Blog Brief:
Advertising represents the brand, conveys the brand message, improves its value with the audience, and gives your brand an edge over competitors. It’s a paid form of communication targeted at a collective crowd. Informative, persuasive, comparative, and remainder-oriented advertising are the different ways businesses advertise their products. Sales promotions build brand attributes by providing customers with short-duration incentives to buy the product, like coupons, discounts, buy-one-get-one-free sales, rewards for reviews and feedback, etc. Promotion is a vital aspect of marketing communication influencing customers and dealers to buy your product. Advertising connects with people at an emotional level and is subtle. At the same time, sales promotions adopt a rational and direct approach. Advertising and sales promotion have their advantages and disadvantages. Two-month online advertising and sales promotion certificate enable you to choose your marketing strategy based on analyzing marketing conditions, objectives, budget, requirements, and product life cycle stages.
In advertising, people are informed about the attributes of the product/service and encouraged to make a purchase or take advantage of its benefits. Sales Promotion builds healthy customer relationships improving engagement and retention.
A certificate in advertising and sales promotion helps you gain a deeper understanding of the basics of advertising and sales promotion, the process, and various approaches in the field.
Advertising represents the brand, conveys the brand message, improves its value with the audience, and gives your brand an edge over competitors. It’s a paid form of communication targeted at a collective crowd.
Let’s look at the different ways businesses advertise their products:
Informative advertising: While launching a new product in the market, this form of advertising builds curiosity and demand for the product.
Persuasive Advertising: This advertising strategy is employed during the development and maturity phases of the product life cycle to improve its advantage and position itself in the market.
Comparative Advertising: This strategy compares with competitor products/services vying for attention.
Reminder-oriented advertising: This method is employed during the decline phase of the product life cycle to strengthen the previous marketing efforts by broadcasting the product name.
Most businesses use the following mediums for advertising:
- Newspapers help you to reach the right audience with different pricing alternatives; choose the one that falls within your budget.
- Television and radios can be pricey. Study your target audience to choose appropriate channels to advertise your product.
- You can reach your customers directly by sending emails. You can send the mail through your marketing team in-house or utilize the services of marketing companies.
- Advertising via magazines and trade journals helps you reach your audience region-wise.
- Outdoor advertising includes banners, billboards, transit ads, buses, or cabs.
- List your business in online web directories like Google Business Profile, Bing, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, etc. The disadvantage with web directories is that your competitors will also be listed and appear in search results when customers search using generic product names.
- Advertising via social media platforms by way of postings, ads, banners, etc. It offers cost-effective and affordable options to promote your products/ services.
While advertising your products, you should study the effectiveness of your advertising strategies using various metrics to ensure return on investment (ROI).
Sales promotions build brand attributes by providing customers with short-duration incentives to buy the product, like coupons, discounts, buy-one-get-one-free sales, rewards for reviews and feedback, etc. Promotion is a vital aspect of marketing communication influencing customers and dealers to buy your product. It’s not about advertising, personal selling, or creating publicity; it’s about boosting sales and urging the customer to make the purchase, for example, distributing product samples, cooking demonstrations, discussing recipes and cooking techniques, etc.
Sales promotions are short-term strategies targeting consumers and retailers to achieve specific goals:
- persuading customers to try the product or make an immediate purchase
- introducing customers to the store where products are displayed
- motivating retailers to stock products, and strengthening advertising and personal sales efforts
It’s a widely adopted promotional strategy as it helps reach consumers living in rural regions, under-developed or inaccessible places, and with limited access to the digital medium.
Advantages of sales promotion:
- It adds value and helps to differentiate the brand from other brands and stay ahead of the competition.
- It helps in interacting and connecting with customers and nurturing relationships.
- Increasing the display of products are retail outlets boosts sales since most purchase decisions are made impulsively at the store.
- It helps reach different market segments faster than digital media.
- As you respond quickly to fulfill market demands, it enables you to meet your targets.
- Promotes trust, and loyal customers refer the product to friends and family and encourage them to purchase.
- Creates opportunities to sell related products or accessories at lower costs, which boosts sales.
- Customers switch to different brands quickly since products of several brands are available in the market. Customers prefer to purchase your products when you provide benefits and discounts.
- Companies devise unique strategies to market their products. As sales improve, they focus all their efforts and resources on their unique approach, building brand identity.
- Sales promotion strategies are affordable compared to advertising via digital and media channels.
- The rise in sales boosts revenue, and you need to study the costs to ensure ROI as people start making use of the benefits you offer.
- The above strategies help companies to segment their audience and devise unique personalized marketing strategies to influence them.
- Sales promotions benefit companies by boosting revenue, building brand identity, and reaching new customers.
Disadvantages:
- Sales promotions are short-term activities that help meet short-duration targets only and do not provide results in the long run.
- Comparisons tend to happen between advertising and sales promotions. Many companies prefer the advertising and public relations to build brand identity.
- Price-related promotions reduce brand image and lead to price wars between competitors, lowering the profit margin. In advertising, you are conscious of the cost and budget at all times, enabling you to earn profits.
- Sales promotion regulations and practices differ with regions and countries. Design your strategies after analyzing different market conditions.
- Companies cannot define their buyer persona since surveys and questionnaires used to collect customer data can be ineffective as customers tick randomly, distorting the data.
It might look complex and way out of your league, but pursuing a certificate in advertising and sales promotion program will demystify the process of advertising and sales promotion and enhance your expertise in devising marketing strategies with exposure to best practices in the field.
What you will be learning:
- Principles, strategies, and ethics in advertising and sales promotion
- Study and analyze advertisements
- Various communication approach in marketing
- Branding and advertising messages and appeals
Texila-CPD offers the best certificate course in advertising and sales promotion. The program is budget-friendly and completely online, with global recognition. It opens you to the following jobs roles:
- Accounts Executive
- Media executive
- Public affairs consultant
- Public relations officer
- Sales promotion executive
- Marketing Executive
Key Takeaways:
Advertising connects with people at an emotional level, whereas sales promotions adopt a rational approach. Makeup, perfumes, and jewelry ads should be innovative and endearing to persuade the audience to buy your product.
Building brand identity and loyalty and nurturing relationships take time. Advertising assists in developing relationships over time. Sales promotions are short-duration strategies and do not forge relationships.
Advertising employs subtle strategies, while sales promotions use a direct approach to build brand image.
Advertising is best during the introduction and growth phase of the product life cycle. Ads in the initial phase keep the customer informed about the product, builds curiosity, and help the brand establish itself in the market. When your brand has several products, ads help promote the brand along with its entire product range.
Promotion is best suited during the later stages of the product life cycle – – maturity and decline and helps restore the brand image. This mode of marketing is not suitable for brands with several products since promoting several products can be a costly affair.
Advertising and sales promotion have their own advantages and disadvantages. A two-month online certificate in advertising and sales promotion enables you to choose your marketing strategy based on the following:
- Analyzing marketing conditions
- Objectives, budget, requirements, and stages of product life cycle
