An appropriate promotion mix can be used not only to attract customers, but also to hold them by creating brand loyalty. Promotion mix is a combination of bank's various activities and other sales promotional instruments. It may be in various shapes like a press advertisement, a sales campaign, word-of-mouth, personal interaction, direct mailing to customer, etc. The fundamental objective of a promotion campaign is to persuade the customer to buy its products in preference to other similar products available in the market.

People no longer buy shoes to keep their feet warm and dry. They buy them because of the way the shoes make them feel- masculine, feminine, rugged, different, sophisticated, young, glamorous, and `in'. Buying shoes has become an emotional experience. Our business now is selling excitement rather than shoes. - Francis C Rooney

Promotion not only gives information to the customers but also stimulates demand, creates differentiation and brings brand loyalty. Any marketing promotion campaign will have two basic objectives, i.e., to inform the prospective customers and to persuade them. For example, when a bank comes out with a new product, it makes it target customer segment aware of it only through marketing promotion. It may be in various shapes like a press advertisement, a sales campaign, Word-of-Mouth (WOM), personal interaction, direct mailing to customer, etc. Usually, promotion mix is a combination of these activities and other sales promotional instruments. Making the customer aware may be enough for settling a firm's deal if the product is unique or in great demand. However, this may not be so all the time. So, the second fundamental objective of a promotion campaign is to persuade the customer to buy their product in preference to other similar products available in the market. Now, this persuasion, too, can be in different ways, for instance, by working on an emotional plane, by an objective presentation of benefits of the product, by identifying the product with some strong need of the customer, etc. Marketing promotion can be driven by other subsidiary objectives, like image building of the organization, promoting growth of a nascent industry, etc. But the two objectives mentioned at the beginning are the most fundamental objectives, governing all other derived objectives.

Promotion is a process of communication involving information, persuasion and influence. It includes all types of personal or impersonal communication with customers as well as intermediatories.An important aspect of both advertising and sales promotion activity is that during this process, the bank directly talks about itself, and pays for doing so. In other words, the bank when advertising its products explains to the customers how its products are better than others in the market, how customer needs would be fully satisfied through them, etc. As against this, in publicity it is the customer who says how and why he likes (or dislikes) the products of the bank.

Professional Banker Magazine, Promotion Mix, Press Advertisement, Marketing Promotion, Advertising, Promotional Strategy, Direct Marketing, Private Sector Banks, Public Sector Banks, Advertising Policies, Financial Planning, Sales Promotion Schemes, Null Hypothesis, Banking Products, Word-of-Mouth, WOM, Brand Loyalty.