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Online sales promotion were one of the most loosely used terms in the internet marketing vocabulary. In fact, “online sales promotion” is used synonymously with “online advertising” or “online promotion” in total. Today in the field of internet marketing, however, we are beginning to get agreement that online sales promotion is a separately distinguishable field.

So what then is online sales promotion?

Online sales promotion or internet sales promotion represents those internet marketing activities, other than online personal selling, online advertising, and online publicity, which stimulate consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness, and are conducted for a limited period of time. The major forms of online sales promotion include contests, premiums, sampling, e-coupons, price-offs, two-for-one offers, and allowances. For example, when you visit some e-commerce sites of many software companies, they allow users to sample digital products prior to purchase by providing free downloads of demo software that normally expire after 30 to 60 days. At that time, the user can then choose to purchase the full product if they wish. Another example is that subscriber-only e-coupons can be used to encourage customers to sign up for e-newsletters, with the newsletter helping to increase sales and build your customer database. Both of these illustrations are examples of online sales promotion.

In what way is online sales promotion and online advertising different?

Online advertising deals with advertising your businesses on online media sites owned and controlled by others. While, online sales promotion involve using tools and methods controlled by you, such as e-coupons, samplings, contest and sweepstakes, to inform and persuade your customers and prospects to make a purchase or subscription. There is no question that a major reason for using online sales promotion is their unique advantage in achieving online communication goals.

Functions of online sales Promotion

Due to the hybrid nature of online sales promotion, it is difficult to define its basic function. Thus, one major function of online sales promotion is to develop buyer awareness and influence attitudes through trial using sampling method. Sampling is one major function of online sales promotion that is used to develop buyer awareness and influence attitudes through trial or sample use. This function of online sales promotion is particularly important in the introduction of new products, new services, or product variations, and explains why an online sales promotion is so often an element of a new product’s introductory online promotional campaign.

Another function of online sales promotion is the organizing of contests and sweepstakes on your website to attract visitors and keep them returning. Contests generally require some level of skill, while sweepstakes involve a pure chance draw for the winner.

The concept of using online sales promotion to influence buyer awareness and attitudes is not one that is widely articulated by most web business owners. Through discounts, premiums, e-coupons, sampling, and contests there is an added effort that will cause customers and prospects to act. In this role, online sales promotions are a short-run sales stimulant. Hopefully, of course, sales derived in this manner will have some long-run benefits as a result of product or service exposure.

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Online promotion is a component used to inform, persuade, and influence the online market regarding a company’s products, services, or ideas. It is only one basic element of the internet marketing mix. Other important elements are:

• Product (Is your product: innovative – truly unique, adaptive – replacement of existing product, or imitative – new to your company but not new to the market),
• Price (How much do you think I can get for this item? If the price of the product is too high or too low, it may have positive or negative effect on the company’s internet marketing campaigns), and
• Place (Since your product is now ready for its market, you need to establish distribution strategies, including selecting channels of distribution).

What is online promotion?

Online promotion, which is also known as internet promotion or web promotion, is any web communicative activity whose purpose is to persuade buyers to accept, resell, recommend, or use the product, service, or act favorably upon an idea being promoted. In short, it is an exercise in information, persuasion, and influence. These three are related in that to inform is to persuade, and conversely, if a person is persuaded, he is probably also being informed.

Online Promotional Tools

Those individuals and companies who promote their businesses on the internet try to overcome potential customers’ resistance toward their market offerings by communicating with the online market. By using the online promotional tools of online advertising, online publicity, online personal selling, and online sales promotion, they give consumers product information in a persuasive manner that is designed to overcome consumer inertia and lead to the active purchasing of appropriate products. While two words may be unfortunately similar, it should be noted particularly that “online promotion” and “online sales promotion” are different. “Online promotion” is the all-inclusive term representing the broad field under discussion here, and “online sales promotion” is only one part of it. In fact, let me give you a brief description of what each really is:

1. Online Advertising is the non-personal presentation to a group of internet users an openly sponsored message regarding a product, service, or idea. This message, called an online or internet advertisement, utilizes internet media including, among other forms, banner advertising, text-link advertising, pay-per-click advertising, and social media ads, and it is paid for by the identified sponsor.
2. Online Personal Selling is the presentation of a product, service, or idea by an online salesman in direct communication with his customer or prospect; either through a one-on-one chat or through an internet calls. For example, when you invite someone for a direct or private chat on skype, yahoo messenger, or google talk, or you make an internet call to that prospect, so as to explain your product, service, or idea to that customer or prospect, respectively, you the online salesman is actually performing or trying to perform what we call “online personal selling.”
3. Online Publicity is news or information about a product, service, or idea that is published on behalf of a sponsor. Online publicity is “free” in the sense that the sponsor does not pay for space or time used in presenting his message. Usually, online publicity messages are presented as news, helpful information, or announcements, in such online media as article directories, forums, community boards, blogs, press release sites, and online news sites; and the sponsor’s name may or may not be given.
4. Online Sales Promotion is any online promotional activities that are supplementary in nature, are conducted for a limited period of time, and seek to induce buying. The major forms of online sales promotion include price-offs, sampling, two-for-one offers, coupons, premiums, and contests. Recently, it was said that Dell had earned $3 million in revenue directly through twitter since 2007, when it started posting coupons and word of new products on the microblogging site. That is an example of online sales promotion. In other words, if an online promotional activity does not fall into the classification of online advertising, online personal selling, or online publicity, it should be classified as online sales promotion.

Online Promotion Mix

Online promotional tools are somewhat interchangeable, and not all tools have to be used in any online promotion mix. However, no single online promotion tool is customarily used as the entire online promotion mix. The peculiar combination of online promotion tools used and the relative amounts of promotion cash spent on each is called the online promotion mix for a product, service, or idea.

Importance of Online Promotion

So many firms are going online and creating an online presence nowadays, and the resulting intensification of competition between individual firms within given industries, has place tremendous pressures on the online promotional programs of individual internet entrepreneurs.

In the internet world of abundance, want satisfaction has replaced, to a great extent, the mere necessity of fulfilling basic physiological requirements. As consumers engage in the satisfactions of wants rather than needs, they become more selective in their choices of alternative expenditures. To attract and retain these online customers, a firm must have a good and sound online promotional program. Customer demand is largely dormant; it must be awakened and stimulated.

Online promotional effort looms important in the overall operations of a business. It is usually the largest part of the total internet marketing expenses. So many firms, in order to have an internet market-share, are now hiring the services of internet marketing companies to help them keep up with the pressure and competition on the internet.

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