Promotional Strategies - Essay Example

Promotional Strategies Introduction: Promotion is one of the 4 P‘s of marketing. Promotion owes it significance to its impact on the sale of the products of an organization. There are two major components in promotion, and these are advertising and personal selling. Appropriate use of either or both is an essential part of any marketing strategy. Advertising offers the means of attracting customers to a product or the pull strategy, while personal selling offers the means to persuade the customers to purchase the product or the push strategy.

Advantages of Advertising: Advertising is the most effective form of promotion that can be used by any sector of industry, for any product. Promotion of a product involves the achievement of two objectives, and that is to provide information of the product to the targeted market, and to effectively persuade the targeted market into purchasing the product. Advertising is extremely useful in reaching any message put to any targeted market, while its relative impact on persuading the targeted market into purchase is low.

Yet, it does both, and this is true for any product and in any sector of industry making it the effective form of promotion for all products. The primary advantage of advertising is that it is the least expensive in terms of per individual cost and less time consuming in spreading consumer behavior oriented information on a product to any target market, when compared to personal selling. Such messages can be got across to the targeted markets through different forms of media and the Internet quickly, and at much lower costs than what it would take a team of sales representatives to achieve.

The advent of the Internet has provided a means for advertisement at even lower costs than conventional advertisements through print and television media (1). Words and images used in advertisements can trigger consumer positive reactions in wide target markets, even spread across the globe at a relatively low cost, and in very quick time (2). Disadvantage of Advertising: The disadvantage of advertising lies in the impact that it can create in the target market. Therefore deliberate planning must go into the creation of an advertisement, with extreme care being taken in the words and images used.

An advertisement is like an arrow. Once it is let loose it cannot be called back, and if the message it carries creates negative feelings of either the product or the business enterprise involved in it the consequences will be disastrous. This is particularly true when products are marketed globally, and advertisements used for their promotion. Care has to be taken see that the words and images used due not offend the cultures of the country, or that the words and messages used in the advertisements are not counterproductive. (3). A simple example here brings clarity.

One of the common advertisement strategies used for cosmetic products is the use of a not so beautiful person prior to the use of the product, and the same person beautified after the use of the product, to give the before after effect. In the Western world and in most other parts of the world reading is done from left to right. Hence the before part of the advertisement is on left, and the after on the right. In the Arab world, however reading is from right to left. The detrimental promotional effect on the product of showing an advertisement created for the Western world in the Arab world can be well imagined.

Thus the extreme care of the wording and imaging used is the disadvantage in advertising.Conclusion: Advertising offers the most effective means of promotion of any product, as a result of the lower costs and quicker time involved in the spread of messages to the intended markets. However care has to be taken in the words and images used to ensure that the boon of advertising does not turn out to be a bane. Works Cited1. Pilkington, Nicky. “Low Cost Internet Advertising Solution versus Conventional Advertising”. 2006. RedSofts.com. 31 March, 2007. .2.

Taflinger, F. Richard. “Taking ADvantage Conclusion”. 1996. 31 march, 2007. .3. Douglas, P. Susan. & Craig, C. Samuel. “International Advertising”. #1 March, 2001. .