Marketing - Product Promotion Strategy

Product Promotion Strategy

Promotion is one of the elements in marketing mix that used to communicate with customers, stockholders, and the broader public. It aims to attract customer’s attention, increase the demand of the product, and mark off the product from others in the marketplace (Boundless, n.d.). We decide to use a mix of advertising and direct marketing to promote our ‘Cloud sofa’.

“Advertising is any paid-for communication overtly intended to inform and influence one or more people.”(Jeremy Bullmore, n.d.). Apple, Inc. mostly advertised its products through TV show, slogan and billboard. The characteristics of Apple, Inc.’s advertisements are clear and simple as each advertisement only aims to make one point (Jayson DeMers, 2014). Thus, we decide to use billboard for the main advertising with the point — comfort. Billboards are usually placed along highway and streets, hence the chances that the product being noticed are higher. Besides, as our target customers are those         , most of them pass by the same route regularly and probably this would make the advertisement stick in their minds (Tanya Robertson, n.d.). However, billboard advertisement is considered as one way communication in advertising. This means potential customers could be attracted but it is hard for them to get more details from billboard since billboards are always focus on images in order to attract people’s attention very quickly.

Direct marketing is about making direct contact with existing and potential customers to promote products or services through direct mail, mailshots and leafleting. One of the direct marketing method used by Apple, Inc. is e-marketing. Apple store is Apple, Inc.’s online store and it is available in 40 countries (Apple store, n.d.). Everyone can get to know about the details of every single Apple’s product easily through Apple store. The most significant advantage of direct marketing in promoting ‘Cloud sofa’ is creating brand loyalty (Queensland Government, n.d.). Personal connection between Apple, Inc. and customer can be increased by personalise promotions such as offer discount and invite to upcoming sales, thus, brand loyalty created. Nonetheless, direct marketing might fail to attract customers due to invalid customer database contains and non-current information. These will lead to increasing in cost of direct marketing and create dissatisfaction in customers (Billie Nordmeyer, n.d.).  

In conclusion, advertising is used to create some awareness of customers on our new product and encourage customers to purchase with the aid of direct marketing. In this case, personal selling is not used since it is too time consuming.

http://www.ipa.co.uk/Page/What-is-advertising#.VSqEjPmUfT8

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/07/08/heres-the-simple-secret-to-apples-marketing-success/

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-billboards-advertisement-tool-16143.html

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/open/country_selector