Promotion

Promotion is the most obvious side of marketing. This is how to get information about your product to your customer. Promotion ensures that people know about your product. But although it contains advertising, there is much more to it than just posters.

Advertising

Advertising can reach a huge market or a narrower market depending on the type of media used.

It includes:

• Print advertisements in magazines and newspapers.
• Advertisements on television or in the cinema
• Hysbysebu ar y rhyngrwyd
• Hysbysebu ar y radio
• Posteri gan gynnwys hysbysfyrddau a hysbysfyrddau electronig.

Depending on the media, advertising can be expensive but it can be worth the money if you are able to reach a wider market. The disadvantage of advertising is that it can reach many people who are not in your target market. Businesses therefore try to target their advertising, for example by timing TV advertising at times of the day when their target market is likely to be watching, or around certain programmes.

Public relations (PR)

This is a way of trying to communicate with your market and make them feel like they know the company.

PR methods are:

Sponsorship

Sponsorship occurs when a business pays for its name to be used on something that will be seen by the public.

A famous example in Wales is the Millennium Stadium which has changed its name to the Principality Stadium in a multi-million-pound deal with the Principality Building Society.

Another example is rugby referee shirts sponsored by Specsavers.

The Ifor Williams trailer company used to sponsor the front of Wrexham Football Club’s shirts. Click on the link to see a mock advertisement for the company by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney:

By now, interest in the club following the successful Welcome to Wrexham series has led to sponsors with a much higher profile and in 2023 the team announced that United Airlines would sponsor the shirts.

Use of social media and other media

Social media is becoming increasingly important as a method of promoting businesses. Businesses promote on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X (Twitter), TikTok and many other platforms across the world.

Posting content is free, therefore social media can be very effective. Having said this, businesses often employ social media experts to manage their output. Businesses can also pay to place advertisements on the media in order to reach a wider variety of people than just the followers.

Watch the video below to see the ‘Bodoli’ company talking about using social media.

There has been a huge increase in the number of individuals known as social media influencers. Influencers are followed by millions of people who watch their content. Because of this an influencer is able to boost a product or service by promoting it or showing it on their channel. The influencer must reveal when a business pays them to use their product or service.

Guerilla marketing

This is a form of marketing that seeks different ways to attract the public’s attention

Guerilla marketing can be very effective but requires a lot of imagination!

Some examples are shown below (Click on the images to make them bigger.):

Personal sales

This is when a business employs individuals to sell their goods. For example, in a car showroom there are people who can talk the customer through the buying process. This type of promotion can be found in technology stores such as the Apple Store where there are sales staff who can answer questions about the product.

It can also take place over the phone.

This can be an expensive form of promotion because staff have to be paid, but it can be effective if the product or service is complex. B2B businesses use more personal selling as the products are often very technical.

Product placement

Product placement involves the use of products in films and television programmes. Below are examples of product placement in the Netflix series, Stranger Things.

James Bond films are famous for product placement of luxury products such as Aston Martin cars and Omega watches.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing uses information technology media therefore it includes social media together with websites, blogs, e-mail blogs etc.

A website is useful for businesses to give customers more information at their fingertips. They can also use the website to sell directly to customers. Blogs and vlogs build interest in the company so that the customers feel they know the company better. People are much more likely to buy from a company they feel an emotional connection with.

Click on the link to see an example of a blog on the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol website:

Corporate image

A corporate image is how a company portrays itself to its customers and how the customer sees it. There are 3 aspects to a corporate imaging.

• Corporate communication is the language and phraseology used by the business
• Corporate design is how the business looks, its colours, its branding, the feeling it presents
• Corporate behaviour is the way the business behaves.

All these elements need to blend together in order to create a coherent corporate image.