Before we get to know the concept of the promotional mix, you must know that in the field of marketing, there is no place for coincidence, and even an extremely wonderful product cannot be sold automatically. All steps are studied and carefully built in order to persuade target customers to make a purchase, and to promote the purchasing experience and the brand. In fact, some brands may not have huge marketing budgets, but they enjoy an influential and strong presence in the market. This is due to their ability to use the right promotional mix that helps them achieve their marketing goals more effectively. In this article, we will discover how you can do that by discovering the effective promotional mix that will help in developing a solid marketing strategy for your online store.

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Definition of Promotional Mix

The promotional mix can be defined as the set of customized elements - and tools - that a company defines to help it achieve its marketing goals, taking into account the inclusion of an attractive and informative message to promote the service or product and be convincing to play its role. Every business has the freedom to choose the effective promotional mix tools for its own promotional campaign, whether by relying on only some of them or mixing them all together.

The promotional mix concept assumes that there is a variety of channels to communicate with consumers, and Philip Kotler believes that: “A company's total marketing communications mix - also called promotion mix - consists of the specific blend of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct-marketing tools that the company uses to persuasively communicate customer value and build customer relationships.” While Gary Armstrong defines the promotional mix as: “It includes advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing for the company, as well as product design, shape, packaging, color, label, etc., as all these things convey something to the buyer.”

Key Promotional Activities of the Promotional Mix

To determine the optimal elements for your marketing strategy, you need to ask the following questions in order to get a balanced mix:

• What is the best way to inform customers?

• What marketing tools should be used?

• Who is the promotion targeting?

• What is the marketing budget? How is it allocated to promotional tools?

 Elements of the Promotional Mix:

First: Advertising

The American Marketing Association defines advertising as “any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.” Advertising is therefore one of the most common promotional mix tools, used to increase customer interest in companies' products and brands by informing them of new products, price changes, and brand activities in general. Companies can use advertising to increase online sales and achieve various purposes including increasing awareness, and it also reinforces different messages as well. Due to the massive daily flow of advertising messages, it may be easy for customers to remember some and forget others, depending on the type of content, the message, and the platforms used by the advertiser to deliver their message to the market.

Second: Personal Selling

This element is primarily based on direct and effective communication with customers, and is carried out through sales staff to increase reach and raise sales by building stronger relationships with the consumer and user. According to Philip Kotler, personal selling is: “Personal presentation by the firm’s sales force for the purpose of making sales and building customer relationships.” The art of personal selling is also defined by D.D. Couch as: “The science of creating a desire in the mind of the prospective customer that can only be satisfied by the possession of your product.” Personal selling, therefore, is a science and an art, requiring mastery of some key practices such as patience, practice, and the use of the right methods, devices, and skills.

Third: Direct Marketing

Unlike personal selling, direct marketing involves targeting specific individuals - within a narrow range of potential customers - to get an immediate response using direct communication channels. Companies promote their offers through various channels such as: telemarketing, regular mail, email, catalogs, brochures, faxes, or other personal and non-personal tools to reach targeted individuals directly and get an immediate response.

Fourth: Sales Promotion

This element essentially includes short-term incentives offered by companies and marketers to increase sales by boosting demand for specific products and services, such as discounts, coupons, and offers. These are activated to build urgency and drive customers to stores through the psychological trigger of (scarcity). This promotional activity aims primarily to persuade customers to make an immediate purchase, and a well-designed sales promotion can generate strong immediate traffic and act as a marketing strategy to increase your sales in the short term.

Tip | With the advent of digital marketing, companies have been able to target their potential customers more easily, bypassing traditional marketing channels and running digital campaigns at a fraction of the cost.

Fifth: Public Relations

Public relations is an important element of the promotional mix, and it is: “A deliberate, planned, and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its publics, customers, employees, shareholders, government, and society.” Through public relations, companies build interesting stories and promote a positive image of the company to the public using various media channels. In this way, the public relations team tries to gain the support of all stakeholders associated with the company, including customers, government, the general public, investors, and other stakeholders.

Tip | Companies do not always positive reviews. Sometimes unwanted rumors can damage the company's image. In such a scenario, a good public relations strategy helps avoid crisis and restore the damaged reputation.

Additional Tools within the Promotional Mix

This mainly includes publicity via "word-of-mouth marketing," and many giant companies have paid attention to viral marketing over the Internet, which is very similar to word-of-mouth publicity. In addition to that, other forms not directly related to the promotional mix include: sponsorship of events and other brands, organized activities, sports tournaments, and so on.

Benefits of the Promotional Mix

You can reap the following benefits through the professional employment of an effective promotional mix within the marketing strategy of your online store:

Increasing awareness of a new product / brand

At the launch stage, products and services are unknown to customers, which requires brand registration to introduce them by increasing awareness. This is done through initial promotional efforts by focusing on building identity and informing the market of what you offer and what sets you apart.

Creating Interest

The customer must first realize that they have a need for the product or service before getting motivated to consider purchasing, and this is where the task of the promotional mix elements comes in.

Providing Information

The purpose of information is to explain what the product is so that it helps enhance the customer's confidence in their choice during their search journey for the most suitable product. Informational promotion can be used to assist in product positioning strategy.

Stimulating Demand

A well-designed promotional mix can prompt potential customers to take purchase action. In the case of products that the customer has not bought before or has not bought for a long time, promotional efforts may be directed towards urging the customer to try the product.

Building Close Relationships

Once a purchase is made, you can use the promotional mix to build strong relationships that can lead to enhancing customer loyalty to your online store.

Improving Promotional ROI

An effectively designed promotional mix helps increase the brand's reach and impact in the market. You should focus on every aspect of your promotional mix to send a consistent message. Planning the promotional mix effectively and using the optimal channels leads to great results and a higher return on investment from the budget you invested in your marketing campaign.

Improves Communication with Customers

Grow your relationships with customers by engaging them in the promotional campaign. You will have to develop a promotional mix that tries to speak the language of consumers. If prepared correctly, it helps build trust between the brand and its customers, which is a decisive factor in enhancing potential custom loyalty and retaining them. ( Acquire selling and customer relations skills )

 Distinguishes You from Your Competitors

With the massive flow of various daily advertisements, a thoughtful promotional mix will help you stand out from the crowd without creating chaos or annoying your customers. Successful companies make sure quality triumphs over quantity, and choose the optimal place and timing for promotional campaigns, to craft a unique brand identity and build a distinctive image that helps to stand out in a highly competitive market.

Increasing Sales Percentage

Professional building of the promotional mix contributes to raising the sales percentage, attracting more new customers to the brand, and increasing the retention rate of current customers by building strong relationships with customers through diverse and varied channels.

7 Practical Tips for Developing a Promotional Mix

Every company has its optimal promotional mix according to its unique activity and identity. Here are practical tips for an effective mechanism to help you develop the right promotional mix for your specific case:

• Define your target audience

As a first step, it is essential to create a detailed buyer persona for your ideal customer. Without a clear and specific picture of the person you are trying to reach, you will waste a lot of time, effort, and money marketing to the wrong audience through the wrong channel. Create a profile for your customer to improve targeting.

• Define your promotional goal

Defining the goal acts as a roadmap, as precisely set goals will make it easier to prepare an effective marketing plan. Your goal could be: increasing sales, raising brand awareness, or promoting a new product, or otherwise.

• Determine your budget

Determine the amount you can spend on the elements of the promotional mix. Certainly, the cost will vary according to promotional activities and channels, so find out what works for you and your budget. There are also 8 effective marketing strategies suitable for low-budget stores.

• Choose the right platform

Choose the optimal platform to deliver your promotional messages. Your messages are expected to differ depending on each platform, so discover the most suitable communication channel for your audience.

• Define your marketing message

Your marketing message must be consistent, clear, and precise so that the audience can understand and interact with it simultaneously.

• Choose the right mix

Make sure to choose the right mix for your specific case; not every mix is necessarily suitable for your brand, even if it is popular among competing brands. Banks, for example, use SMS marketing, and some companies use email marketing, so you must develop the optimal mix for your business.

• Monitor new trends

You will need to learn, measure, and modify your promotional mix plan every time. It will also be necessary to monitor local and global marketing trends, keeping up with what suits your brand and market positioning, so you can reach your customers the way they like. 

Remember!

• You can create an effective promotional mix by targeting the right audience, reinforcing marketing goals, understanding the market you are selling in, and keeping your available budget in mind.

• Your efforts are likely to get scattered if you mobilize all the elements of the promotional mix, so relying on only one or two elements at the beginning might be useful.

• When deciding on the promotional mix, remember that promotional tools do not carry equal importance, and their importance changes with the emergence of changes in the business environment and new trends in the market.

• There is no one-size-fits-all promotional mix; rather, each company must design its own unique promotional mix.

• Brands can use any tool of the promotional mix depending on the nature of the product in addition to the overall goal of the company.

• Customers' consumption habits change, search algorithms change, and it is necessary to keep pace with them when building your promotional strategies.

• A carefully planned promotional mix ensures that your business has multiple strategies to reach customers, make sales, and achieve short and long-term goals.

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