Personal selling approach for public relations

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Hello marketers, Professor Wolters here. And today we're back in Georgia. And today what we're gonna talk about is the promotion mix. These are all the things we do in order to help promote our products or services. And there's some things you need to think about before we go into, kind of each, of the different parts that are out there. One thing you gotta realize is your promotion mix is gonna help you engage with your customers. It's gonna help you speak to your customers. They're going to help you promote to your customers, right, communicating with them, this kind of stuff. We're gonna be doing those things. And when we do that, we want to make sure that we're promoting and engaging our customers to let them know the value of our products, the value of our services and things like that. And what's important is that we're consistent across all platforms. So it doesn't matter if it's a TV ad, a digital ad, or if it's a salesperson, everybody's kind of on the same page about what we're doing so you're sending a consistent message on each one of these parts of the promotion mix. And I guess I'll start off with the first one is advertising. Obviously, this the most popular, most famous version of promotion is you put ads out there. Whether it's the billboard on the side of the highway, saying, hey, next exit is Culver's, or McDonald's or whatever, you know, to get some food. Remember, they're communicating some value. Look, there's food, it's close by, it's at this exit, they have those things. You might look at your digital ads you have online that are out there: hey, click here to find our latest deals. Or maybe you're gonna let them know about your new products that are now offered in a, you know, I don't know, like a radio spot. There's all kinds of different things you'll see in terms of ads and where they show up. And we have a whole video that goes through different, y'know, kind of advertisement media that you can use. So check out that video for some more, like, pluses and minuses of those. But, that's the first thing you gotta think about. Your first promotion mix, the one that you'll be thinking about the most is actually this advertising you're going to have. Now, the second thing I want to talk about is actually digital marketing, okay. Now, you noticed I talked about the digital ads and the advertising part, and that is part of this. But the thing is, in digital marketing, you also have what are called email lists where you have a collection of emails for people. Maybe it's clients, or potential clients, or customers, or whatever, you-you send out. You can email them, you can target them and stuff like that, to promote to them, to talk to them. So you have your digital marketing aspect you're going to have, right? But then also we have to think about other things. Like, one thing I really enjoy are the good public relations stories you see that are out there. Cause the thing is, companies need to promote the good things they do in their community cause a lot of companies really do give back. Like, you know, if you watch my videos, I'm a Coke person. But the thing is, in my hometown, Refreshment Services Pepsi of Quincy, man, they do fantastic things to the community. They sponsor all kinds of sports things, they put, you know, billboards up. They-they put the sports fields and things like that. They do a lot of stuff within the community, which makes you feel like, you know what, I wanna give more. I wanna buy my Mountain Dew when I go home to Quincy, as opposed to something else. And the thing is in public relations, part of their job is to promote the good things the company is doing. So they might write press releases to let people know that, hey, we have this new product release, we have this new person hired, we have these new initiatives we're doing. You have that kind of thing. But also part of the job is to deal with the negative press that's out there. For example, Airbnb has had a number of bad press over the years, and their public relations team has to deal with it. Like, hey, what about when there were cameras in people's Airbnbs, what's going on with that? Or-or other things, like they have to discuss that. They have to talk about that. So, there's a lot of things that the public relations people need to do. And all these things they do are in order to kind of promote, really, hence the promotion mix, promote what the brand is doing in the community and other spots, okay. Now, the next thing I want to talk about is actually personal selling. Like those people that are selling to you in the stores, or in the shops, or online or however when you're talking to somebody, maybe it's a little like chat bot over there, you need to have sales people that promote your products, that understand the products, can tell people why it's good for them, why it's bad for them. I mean, think about it, when you go into a store, a-a-and the salesperson, they'll do a good job of promoting the right products for you, you're a lot happier. Oh, you helped me choose the right car, you help me choose the right phone, you helped me chose the right computer. That really helps build a good brand image overall, but also what it does is it helps us promote kind of our values of our company. That's why when you go to some stores, you're like, wow, you're just like the ads I see on TV. I mean, think about it. Jake from State Farm, back in the day with a khaki pants and a red shirt. You know what, if you went to State Farm, you saw a lot of khaki pants and red shirts. And they did that. It's like wow, the brand and the advertising, the promotion, is consistent across all platforms, okay. So you think about that. You're like, hey, yeah. And one thing you really need to do if you do want to have this kind of, you know, really good personal selling aspect is you got to spend a lot of time on training your employees so everybody's delivering the same thing. Because you don't want a restaurant, for example, that one table has amazing service and the other table has horrible service. No, no, I want people to be consistent with their service so everybody's getting the same service, so we're being consistent. Remember, consistency and promotion. We have to think about those things right? Now, next thing I want to talk about, since I'm talking about promotions overall, are this sales promotions we do. That is actually part of your promotion mix. You know, when you see that buy one get one free kind of thing, that's a promotion mix. Maybe you see different coupons, or ads running online, and you're seeing discount codes, these things? These are sales promotions. They're incentives that we use to entice customers to buy. And the thing is, remember, we talked about consistency, and everyone has to work together? So our ad has to have a, you know, an information about the sale that's coming up. We actually have to have that sale. The salespeople need to know about it, and who's gonna be the most, you know, get the most benefit from it. We have to think about those things, and they all kind of mix together, hence why it's a promotion mix. We're doing all these different parts at the same time, so you gotta think about that. And I will say sales promotions usually are kind of a short term thing, it's not long term, it's more of a strategy overall. We're looking at sales, like short term tactics of sales promotions, that's you're looking at your promotion mix. And the last thing we're talking about is what we call direct sales or direct marketing. And this is when you're talking directly to the consumers, or a group of consumers, you're developing a promotion strategy just for them. So you might have that direct, you know, the direct mailers you might see and things like that. Yes, that kind of goes in there as well. So, there's all these different parts of a promotion mix. So there's other parts out there, but I just want you to kind of think about all the different things that advertisers and marketers have to think about when they're developing their promotion mix. Cause it's not just make a cool ad and sell. No, no, no, we could make a cool ad, but we've gotta have the right product for it, we've gotta know what's gonna be the selling point for it, our sales staff has to know what's going on, we gotta make sure our public relations firms can let people know about why we're making this, all these things together really make up our promotion mix. And that's why it's kind of a tough thing to keep everyone on track because there's so many different people that are kind of in there. Because you got your sales, you got your advertising, you got your marketing, you got a new product development, you got your your sales staff on the floor, you got your managers there, there's all kinds of things you really got to do. So I hope this helps you better understand what the promotion mix is, what goes into that promotion mix, and what you might need to do to, you know, put together your own promotion mix for your firm, your company or your business. So, I wish you all the best and I'll see you later. Bye from Georgia.