The importance of advertisement to marketing divisions. What is sales promotion?

 The various function of advertising can thus be listed as below :

Stimulates demand: By informing consumer about the availability of a product in the market, advertising stimulates latent needs and reinforces the aroused needs. there is general agreement that advertising has some effect on aggregate consumption.

Strengthens other promotion mix element : Advertising does the pre-selling of the product and makes the job of sales people easier. It reaches a relatively large audience and make them favorable predisposed. Ads carry sales promotional messages and often produce sales response.

Develops brand preference: Consistent and persuasive advertising often induces brand trial or purchase. When the product delivers the promised quality, service and value, it creates satisfied customers who become instrumental in spreading a favorable word of mouth. Satisfied customers also develop brand preference which gets reinforced by repeated ads. Products with strong brand franchise offer some protection against competition. Resellers develop confidence and do not hesitate in stocking strong brands. Brand loyal customer are an important asset for the company and are less likely to be influenced by competitive moves.

Cut costs: Advertising may be instrumental in cutting down production and selling costs. Increasing unit sales decreases unit costs. Selling costs also may decrease because there would be fewer wasted calls and less strain on sales people.

Lower prices: In any market based competitive economy, when unit cost of a product goes down, there are external and internal pressures which compel companies to lower prices to the advantage of consumers. This often leads to deeper market penetration.

Competitive weapon: Advertising by itself and coupled with other promotion mix elements may prove to be an extremely potent weapon to counter competitive moves. Advertising has an established role in creating brand personality and image. It helps differentiate a company offer in a manner that the product may be considered as something with unique value having a definite identity of its own.

         In a specific sense, sales promotion includes those sales activities that supplement both personal selling and advertising and coordinate them and help to make them effective, such as displays, shows and expositions, demonstrations and other non- recurrent selling efforts not in the ordinary routine.

In comprehensive way sales promotion is defined as :

Sales promotions include incentive offering and interest creating activities which are generally short term marketing events other than advertising personal selling publicity and direct marketing. The purpose of sales promotion is to stimulate motivate and influence the purchase and other desired behavioural responses for the firm customers.