The process, through which consumers (or potential consumers) are attracted to the products and services of different producers or manufacturers, is called Promotion or Marketing Communication.
This process informs and reminds potential consumers about the products and services of the manufacturers. It is also used to request and persuade consumers to buy these products and services.
However, this promotion may either be performed in the presence of the product, or even before its market introduction.
According to Philip Kotler, “Promotion compasses all the tools in the marketing mix whose major role is persuasive communications”.
According to Stanton, “Promotion includes advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and other selling tools”.
Since services are of intangible nature, so a high level of risk factor is attached to the consumer of the service as compared to the consumer of the product.
Service providers must focus on eliminating the risk factors that are attached to the service and this can be done by ensuring effective communication with the customers.
For this, the company needs to promote the services through positive word-of-mouth publicity, offer a trial period to customers for using services, create a good brand image, adopt appropriate advertising strategies, and manage public relations efficiently.
Service offers should be promoted along with the service providers because consumers cannot accurately measure the effectiveness of intangible services without knowing about the service provider.
Hence, the importance of promoting service providers is the same as that of services.
For example, consider a customer visiting an amusement park or a restaurant, then he will rate the service on the basis of the behavior of the service provider and on the basis of the gentry available at that time.
Hence it is very important for the service provider to attract rig t mass by employing the right personnel.