Creating a promoting plan

The promotion should be a mixture of both Public Relation and Advertisement activities. The reason for selecting this type of plan is because experts believe that Advertising and PR (Public Relation) activities can take businesses to such high places where one alone cannot. Hence, PR and Advertisement will be an important part of the business’s promotional activities. Advertisement involves informing consumers about the business. It is also used for persuading people to buy the products offered by the business for sale. The advertisement for plan for the business should follow a target market approach. The mass media, Radio and Television, should not be used. The reason for not using these media is because it is extremely expensive and should never be used unless the target market is the entire population. Since, this business serves only a particular market; hence advertising on mass medium is wastage of resources. The company should use below the line marketing effort in order to attract people towards the business. In the first stage when the business is still young, the company should offer sales discount and provide free samples to consumers in order to encourage trial purchase. Many businesses fail because they are unable to generate trial purchase and hence consumers are not aware of the product and its benefits. Hence, BTL activities are an extremely important part of the company’s promotion plan. When the sales pick up and the company matures, the focus of advertising should shift from generating trial purchases to inform people about the business and its strengths. This can be done through advertising on bill boards and using specialist magazines in order to make sure that the target market is being tapped effectively. (Armstrong and Keller, 2003) As soon as the company reaches some sort of maturity, the advertising and promotion of the company should also include Public Relations. Public relations are about creating a goodwill effect of the company. This is to show that the company is aware of its responsibilities and giving back the society in terms of employment and providing benefits to the under privileged. The ideal situation for this business should be that the company should associate itself with a cause that is relevant to the business’s products. For example, a yoghurt company can associate itself with a local sporting event in order to tell the people that Yoghurt is healthy and at the same time it is telling the target market that it is playing its role in developing young players. Similarly, celebrity association is also important and can only be achieved once the company matures as endorsements are expensive. A young many might not be financially well placed to pay the endorsing celebrities as they command extremely large amount. Hence it is recommended that the company should go into this venture of promoting their business once they are mature and financially stable enough to meet the high costs of conducting such expenses. (Keller and Kotler, 2004) The use of Advertising and PR as a part of company’s promotion plan will ensure the company’s visibility to its target market and this will generate not only sales, but will also work towards providing goodwill to the company. However, this should be done very cleverly and each campaign should continue the effect of the last campaign and at the same time providing something new to the people to talk about. Once, the company’s sales are stable, both advertisement and PR activities should be expedited in order to make sure that there is no room for competitor to enter the market and the business is capable enough to meet the demands of the market at a reasonable cost. (Daft, 1994) STEP-BY-STEP: In the launch stage, the company should promote its BTL advertising activities informing consumers about the special introductory pricing and discounts of the product. At this time, there is no need to conduct PR activities at it is expensive and the company is still young. Once the company gets older it should start advertising in newspaper and specialist magazines to inform people about its existence and its purpose of conducting the business. It is at this time that these activities should be accompanies by PR activities. The company should use celebrity endorsement and should sponsor local events. This is in line with the company’s objectives of letting people know that they exist in the market. In the end, the company should expedite its promotional efforts in order to discourage competition in the market. References: Armstrong, Gary and Kotler, Philips. (2003). Principles of Marketing. Prentice Daft, Richard L. (1994). Management. The Dryden Publications Keller, Kevin L and Kotler Phillips. (2004). Marketing Management. Prentice