A promotional mix is the strategic combination of promotional tools used to reach customers to achieve a product’s marketing objectives. Included in the mix are advertising, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotions.

Implementing the promotional mix is part of an effective promotional campaign. Promotional campaigns involve six steps:

• Identify the target market.

• Determine a product’s marketing objectives.

• Design the message.

• Determine the budget.

• Implement the promotional mix.

• Evaluate and adjust the mix as needed.

Advertising is paid, impersonal mass communication from an identified sponsor to persuade or influence a targeted audience.

Advertising plays several important roles in business:

• It helps businesses build brand awareness and differentiate products.

• It has economic benefits because a great deal of money is spent on it, which creates jobs.

• If advertising increases a product’s sales volume, a firm can achieve economies of scale in terms of how the product is produced and potentially lower the price of the product.

Advertising also plays a societal role:

• Society benefits from advertising because it informs and educates us about new and different products.

• Advertising can also persuade us in ways that can have positive or negative social ramifications.

Public relations is the process of establishing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and its stakeholders.

Public relations tools consist of controlled, semicontrolled, and uncontrolled news messages. Information communicated about a person, organization, or a product transmitted through mass media at no charge is called publicity.

Damage control is the effort to minimize the harmful effects of a negative event.

Personal selling is direct communication between a firm’s sales force and potential buyers to make a sale and build good customer relationships. Establishing and maintaining good customer relationships through personal selling is critical for a firm’s success.

Six steps are involved with personal selling:

• Prospecting is identifying qualified potential customers.

• Approaching the prospect has two parts. In the pre-approach, the salesperson learns as much as possible about potential customers to determine their likely needs and think about how those needs might be satisfied. In the actual approach, the idea is to meet, greet, and put the prospect at ease.

• Presenting involves telling a product’s story, demonstrating its use, asking questions, and listening to customers’ answers.

• Overcoming objections involves countering customers’ reasons for not buying with reasons to buy.

• Closing the sale is when a salesperson asks for a purchase.

• Following up is when a salesperson ensures that a customer is happy with a product and asks for feedback.

Sales promotions are short-term activities that target consumers and other businesses for the purpose of generating interest in a product, which have not already been undertaken by advertising, public relations, or personal selling.

One type of sales promotion is a consumer sales promotion. Tools used for consumer sales promotions include coupons, rebates, frequent-user incentives, point-of-purchase displays, free samples, contests, and sweepstakes.

Trade (B2B) sales promotions include trade shows, trade allowances, cooperative advertising, free merchandise, sales contests, dealer listings, store demonstrations, quantity discounts, and training programs.

Marketing intermediaries are middlemen in the distribution process. Wholesalers, agents/brokers, and retailers constitute the different types of intermediaries.

A distribution channel is a whole set of intermediaries. There are many different types of distribution channels, including consumer channels, consumer/business channels, and business channels. The type and length of the distribution channel depends on the type of product that is being brought to the consumer.

Intermediaries are important because they reduce the costs of products to consumers by increasing the efficiency of the distribution of goods and services.

Wholesalers provide many services that add efficiency to the distribution of merchandise, including selling and promoting, warehousing, transporting, ­financing, and providing market information.

Agents/brokers are intermediaries that facilitate ­negotiations between buyers and the sellers in B2B markets but never take title (ownership) of the products traded.

Several types of retailers exist: specialty stores, department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, discount stores, factory outlets, and warehouse clubs.

In nonstore retailing consumer contact occurs outside a traditional retail store. Examples include electronic retailing, vending machines, kiosks, carts, telemarketing, direct selling, and direct marketing.

Retailers can cover their markets using an intensive, a selective, or an exclusive distribution strategy.

Physical distribution is one of the most expensive parts of marketing a product. In the broadest sense, it entails the management of the entire supply chain.

Transportation options include railroads, trucks, waterways, airways, and pipelines. Careful measurement of the advantages and disadvantages of these options is important before selecting a mode of transportation.