Marketing Mix: Promotion

Techniques Notes
Advertising It’s the most expensive, but most powerful tool. It’s not personalised in any way. It uses mass media, and the message influences and stimulates the customer by focusing on the product. For instance you usually see images of idyllic beaches.
Direct mail It’s more personalised, it’s very common. Organisations target specific customers through the postal system. It’s commonly used by hotel chains to stimulate demand. Customer details from databases are used.
Telemarketing System aimed at creating interest through telephone calls. Potential customers’ details from databases are used.
Public Relations They consist in participating in trade fairs (such as the BIT fair in Milan) or organising familiarisation trips. It’s used to convey a positive image of an organisation and its products / services.
Personal Selling Face-to-face interaction to promote products or services is used. An example is a hotel receptionist promoting the use of the leisure facilities of the hotel (swimming pool, spa etc.).
Sales promotions Coupons, competitions, special offers and so on (wee case study about Great London Deals).
Sponsorship Organisations offer financial or other support to community events or commercial activities in order to gain greater recognition for their own products or services.

Marketing tools

Marketing includes all strategies to improve trade / to improve a company’s turnover.

1- advertising (TV, radio adverts, cinema adverts, on line adverts or banners, brochures, catalogues, billboards and posters, using airplanes, during sports events or concerts, magazine and newspaper adverts, video adverts on YouTube, mobile phone adverts)

2- promoting products with samples / or promoting a product by giving a gift (for instance you book a holiday now and you get 5% discount on your next booking)

3- sponsoring sports events / music events etc.

4- using testimonials (for instance giving free products to celebrities to wear, or inviting journalists and celebrities to go on holiday in a certain place).

5- movies and books (to promote a tourist destination) – there is a very famous book and movie called “Under the Tuscan Sun”, Dan Brown’s books have promoted lots of tourism destinations (Inferno promotes Florence and other destinations in Italy, the Da Vinci Code promoted Paris, etc.)

6- events 

7- a very powerful marketing tool is “word of mouth” (negative word of mouth is more powerful than positive word of mouth); nowadays word of mouth is becoming more and more important because there are websites such as Tripadvisor or Duespaghi where people write reviews.