Promoting a Product
The final P in our marketing mix is promotion, which people often think about when they hear the term marketing. But, as we have seen, it is only a part of the entire marketing mix. The promotion mix includes advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and publicity. Some of these elements are paid for, with the business having direct control over the message. Some are not. Read this section to learn more about promoting a product.
Free publicity – say, getting your company or your product mentioned in a newspaper or on TV – can often generate more customer interest than a costly ad. You may remember the holiday season buying frenzy surrounding a fuzzy red doll named "Tickle Me Elmo". The big break for this product came when the marketing team sent a doll to the one-year-old son of talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell. Two months before Christmas, O'Donnell started tossing dolls into the audience every time a guest said the word wall. The product took off, and the campaign didn't cost marketers anything except a few hundred dolls".
Consumer perception of a company is often important to a company's success. Many companies, therefore, manage their public relations in an effort to garner favorable publicity for themselves and their products. When the company does something noteworthy, such as sponsoring a fund-raising event, the public relations department may issue a press release to promote the event. When the company does something negative, such as selling a prescription drug that has unexpected side effects, the public relations department will work to control the damage to the company. Each year, the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Financial Times jointly survey more than a thousand CEOs in twenty countries to identify companies that have exhibited exceptional integrity or commitment to corporate governance and social responsibility. Among the companies circulating positive public relations as a result of a survey were General Electric, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and IBM".