Promotion and Selling
This domain tests promotion and selling: the promotional mix, integrated marketing communications, AIDA, the selling process, and ethical persuasion.
Core rules
- Promotional mix: advertising (paid, nonpersonal), public relations (earned credibility), sales promotion (short-term incentives), personal selling (interpersonal), and direct/digital marketing.
- Push strategy moves product through intermediaries; pull strategy builds consumer demand.
- AIDA describes message effects: attention, interest, desire, action.
- Integrated marketing communications (IMC) delivers a consistent message across channels.
- Selling process: prospecting, preapproach, approach, presentation/demonstration, handling objections, closing, follow-up.
- Consultative selling translates features into benefits and focuses on customer needs.
Worked example
A B2B payroll software firm exhibits at an HR conference. Staff collect badges (prospecting), research attendees' company size (preapproach), open with a question about payroll errors (approach), demonstrate a compliance report (presentation), address "too expensive" by showing overtime savings (objections), offer a 30-day pilot (close), and schedule a check-in (follow-up). Advertising alone is weaker here because the sale is high-consideration and needs dialogue.
Traps that cost marks
- Confusing public relations with advertising; PR earns credibility rather than buying space.
- Treating sales promotion as advertising; promotions are short-term incentives.
- Applying AIDA rigidly to every purchase.
- Reversing push and pull.
- Skipping preapproach or follow-up.
- Presenting features without benefits.