Promotion Mix: Advertising, Sales Promotion, Personal Selling and Publicity
The promotion mix covers advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, publicity and public relations, and direct marketing. Expect matching tools to objectives and identifying push versus pull.
Core rules
- Advertising is paid, non-personal, identified sponsorship; it builds awareness and attitude. Personal selling is oral, two-way and costly per contact; it suits high-value or complex goods. Sales promotion gives short-term incentives (coupons, contests, free samples, trade allowances). Publicity is unpaid, uncontrolled mention; PR builds relationships. Direct marketing seeks a measurable response.
- AIDA: attention, interest, desire and action. DAGMAR focuses on measurable communication objectives.
- Push targets channel members; pull targets final buyers. Most campaigns mix both.
- Media choice depends on reach, frequency, cost per thousand, selectivity and message complexity.
Worked example
A clothing store wants repeat visits. It starts a Rs 99 loyalty club, sends SMS alerts and trains staff to greet members. Reasoning: the club is sales promotion with a direct-marketing database; SMS is reminder communication; staff greeting is personal selling. Publicity would be a newspaper story, which the store cannot control. The mix fits a repeat-purchase objective better than a one-off television advertisement.
Traps
Do not call publicity paid advertising. Do not use sales promotion to build long-term brand equity alone; it is mainly short-term. Do not say personal selling is always cheaper; cost per contact is high. Do not ignore the message and media fit.