Nowadays, companies promote their brands in different ways. Advertising, public relations, point-of-sale promotion, word-of-mouth and promotion through distributors are the most widely used methods. Among these, advertising has long been the primary means of promotion as it can reach a large number of consumers over a short period of time. Compared with advertising which takes a hard sell approach, public relations activities are less direct as they help build up a company's brand image through organising or sponsoring events for the community. However, public relations are just as effective as advertising. Point-of-sale promotion is targeted at new customers or customers wishing to change brands. Point-of-sale promotion can often achieve short-term sales effect, but may not be very successful in convincing customers to switch their brand loyalty.
As for word-of-mouth, many people have the misconception that it only works for long established brands. In fact, word-of-mouth hinges very much on brand quality and service level. Relatively new brands can also generate word-of-mouth provided that they meet these two criteria. Professionals, senior company executives and celebrities are the most effective personalities for word-of-mouth promotion.
Many Hong Kong companies prefer to choose promotion through distributors when they first enter the mainland market because distributors understand the local market conditions better. Besides, local distributors have already established extensive networks and can directly and effectively promote products and brands to consumers and other retailers.
SMEs which have limited capital may not be able to afford expensive TV commercials. At the same time, the rapid surge in the number of TV stations to several dozens on average in a province has taken a toll on the penetration of TV commercials. In light of this, public relations and promotion through distributors are more suited to SMEs. For promotion through distributors, if the distributors have already built up a good reputation and word-of-mouth, promoting through them will produce even faster results and help reduce the investment and financial burden of the supplier. As for point-of-sale promotion, SMEs should refrain from excessive promotion activities as too many activities could cause negative feelings among consumers and dampen the brand image.
