Introduction. A) Description of various forms of promotional activities.

Task One (A01)

A) Description of various forms of promotional activities.

Introduction

Promotion is a part of the marketing mix and basically shows how different businesses make their customers aware of their products and persuade them to buy their products by advertising them in various sources. The key in Promotion is to grab consumers’ attention and make them interested in your product. In order to this, businesses use above-the-line and below-the-line methods of promotional activity.

Above-the-line promotional activity involves advertising products to the public by using various media sources the examples of which are described below:

Using Television

Advantages:

• Allows targeting particular groups of people by advertising products in particular programs. For example, car producers might advertise their cars in the TV programs about the cars
• Attracting customers’ attention by the use of colours, funny pictures, videos and etc.-grabs people’s attention
• Businesses can demonstrate products in use and show how useful, necessary or desirable the products are.
• There can be millions of people watching the advert. Therefore, an advert can reach a vast audience.
• If the businesses continuously advertise their products few times a day during a certain period of time, then the message, which businesses are trying to send to the customers might be reinforced. People eventually become aware of the product, because they see an advert every day, which makes them more likely to go, buy and try the product and see whether they like it or not.
• Businesses can also use celebrities in their TV adverts, in order to grab people’s attention.
• Some advertisements of addictive or desirable products, like food can make you want to buy it. For example, Marks & Spencer and SAINSBURY’S advertise food on the TV in the very delicious way in order to make their audience hungry. When brewing companies advertise drinks, like beers or even products like Coca Cola, they are trying to make their audience feel thirsty.
• Even though the initial costs of TV advertising are relatively expensive, it can pay the businesses back, if it turns out to be very effective. Also, after the businesses have advertised their products and made people aware of their products, they don’t necessarily need to advertise as often as they used to, so they can decrease the costs of advertising.

Disadvantages:

• Businesses canonly advertise the products on local or national channels like SKY, but not BBC
• Expensive initial costs of advertising. E.g. only relatively big companies with big budgets can afford to advertise their products on TV.
• The live cycle of the message depends, how often the business advertises it on a TV.
• Some consumers don’t watch commercials, because e.g. they want to have a break, see what other programs are on the TV, or they just don’t want to watch it.
• For businesses which produce high-tech products, it is more difficult to explain technical information about the functions of the product. Only a limited amount of information can be shown. Businesses pay for the time on TV which costs a lot of money. Also, if they tell too much of technical information, the consumers might not be able to remember it and it will lead to high costs, as it takes longer to explain them on TV.
• Businesses need to be very careful when advertising on TV. Some people can remember the advert or the catch phrase used in the advert, but cannot remember the name of the brand or product.

This method of promotion is appropriate for those firms that have huge budgets and are able to spend large sums of money on advertising on a TV. It is too expensive for small businesses and, therefore, is unlikely to be used.

Examples of TV promotion and their further description are given below:

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