Promotion and publicity campaigns

Publicity is defined as "the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a subject."The subjects of publicity include people (for example, politicians, and performing artists), goods, and services.From a marketing perspective, publicity is one component of promotion.The other elements of the promotional mix are advertising, sales promotion, and personal selling.Promotion is used as a marketing tool mainly in the introduction of a new product or new features of an existing product.The purpose of promoting a product is to get the public excited about how your product can improve their life.

• Advertising - advertising is meant to persuade consumers to purchase a particular good or service.There are many mediums of advertising including television, radio, cinema, magazines, newspapers, video games, the Internet, carrier bags, and billboards.In advertising, factual information is used to create a brand image for the company and to increase the number of products that are sold by that company.
• Sales promotion - in a sales promotion marketing tactics are used to stimulate sales for a pre-determined and limited time.This is intended to stimulate the market and requires an increase of product availability.Some examples of a sales promotion are contests, rebates, and items or services for free with purchase.
• Personal selling - good old-fashioned sales where the product is introduced, sold and delivered by a sales person in a face-to-face transaction.

There are times when promotion and publicity campaigns are brought about by media interest, thus making this form of marketing very affordable.But for most companies the work of promotion and publicity must move forward regardless of the amount of media attention the business is receiving.In order to create opportunities to make news and publically promote their business, promotion and publicity campaign are created to coincide with such things as.

• Conduct a poll or survey
• Stage a debate
• Organize a tour of your business or projects
• Issue a commendation
• Issue a report
• Take a stand on a controversial subject
• Arrange for a testimonial
• Announce an appointment
• Invent then present an award
• Art exhibitions
• Event sponsorship
• Arrange a speech or talk
• Make an analysis or prediction

Publicity and promotion are such vital parts of marketing mainly because they are low cost and can be highly credible (when aired in between news stories like on evening TV news casts). New technologies such as weblogs, web cameras, web affiliates, and convergence are also adding to the cost-effective nature of marketing through publicity and promotion.Disadvantages to promotion and publicity campaigns are that you have limited control over how the medial will interpret the release of information and that there are relatively few promotion and publicity campaigns that are taken advantage of by the media.Another disadvantage to promotion and publicity campaigns is that often times the public is weary of the possibility that the promoter is being untruthful just to promote sales.Publicity stunts are very common and the last thing that a consumer likes to have happen is to be tricked into making a purchase or believing a claim that is not true.Choosing to participate in publicity stunts can have a long-term negative effect on your brand and could even mean the failure of your business depending on the scale of deception.

The best kind of promotion and publicity campaigns are the ones where your company is able to honestly promote a good product in a way that gets consumers excited because they see the value that having your product would have on their lives.