Marketing Mix: Promotion

“Promotion means activities that communicate the merits of the product and persuade target customers to buy it.”(Armstrong and Kolter. Introduction to Marketing. 10^th Edition. Printed page 54). Big companies spend millions and millions of dollars each year on US advertising to tell consumers about their company and its many products. Promotion can be better described as communication. “It is the link between sellers and buyers for the purpose of influencing or persuading potential buyers purchasing decisions with promotions.” (Armstrong and Kolter. Introduction to Marketing. Printed page 54). In today’s market people tend to find a product they like and stick with it. If your product is consistently of good quality and is offered at a valuable price for what you are getting, most likely you can keep the customer coming back.

Many times there are incentives included in purchasing a product like discounts of buy one get one free. "Some think this increases the sales of a product, but what it can do is cheapen a brand. It is better to persuade a customer to pay a higher price for your company’s brand and justify it by the greater value they will gain by using your quality product.”(Armstrong and Kolter. Introduction to Marketing. Printed page 275).

Clinique does not discount its products to gain customers. We have a recognizable, quality brand that has gained its name by its quality products.  One thing we do is run a special three times a year in some of the department stores that carry our products. This special includes a free gift with a substantial purchase. The gift includes a small bag bearing our logo and a few small samples of our products. We do this only to introduce any new products we may have or to boost sales on items that may not be selling. It gives our existing customers the chance to try something new and any new customers the chance to try our products for the first time. We do not lose any money because the consumer still has to purchase items to get the sample gift bag. Offering the small sample of our newest products is at a very low cost to our company.  The only other special offer we do is give our customers a free makeover using our products at any of our Clinique cosmetic sales counters.  We gain more customers through these two types of promotions yearly.

As far as any type of advertising, our company includes flyers in the weekly newspapers prior to running our gift with purchase promotion.  We also run monthly ads for our men’s line of facial products in all the men’s magazines like GQ.

This is a new Ad we plan on putting in all the mens magazines we advertize in. This will make the April edition.

 Clinique has ventured out into the social networking sites like Face book, where we have a page of our own and do advertising on there also (http://www.facebook.com/clinique?ref=ts&sk=app_192391640772038#!/clinique?sk=app_10531514314). We pride ourselves on always trying to stay up with the latest trends for advertising today. Our brand is recognizable world wide so we always offer a quality product to keep our customers coming back.