In any marketing plan, there is a clear relationship between marketing promotion and sales. Promotion incorporates not only sales but also advertising, online marketing, direct marketing and public relations to achieve a company’s communication objectives. Sales use the marketing tools that the promotion team develops to educate the customer and reinforce the company’s brand and value in an interpersonal setting.
Features
Marketing promotion communication elements–advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations and online marketing–create product value and encourage consumers to buy a company’s product. Sales or personal selling incorporates cold-calling, door-to-door selling, and face-to-face interaction with the customer.
Purpose
Though promotion and sales are interrelated in the marketing process, the two elements use different skills in order to achieve the same goal: increase revenue. Sales are just one part of the promotional mix, where marketing promotion incorporates sales, as well as all of the marketing communication channels used to promote goods and services. Because a salesperson speaks to the customer directly, he is responsible for closing deals and signing the contracts, which directly translates into revenue. In contrast, promotions are responsible for creating the marketing materials–product brochures, website blogs, press releases, advertisements and customer surveys–that collect information from prospects that are forwarded to sales associates for follow-up and further communication.
Benefits
Sales associates communicate with prospects and clients in person and can gauge a customer’s body language, tone or response during a sales pitch. If the sales associate observes the customer backing away from a purchase, he can quickly adapt and tailor his message to fit the customers. needs. On the other hand, promotion uses multiple communication vehicles to send out messages to a much larger audience. For instance, the promotion department can communicate with customers instantaneously by broadcasting a commercial viewed by millions of people or publish an article touting a product’s benefits in a widely circulated newspaper.
Target Audience
Sales associates usually pitch products and services to prospects who are somewhat familiar or already interested in buying the company’s products. However, promotional tools, such as advertising and direct marketing, communicate to customers. prospects and the general public. The target audience for the marketing promotion department is much larger than the vetted, group of prospects that comprises a sales associate’s audience.
Expert Insight
According to Philip Kotler, a Northwestern University international marketing professor, and Gary Armstrong. a University of North Carolina professor, selling acts as the “interpersonal arm” of marketing promotion and is more effective than advertising, direct marketing or public relations in complicated sales scenarios. In companies such as Xerox and DuPont, sales efforts play an instrumental role in selling products and serve as the human bridge between a company and its customers. In other companies such as Proctor & Gamble, which sell through intermediaries and rely heavily on marketing promotion to sell products, customers almost never meet sales associates or even know of their existence.
