Banking Marketing Aptitude Sales Promotion Promotional Mix

 

 

Promotional Mix

 

Introduction: Promotion, like any other element of the marketing mix, is very essential for successful marketing of a product/service. Promotion has to be given a little more importance in marketing services due to their intangible and tangible characteristic.

 

Elements of the Promotion Mix: An organization should develop a promotional mix after careful analysis of the present and potential constraints, strength of the competition and their likely reaction, and the number of geographical areas to be covered by a communication programmer. The elements of promotion mix namely, personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, publicity & public relations, and direct marketing are represented in:

 

 

Personal Selling: Personal selling involves persuading an existing of a potential customer through oral communication, to purchase the goods and service offering of the company. It aims to develop a rapport with the customer and because of that, enjoys a high success rate. Different mode' of personal selling include face to face conversations, tale marketing, chatting on the internet. However, personal context through face to meetings are more successful in increasing business and building a repose with the customer, when compared to the other ways.

 

Personal Selling is suitable under following conditions:

 

(i)         When the company has insufficient funds to conduct an adequate advertising programmer.

(ii)         When the market is geographically concentrated, that is several customers are located very close to each other in one particular region.

(iii)        When major purchases are made by a few large customers or a few companies.

(iv)        When the personality of a sales person is necessary to establish repo.

(v)        When the product is made for customers purpose that is it has to be designed in such a manner as to satisfy the needs of the particular customer  only.

 

Steps in Personal Selling:

 

(i)         Locating the prospective customer

(ii)        Creating the sales presentation or conducting the sales interview.

(iii)        Handling objection

(iv)        Closing the sales

 

(i) Location the prospective:     

Prospecting is the first stage in selling process and involves the search and identification of potential Listomers who may be willing to buy a product and have the ability so. The salesperson obtains contact information about the prospect and Lakes cold calls to him. Information about prospects can be obtained from four different sources: external sources, internal sources, personal contacts and miscellaneous sources.

 

(ii) Creating the sales presentation or conducting the sales interview:  This is the most important stage in the selling process, the salesperson demonstrates the product to the prospective customer. Sales presentation can be represented from the following methods.

 

Visual Display Techniques: Visual display techniques include-

 

Visualizing: Helping the prospect visualize the product by using or graphs.

 

Demonstrating: Demonstrating the utilities of the product to enhance is appeal.

 

Presentation Technique: Presentation techniques can be of three types-

 

Customized sales presentation: The presentation is tailor-made to suit he prospect.

 

Standardized sales presentation: Making the same sales presentation or all prospects.

Partially standardized: A sales presentation that is slightly different for each prospects.

 

Non Visual Clarification Techniques: Non-visual clarification techniques

Include-

 

Questioning: Asking the prospect questions during the presentation to make sure that he understands what is being said.

 

Comparisons: Comparing the product with that of the competitor's

 

Showmanship: Dramatizing the sales presentation.

 

(iii) Handling Objection: In this stage, the salesperson tries to clear the negative perception about the product in the customer's mind and create a positive image by reiterating its benefits and techniques that can be used to handle and techniques that can be used to handle objections sales resistance include.

·               Create strife techniques

·               Offset objection techniques

·               Clarify objection techniques

·               Miscellaneous techniques

 

(iv) Closing the sales: This is naturally the most important step in the personal selling process. The salesperson asks for an order and tries to close the deal after negotiating and convincing the customer to buy the product. Some techniques used for closing sales effectively are-

·               Clarification closes

·               Psychologically oriented closes

·               Straight forward closes

·               Concession closes

 

Types of Personal Selling

 

(i) Direct Face-to-Face Selling: It is the most common and widely used form of personal selling in which direct face-to-face interaction

Occurs between the sales person and the prospect.

 

(ii) Tele-Selling: In this case sales presentation takes place over telecommunication medium and the sale is concluded. Product standardization, mutual trust and routine purchases are some of the conditions that are necessary for tele-selling.

 

(iii) Relationship Selling: Here the sales person is not interested in making an immediate sale but wants to establish a good relationship with the valued customers.

 

(iv) Team Selling: A sales team is a group of sales personal representing the company. There can be several sales team. Each team covering a particular territory or area. This method is expensive and it is adopted only when there is a scope of achieving sales volume.

 

(v) System Selling: It involves selling a configuration or set of product or a packages and information technology products.

 

Selling Style

 

(i) Drive Sales Style: It involves the sales person primarily delivering the product. In this style skill is not necessary for salesman.

 

(ii) Missionary Selling Style: It is adopted in case of relationship selling a missionary salesman acts as an ambassador for the company.

 

(iii) Engineering Selling Style: It is adopted in case of technically complex goods which require detailed explanation and demonstration Here the salesman tries to establish the technical superiority of the product by explaining the complete technical features an operational aspects.

 

Creativity selling style

 

It calls for creativity and creative talent on the part     of a salesman who is involved in selling new brand product, New ideas etc. Sometimes the customer may be reluctant to discuss in open on some topic with the third party. There can be some kind of psychological barriers or perception gaps. Creative selling style is adopted to overcome such kinds of barriers

 

Benefits of personal selling:

 

(i) Due to direct face-to-face interaction between the sales person and the prospect it is highly effective. When there is any doubt in a customer's mind clarify sales people if immediately

(ii) Salesman is highly successful in achieving sales volume. It is direct process of selling, but other promotional tools make "Round about

Efforts".

 

Advertising: Advertising has been derived from the Latin word advertise" which mean turning the valuable attention of people toward the product, services or organization.

 

American Marketing Association defines advertising as: "Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of goods, services, or ideas by an identified sponsor".

 

Advertising is basically a programmed or process which consists of an series of activities that are carried out to prepare a message and convey the intended market or target audience. Advertising plays a major role I promoting a company's products and services on a large scale. However, developing advertising campaigns for services is a difficult aspect because of the intangible property of services. For example, the Ta group of hotels in India has introduced a scheme where their personnel are rated by visitor at the hotel for their customer's rice. Such schemes encourage the service personnel to perform well.

 

 

Types of Advertising

 

 

 

 

 

Features of Advertising:

 

Features of Advertising are as follows:

(i)        Advertising can deliver the same message in a wide variety Context:

(ii)        Advertising can contact several people simultaneously quickly at a very low cost per prospect.

(iii)       It is a non-personal salesmanship.

(iv)       Advertising message can be addressed to numerous persons at a time, e.g.-readers, listeners, viewers etc.

(v)        Advertising is a unique form of non-personal or mas communication.

(vi)       It is very useful for creating maximum as well as providing detailed information especially during launch of a new product.

 

Objectives of Advertising:

 

(i)        To improve company image or goodwill.

(ii)       To promote the sale of new product or service.

(iii)       To influence public opinion.

(iv)       To generate a particular response desired by the company.

(v)       To support personal selling.

(iv)       To provide technical information about a product.

(iv)       To inform and convenience people about product quality.

(viii)      To inform people about changes if any in the color composition and a size of a product.

(ix)       To remind people to buy a product during off-season period.

 

Sales Promotion: Sales promotion is often used by companies to improve the sales of a product or service either by encouraging the existing customers to use the services more frequently or by attracting new customers to us their services. Companies adopt different sales promotion strategies for end consumers, intermediaries, and sales force. Companies aim to pull customers to regularly use their services by attracting them with free offer coupons, cash discounts, warranties, prizes, contests, etc. For example- some banks like Andhra Bank promote their credit cards to potential customer' by offering free user charges for the first one year of issue.

 

Further, they push the intermediaries to improve the sales of their of firing them discounts, providing them allowances to advertise, announcing awards, etc. Companies also adopt a different set of methods to encourage sales personnel to sell more. This can be done by adopting performing based compensation methods and giving them bonuses, prizes and award for exceptional performance. For example, a credit card company normall1 award commissions to its sales personnel based on their performance.

 

 

 

Objectives of Sales Promotion

 

(i)         To encourage existing customers to increase their consumption of a particular product.

(ii)          To prevent existing customers from switching over to competitor' brand.

(iii)        To pursue people to purchase immediately in large quantities an understand immediate benefits of purchase.

(iv)        To stimulate impulse purchase or unplanned purchase.             

(v)          To attract a new group of customers.  

                              

Sales Promotion Tools

                            

1.         For Customer Purpose

 

(a) Sample: Giving sample is a direct benefit offered to the customers. The customer gets an opportunity to try out the product in a very limited sale. Samples are given with the motto of introducing a new product in the market.

 

(b) Coupon: The objective is to increase the sales of the existing product or a new product. It is the kind of certificate which is kept inside package.

 

(c) Demonstration: The customer get an opportunity to observe the merits of the product.

 

(d) Money Refund: Terms and conditions are clearly mentioned money is refunded.

 

(e) Contest: Customers are rewarded for their creative thinking and analytical ability. The reward may be in the form of cash, free ticket for air travelling.

 

(f) Trading Stamp: A customer is given a ticket whenever it makes a purchase and all the tickets collected by him will fetch a particular item free of cost

 

(d) Sweepstake: It is a kind of lottery in which a customer is given a coupon containing several numbers. Customers are asked to write their names, addresses and contact numbers etc and send them to the company.

After a certain period all the coupons will be kept in one place and the name of the winners declared.

 

2.         For Middleman Purpose

 

Buying Allowance: The middleman receives allowance after purchasing goods beyond a certain limit. Buyback Allowance In this case allowance is given after the first purchase is made.

 

Cash Allowance: A definite percentage of discount is allowed on purchase of a given unit of a product.

 

Free Good: The middleman receives a few goods free of cost particularly after crossing a certain limit.

 

Extra Product: Instead of giving any allowance extra product may be given along with every unit of product i.e. purchased. If a soap case normally contains 12 pieces of soap, special case containing 15 pieces may be made and sold at the same price as done in the case of 12 pieces.

 

Count and Recount: It is a device in which the stock of middleman is calculated at the time of opening of the sales and also when the offer closes the goods that are sold in between these two points serve as the basis of receiving allowance from the company.

 

Publicity and Public Relations (PR): Companies use publicity campaigns to bring in awareness about their offers among the existing and potential customers and even the general public publicity involves using of information that induces interest towards a company, event, or person. Publicity is also a mode of mass communication similar to advertising. Examples of publicity include event sponsorships, charitable donations, etc.

 

Direct Marketing: Direct marketing involves contacting the existing and potential customers directly through telemarketing, direct mail, and online marketing (e-mail and official web sites), -without employing any intermediaries in the process. The positive aspects of direct marketing include direct interaction with customers, immediate feedback from might not be there when a company employs the services of intermediaries. For example, say the customer of an insurance company needs some specific information or a customized change in the service offering of the company. While the intermediary might not be in a position to respond to customer's satisfaction, a direct employee of the company would be better equipped to do that. Marketers can also have a direct feel of the customers' pulse which helps them in understanding their requirements and preferences better. Direct marketing helps companies to give a personal touch to their marketing activities. Further, it is less expensive on a cost per order basis and proved to be quite efficient especially in some specific business situations

 

Sales Forecasting: A sales forecast is an estimate of sales, in dollars 01 physical units, in a future period under a particular marketing program and an assumed set of economic and other factors outside the unit for which the forecast is made. A sales forecast may be for a single product or for are entire product line. It may be for a manufacturer's entire marketing, sale' forecasts rather than long range sales forecasts, which are used for planning production capacity and for long run financial planning. Long range sale forecasts, although of interest, are so tentative that sales planners give then only passing attention. It is the short term or operating sales forecast that important to the sales executive.

 

Marketing Information System: A marketing information system marketing intelligence system, maybe defined as "an interacting, continuing future-oriented structure of people, equipment, and procedure designed generate and process an information now which can aid business executive in the management of their marketing programmers. Marketing information includes-

 

(a) Determining and specifying the data needed.

(b) The generation of this information by means of marketing research.

(c)  Processing of these data.