8. Marketing Mix - Promotion

Promotion: This is the P that most non marketers are familiar with, as it includes the elements that most people believe to be marketing such as selling and advertising etc. Unfortunately it is these same people who underestimate what marketing can do.

A huge amount of work should have been done prior to arriving at this stage in the market planning process if a promotion is to be successful and profitable.

Too many managers who have not been exposed to a market led approach all too often jump straight to this stage in the process and commence to waste large sums of money and effort. Even worse, they recruit a full-time marketing person to sort out the ailments of the company and then expect the marketing person to produce a new corporate brochure which will suddenly turnaround the fortunes of the company.

If a company is not generating the sales or profits it should, then it is usually not simply a failing of the company's promotional tactics! It is usually something much more fundamental than this.

Hence the benefit of bringing in a marketing consultant such as myself in order to take a more global look at the company's weaknesses.

This P in the marketing mix deals with all the communication vehicles such as PR, sales, advertising, etc. these topics are covered in other pages of this site.