Promotion could also be called "motivation". Before continuing we would like to dispel all doubts about the difference between advertising and promotion of a product. The former’s goal is to make the product known and increase people’s DESIRE to buy it. The latter is a direct and material motivation that wants to increase SALES. Promotion does not want to move people as advertising does, but it tries to convince people to buy something because it is "convenient".

Promotion is applied in two different ways ―when the product is launched and when the product loses sales. According to the sale strategy formulated by your marketing specialist, it will be used in one or both cases. What does promotion exactly mean? And what is the difference of its usage in each case?

Promotion has many known and to be known application ways . We talk about promotion when a company offers payment options or discounts for certain products, products as a gift with the purchased item, drawing lots, price discounts, public-good campaigns, etc. All these are well designed strategies, which are formulated by the marketing experts in order to increase the sales of a given product. Promotion is the visible face of advertising ―whereas advertising takes care of people’s hearts, promotion takes care of their money. Many times there are ad campaigns ABOUT promotion― a series of advertising elements are launched to show the type of benefit that is being offered with the purchase of a certain product. Thus, both tools of offer optimization are complemented. Advertising responds to the product, promotion responds to sales, and a new ad responds to promotion. Therefore, the process finishes and the product will be vehemently launched again.

However, there are still many things to bear in mind. For example, if you give a gift together with the purchased item, are these products complementary or are they totally different? We will use this example to know the mechanism these matters are handled with. Let’s suppose it is the promotion of a concentrated dishwashing detergent, which is kind of expensive but it lasts longer that ordinary dishwashing detergent. What can you give away with this product? The first answer would be a «sponge» or «a sponge with latex gloves». This is not bad, but there are many other things to consider.

1. Does the company sell sponges and latex gloves?

2. Is the gift too simple and devalues the dishwashing detergent?

3. Do latex gloves give the idea that the detergent is harmful?

We will focus on these three matters.

1. If the company does sell gloves and sponges, can these harm the sale of these products that are given as a gift? Is a good quality sponge? If it is not a good quality sponge, the detergent will seem worse than what it really is. If the company does not sell gloves and sponges, you should be careful when offering another company’s products, since this would be a direct competitor ―because it sells products of the like― and its promotion may end up being a negative one.

2. Doing the dishes is not a luxury and from this point of view it is not an easy gift. However, it may be that the dishwashing detergent’s packaging is very ornamented, and the presence of sponges and gloves reduces completely the value.

3. Gloves can give the idea that the detergent is harmful to hands. A good ad campaign ABOUT promotion will avoid all this inconvenience.

Nonetheless, you can also give a totally different item to the dishwashing detergent as a gift. In such a case, you have to consider the likes of the target group or the type of product being promoted, since a distortion on this can make the promotion an old-fashioned one.