Tesco and NHS: Promotional Mix Used by Two Selected Organisations

The promotional mix of a business is how a business attempts to communicate with various target audiences and is a key element in the overall marketing mix.

Advertising:

Tesco advertise there meal deal effectively, they can advertise their product through commercials, posters, leaflets and billboards, which are all effective in getting the message of their product to their customers, but it isn’t the quantity of advertisement that makes the Meal deal effective, the quality of it instead. Tesco advertise the meal deal with a short catchphrase “Buy any of these for £3” which is simple and straight to the point.

Advertising is one of the key parts of a promotional mix and is the most effective way of Tesco promoting their product. Below is an example of Tesco advert:

Here they show the products previous prices through sales compared to its current price with the image of a berry which symbolises Christmas – This makes people want to buy the item for loved ones.

Sales promotion:

Sales promotion is how Tesco promote sales etc to the consumers so that people will buy products under sale. Tesco promote the meal deal in this way, for example they may promote a certain sale for a group of products. A good example of this is the “Buy one get one free” promotion, which is a very effective marketing strategy.

Public relations:

Public relations is the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation and its public. Activities can include organising conferences, open days etc, however this activity is not particularly used with the Meal deal at Tesco.

Direct marketing:

Direct marketing is used by Tesco to market their meal deal by using a wide range of consumer and business markets. A clear example of how Tesco achieve this is using e-mails and letters, which are sent to customers with the advertised product. Tesco can use direct marketing by specifically targeting the target audience of meal deal – perhaps people at work as they would be able to get a meal deal at lunch break.

Sponsorships:

Sponsorships are where organisations such as Tesco pay to be associated with a cause. This is evident in Tesco with the Marie Curie Campaign, in which 5% of profit would go to the fight for cancer campaign, which helps Tesco with marketing because people will want to become involved, which means more people will be buying from Tesco.

Promotional mix for National Health Service

Advertisement:

The NHS advertise there service of health effectively, they can advertise their service through commercials, posters, leaflets and billboards. Advertising at the NHS varies to Tesco, as they do not advertise in terms of persuasion to gain profits, they instead advertise to make the public aware of illnesses, diseases etc so that people can respond effectively to this. The below image is an example of NHS’s advertisement

Personal selling is where Tesco manage customer relationships. At the NHS personal selling is not really used as the NHS is a service and does not sell products.

Public relations:

Public relations at the NHS

Sponsorships is a very important promotional mix at the NHS, this is important to them because they have links to many charities. One sponsor in particular that the NHS have is the Academic health Science network of North East Cumbria. This makes people appreciate the organisation, as the NHS will have special days where they collect donations for the research organisation.

Direct marketing:

Direct marketing is not applicable to the NHS because the NHS is a charity funded organisation, which does not run on profit. Therefore they do not use direct marketing in their promotional mix.

Sales promotion:

As well as Direct marketing, Sales promotion also does not apply to NHS as the NHS do not sell products, instead they offer services. They would intend to promote their organisation for people to use, however the NHS do not promote to get a profit.