Promotion

Promotion is one of the four Ps of the marketing mix. Promotion is interrelated with other 3 Ps of the marketing mix. Overall, each of the 4 Ps of marketing mix is vital for successful performance of the business.

Promotion, as an element of the marketing mix, entails marketing communication with the target market. Communication can be personal (face to face) and non-personal (not face to face). The objective of marketing communication is to attract customers to purchase a company’s products and services.

Promotion is an important element of the marketing mix because there is a significant amount of products and services available to the population. Therefore, the organization needs to educate, communicate to and persuade its target customers why it’s particular product or service will meet customers’ needs.

SMCR model

Promotion is a form of communication. The SMCR framework is a generally accepted model for communication. SMCR stands for a source (a sender), a message, a channel and a receiver.

In the SMCR model, a source encodes the message and transmits it to the receiver via a communication channel. A communication channel is a medium that allows for the message to be transmitted to the receiver. Communication channels may include television, radio, magazine, face to face communication or telephone communication.

A receiver, hopefully, is able to decode the message accurately, understand it and act upon it (if action is required). If communication allows for feedback from the receiver to the source (sender), then the source may adjust the message for better decoding by the receiver. This improves the efficiency of communication.

Various factors distort the message at the same time as it is transmitted from source to the receiver. Such factors are called “noise”. Due to “noise” and inability of the receiver to decode the message accurately, the meaning that the receiver ultimately attributes to the message may be much distorted from the original meaning of the source.

In the case of promotion, a source is the company. A message is what the organization is trying to communicate to the target market (a receiver). A channel of communication refers to different channels that the organization can use to communicate its message such as television and newspapers.

Overall, if the organizational message received by the target audience is accurately decoded and results in intended actions, then the promotion was successful.