Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

Sales promotion is marketing communication activities other than advertising, personal selling and public relations that motivates consumers to go buy a product. For example, coupons are considered as a sales promotion. Coupons are certificates that allows you to buy a product for a cheaper price. I don't know about anyone else but coupons definitely work on me. Coupons allows me to buy products i normally wouldn't buy or to eat at restaurants I normally wouldn't eat at. I would like to shake the hand of the person who thought of that idea because it has helped many get many things for a very cheaper price. This is probably my favorite type of sales promotion. Sales promotion is a good form of marketing as compared to advertising and other types because it is much much cheaper and you can, also, tally how many people actually bought your product due to the promotion because you can track coupons.

McDonald's every few months sends out a little coupon book to promote its food. Some times you can find them in newspapers, other stores that are partners with them, go in to a store and ask if they are handing out coupon books, or even now just recently they have been giving coupons out on the back of receipts.

One more type of sales promotion is sweepstakes and and contests. This doesn't every really motivate me to buy anything because I usually never win. The feeling of getting excited that you might win a lot of money a very cool prize is good and all, however, when you see that you didn't win the feeling just turns to anger and disappointment every single time. So I always say to myself why even go through the unnecessary space. Fortunately, I did win once but you have to continue reading to find what it was.

McDonald's does the monopoly sweepstakes. The sweepstakes allows the customers to collect tokens which are given on certain items in the menu. In order to win a customers has to collect all the tokens of a certain property of that color and they win the prize.

Another form of sales promotion is premium. Premium is getting another item offered after proof of buying the original item that was being promoted or sometimes it's the same product you get free. Once again I don't know about anyone else but I am always encouraged to buy an item if I am getting another one free. It's products for the price of one, what a good deal. A premium that McDonald's does is with their happy meals. You buy it and get a toy as a little some thing extra. Another premium they offer is sometimes they'll give you two burgers for $4 or $5.

As you can tell McDonald's does a lot of sales promotion, even their promotion goes on 24/7. I guess that is why McDonald's is dominating it's industry. Well I told you I would tell what I won, now is that time. As i mentioned McDonald's sweepstakes monopoly earlier, well due to that I won medium French fries. I know it's much but hey, it was free food from the place that makes the best French fries.

Personal selling is a purchase situation involving a personal, paid-for communication between two people in an attempt to influence each other. Everyone does personal selling because to get a job we all have to sell ourselves. Personal can be better than other types of promotions depending on the characteristics of the consumer and the product.