response ads, telemarketing or direct mail to
introduce your company to shoppers, you must deliver
an even higher level of personalized service to win over
prospective customers. This requires additional
investment in stang and customer service training and
delivery that some entrepreneurs overlook.
Method 5: Personal Selling
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Personal selling brings humanness to selling. Sales

representatives do what advertisements do: inform, persuade
or remind. But they do it in person and can thus give your
company a distinct personality.
There are two types of salespeople, order getters and order
takers. Order getters engage in creative selling by nding and
winning over customers. Order takers are more passive: They
wait for customers to nd them.
The biggest factor in determining whether personal selling
should become part of your mix is whether stang a proactive
sales force applies to your business model. Personal selling is
most often used by companies that sell expensive, technical or
highly specialized products.
5. Determine Your Budget
A common method of establishing your promotional budget is
to estimate what your competitors spend and then match it.
You do this by monitoring their ads, promotions and special
events they sponsor. While this lacks precision, it provides a
ballpark estimate.
Once you gather data about your competitors promotional
budgets, dont copy your rivals spending habits or promotional
mix. Use your information as a guide.
A more exact way to determine your budget is to assemble a
wish list of promotional methods you want to use to meet your
objectives. Imagine that money isnt an issue. Then using actual
rates for print and broadcast advertisements and estimated
costs for sales promotion and publicity, determine each
activitys dollar cost. Then scale the list down until you have a
reasonable budget.
Television and national print advertising may prove too
expensive or inappropriate at this time. In any case, consider
testing a range of techniques rather than investing your
promotional dollars in one area. Why? Because promotion
requires experimentation. It may take several months and
dozens of tests to uncover the most eective mix for your
company. Expect to reevaluate your budget and make
adjustments as you go along.
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Establishing an eective promotional mix cannot occur if you

allocate resources sporadically. For your marketing message to
produce results, promotional activities must occur on a regular
basis. Consumers rarely take immediate action and may benet
from repeated exposure to your message before they buy.
6. Determine Your Promotional Mix
Now that you have completed all of the preceding steps, its
time to formulate your actual promotional mix. The most
common method for actually putting your mix on paper is to
express it as a percentage of your overall promotional budget.
Example 1: Our upscale jewelers promotional mix based on a
budget of $5,000 might look something like this:

50% Direct Mail: Direct-Mail Campaign$2,500

40% Advertising: Print Ads in Local Lifestyle Magazine$2,000
10% Sales Promo: Coupon In Direct-Mail Letter For Free
Appraisal$500
Example 2: The promotional mix of the maker of a candy bar
that ghts tooth decay with the same budget might look
something like this:

25% Public Relations: Press Releases$1,250

25% Advertising: Print Ads in Local Newspapers and Dental
Publications$1,250
50% Sales Promotion: Product Samples, Coupons,
Contest$2,500
Always integrate and coordinate the various tools you use. For
example, sales promotion can be integrated with advertising by
announcing a contest in a print advertisement. Public relations
eorts should try to produce results at the same time
advertisements are scheduled to appear. Direct-mail letters
should be sent the same week a new sales promotion begins.

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Exercise: Dene your mix

Formulate a specic breakdown of your promotional mix.
1. My time frame for testing a promotional campaign:
_______.
2. My promotional budget: $________.
3. My promotional mix: [use format of above examples]
7. Measure the Results of the implemented program and
Adjust as needed
Increased sales will be the yardstick you use to measure each
promotional vehicle you employ. Advertising is often the
hardest to measure. Exceptions: Allow print readers to clip a
coupon or send in an order form, or invite radio or TV
audiences to call an 800 toll-free number.
You will need to evaluate and change your promotional mix not
only to correct ineective promotional vehicles but also to
adjust for growth.
After one year on the market, our candy-bar maker will need to
re-evaluate the mix:

Total Budget$10,000
60% Advertising: Print Ads in National Consumer and Dental
Publications$6,000
40% Sales Promotion: Product Samples, Coupons, Point-ofPurchase Displays
Note: Public relations is now gone from the mix because the
novelty of the product has worn o, and the product is no longer
newsworthy. Advertising represents a higher percentage as this
company moves to increase its national exposure. This particular
company has found that advertising to dentists is important
because they recommend it to their patients and that sales
promotions have yielded eective results.$4,000

Sample Promotional Mix

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Company: Pampered Pets Pet Sitting Service Employees go

into peoples homes to feed pets, take them for walks, change
litter boxes
Target
Market: People who work long hours and dont have enough
time to take care of their pets
People who are going on vacation and dont want to put their
pets in a kennel and dont have anyone who could stay at their
house
Elderly people who are unable to care for their pets but want
to keep them
Communication
Objectives: We need to:
introduce our service to the public
create awareness of our service
get people to use our service, not our competitors
get veterinarians to recommend our service
have at least one veterinarian agree to treat our clients pets
on an emergency basis, a feature that competitors dont oer
Design Message Content:If you care about your pets welfare
when you arent home, then you will use our services/Its so
convenient and reasonably priced that you cant aord not to
use our services Format:Fliers, brochure, ads in local
newspapers and Yellow Pages Promotional
Methods:Advertising
Yellow Pages, local newspapers
Sales Promotions
Coupons that can be punched out 1 punch per day, after 20
punches, get one day free or at discounted rate
Public Relations
Not applicable at this time. As business grows, we plan to oer
to contribute part of customers payments to an animal shelter.
Direct Marketing
Fliers in mailboxes throughout local neighborhoods, to
veterinarians, apartment complexes where elderly live, to pet
shops. As business grows, we will send a newsletter to
customers.
Personal Selling
To veterinarians, pet shop owners, travel agents,
apartment/condominium management to refer people to our
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services. This only requires existing personnel time, no added

budget cost incurred here.
Budget: Five hundred brochures for display in pet shops and
veterinarian oces will cost $150. As business grows, we will
expand to two-color pieces. Fliers can also be created
inexpensively. Two hundred iers will cost $20 to copy on
colored paper (distribute in spring and summer). Yellow Pages
ad will be limited to an informational in-column listing, 1 inch
for $300 for the year in the local book. This book is sucient.
Small ads in the local newspaper will cost $300 for two
placements. Rolodex cards will cost $160 for 500. Five hundred
punch-out cards will cost $27.
Total promotional budget: $977 Promotional Mix: Advertising
61% $596 Sales Promotions 3% $29

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