The document discusses service promotion and the objectives and tools of a promotion mix. The objectives of promotion are to increase awareness of new service offerings, encourage customers to try them, and develop offensive or defensive strategies targeted at competition. The promotion mix refers to the combination of promotional tools used, including personal selling, advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and direct marketing. Each tool is discussed in terms of its definition, merits, and examples. The document also compares promoting services versus packaged goods and provides tips for designing an effective service promotion campaign through planning, objectives, timing, adding value, employee motivation, differentiation, and evaluation.

1. Services Marketing
Service Promotion-Unit-3

2. Meaning Of Promotion
 “Promotion is a process of
communication, involving
information, persuasion and
influence.”

3. Objectives of Promotion
 Promotional campaigns are targeted at consumers
to increase their awareness of a new service
offering and encourage them to try it out
Example: Bharatmatrimony.com and Visa
 Promotional campaigns can also be targeted at
intermediaries to encourage them to offer new
services or make the existing intermediaries give
an extra push for the services
Example: Insurance Companies

4. Objectives of Promotion Conti..
 The promotional objectives targeted at
competition help a service provider to
develop offensive or defensive strategies
targeted at one or more competition in the
market

5. Promotion-Mix
 The term “Promotion-Mix” is used to refer to the
combination of different kinds of promotional tools
used by a firm to advertise and sell its products.
 The main promotional tools or activities which
makeup the promotion-mix are:
1. Personal Selling
2. Advertising
3. Public Relations and Publicity
4. Sales Promotion
5. Direct Marketing

6. Personal Selling
 Persuading through oral communication
Merits:
a) Enables a marketer to attract the attention of the
prospective customers, create interest in their minds,
increase their desire to purchase and persuade them
to act and make a purchase.
Example: Investment agent
b) Creates an opportunity for the marketer to develop a
relationship with the customer.
Example: Service executive of a resort

7. Advertising
 “It is any paid form of non personal, presentation
of goods, by an identified sponsor through the
media.”
 Service providers should involve front line
employees in designing the advertising campaign
Example: Taj group hotels
 Service providers should design advertising
campaigns that attach tangible clues
 Companies should advertise services that they
can possibly deliver

8. Advertising Conti..
Merits:
a) A company can improve its brand image and
brand equity with the help of advertising.
b) It also helps the company in differentiating
and positioning its products from those of its
competitors.

9. Sales Promotion
 “Sales promotion may be defined as any step that is
taken for the purpose of increasing sales.”
Merits:
a) Sales promotion strategies are used by
companies to stimulate potential customers to
try their products or to attract competitor’s
customers to shift loyalties.
b) Sales promotion tends to increase sales for a
period.

10. Publicity and Public Relations
 Publicity involves using of information that
induces interest towards a company, event,
or person.
For example, Publicity includes event
sponsorship, charitable donations etc.

11. Direct Marketing
 Contacting the existing and potential customers
directly through telemarketing, direct mail, and
online marketing (e-mail and official websites),
without employing any intermediaries in the
process
 Merits:
a) Immediate feedback
b) Personal touch
c) Less expensive

12. Difference between Services and Packaged
Goods in the context of Promotion
 Services can not be inventoried
 Reduced role of intermediaries
 Role of service personnel
 Service delivery location
 Customer as a co-producer

13. In view of these differences service providers
can adopt any of the promotional technique:
 Sampling
 Premiums
 Prize promotions
 Price/Quantity promotions
 Refunds and future discounts
 Coupons

14. How to Design A Service
Promotion?
1. Which Services to Promote?
2. Who would be the Target Customer?
3. What would be the Value Added to the Product/
Brand?
4. Is the Timing Right for Promotion and how long
a Promotional Campaign be Run?
5. Who is benefited from the Promotions?
6. How to Differentiate a Promotional
Campaign?

15. Strategies For Effective
Promotion
 Effective Planning
 Focused Objectives
 Perfect Timing
 Adding Value through Tie-Ups and
Promotion Overlays
 Employee Motivation
 Well-Differentiated Campaign
 Regular Evaluation of the Campaign