The Implications Of The Marketing Mix Element In Promotion

This report aims to the marketing mix theory topic of Promotions and how it relates to the well-known Convenience Store company named 7 Eleven. Promotion is defined as small changes in the way to advertise and sell our products. This essay relies on the use of secondary information from a variety of academic and Non- Academic sources.

Promotion is basically a prominent part of advertising your product to the market, which is also known as Promotional Strategy. It is used by the companies to attract and convince the consumer that why they should buy this product and how it is beneficial for them. (Acutt, n.d.)

Promotion contains a certain message or information which is relevant to targeted audience and it is done through various appropriate channels or mediums Like Social Media, Advertising (Banners, Holders, Postures, Pamphlet). It is carried out to make an involvement of the customers to make them feel benefited.

There are some strategies which play a vital role in order to promote our product like:

1. Target Audience – who are you selling for and what are their interests
2. Budget – how much are you willing to invest
3. Plan of action – what strategy are you acquiring to reach your purpose and make a profit (Claudia, 2018)

There are few steps which are been needed to be adopted by a company to channelize themselves at a big platform and make more individuals aware about the current promotions.

Digital Marketing Strategy (DMS)

Currently, it is considered as one of the most famous strategy which is adopted by many companies. For an Example Let’s say if you are a company selling tires and you start blogging about the importance of choosing the correct tires for safety and so on. It will help a brand to gain a trust from the customer that you are selling a genuine product of premium quality to them and thus, making your brand good candidate for the next tire purchase.

Currently every company who sells their product use this strategy:

Mac Donald’s: Whenever we buy French fries from MC Donald it is been delivered to us in a specific material which describes one of the best quality of potatoes are chosen to produce it. This gives Consumer a feeling of trust on brand which attracts them to get themselves attached to it.

Explore Social Media and Email Marketing

Social Media is a huge mediator between our potential customers and our Brand. Each platforms of social media captures different kind of audience such as, Snapchat is more associated with youngsters while Linked In with a more professional public. There are other big platforms which covers higher amount of audiences like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest etc. Despite all of this we need to find out that which social media platform will be highly beneficial for promoting our Brand.

E- Mail Marketing can be a part of inbound promotional strategy as well as outbound promotional strategy. Inbound email marketing focusses on building a relationship with the reader.

Company uses this strategy to make their membership holders aware about their new models, plans through their Loyalty Program or schemes which will help the customer to avail that service at a lower rate.

Hyatt Hotels has a Loyalty program named as World of Hyatt which gives an authority to consumer to earn points and take their rewards to new heights by getting more discount on future bookings on Hyatt Hotels Worldwide. (Hyatt Corporation )

Further I will explain all these facts and strategies which are been used by a Franchise based Convenient chain Store named as 7 Eleven.

7 Eleven was launched in Australia in 1976, and now it is the country’s third largest private company with more than 700 stores across New South wales (NSW), Victoria and western Australia.

The main focus of the brand is to provide the basic daily needs which includes petroleum and morning tea to the consumer by charging a reasonable rate. It focuses on the products like Daily fresh, Cookies, Doughnut, Sandwiches, Pie, Energy drinks, Soft drinks and flavoured milk and it provides basic pharmacy like medicines, Grocery Etc.

Promotional Strategies Used by the Brand

As I have said earlier about the loyalty program this brand has an Application named as 7 Eleven Fuel which helps the customer to acquire the required type and the quantity of petrol at the current rates.

Example

If, today the rate of petrol is 1.38$, I can book or lock that rate which will be saved and valid for me till next 7 days. So, if the prices of fuel fluctuate in the next upcoming days, still I can get the fuel at the same price which I have booked earlier.

This strategy gives the customer an amount of freedom to book or lock the current rate of petrol for the next 7 days. It helps the brand to create a sustainable image in the mind of customer.

Mainly the company is well known for its convenient business where they have certain promotions like

Like on Friday, every 7 eleven store sells the different varieties of pie at just 2$ which is known as Pie-Day. It gives an indication to the consumer that the pie which is more than 2$ on the other days will be available at just 2$.

This strategy is used by the company in the form of Banner to increase the sale of an item and to make it as a centre of attraction for the buyers.

Free coffee for Reusable cup till 2nd September is also a promotion which helps the consumer to buy the reusable cup with an intention to get a free coffee at 7 eleven. It even helps to save the environment by using the reusable cup. By this promotion company assures that the customer daily visit the nearest store in order to get the free coffee but at the same time he will be visualizing the other promotions on the products as well which helps the brand to upsell the product.

There are other promotions like

Grab 2 soft drink can of Solo or Coke at 5$. It clarifies to the consumer that when he buys the same product individually he will be paying 6$. But if he buys it under the promotion he can save 1$.

It will help the company to increase the bulk sale of the products which are under promotion, where if the consumer buys more than one product he can save more money. So it will automatically create a positive and efficient brand image on the customer mind, which will end up into a referral

Once if consumer gets benefited and he is happy. He will use the word of mouth strategy and will tell to several other people.

Given the above research findings on 7 Eleven as a Convenient store enterprise focusing on the promotions which are been used by the brand to maintain the image in front of the market. It can be seen that even small changes to the sales strategy can make an organization look more different from others. In today’s Technical Era, where Competition is there at each and every step in Business. Organization has to adopt some promotions or strategic planning which will help them to create a monopolistic environment.

When we compare the findings from the literature study to the case study of 7 Eleven, It can be seen that targeting the audience is a first step where business recognizes what sort of people will like their product and what a company can do to divert the audience to get a new taste in the same product.

It can be in the form of innovation, promotion, complimentary rewards, and free rewards after certain spending.

References

1. Acutt, M. (n.d.). Marketing Mix – Promotion. Retrieved from The Marketing Mix: https://marketingmix.co.uk/promotion/
2. Claudia. (2018, October). Retrieved from Blog Banners: https://blog.bannersnack.com/marketing-promotion-strategies/
3. Hyatt Corporation. (n.d.). Retrieved from World of Hyatt: https://world.hyatt.com/
4. Voss, G. B. (2003). Exploring the effect of retail sector and Price Promotion Strategy.