Week 9: Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

It is said that a good product needs no advertising and will sell itself. This can in fact be true but a good product can be a greater product if it is introduced to those beyond it's target market. A great tool used in trade to promote a product is giving out free samples of the products. For example if your company specializes in household products like soaps and lotions you can pre-package samples to hand out in front of your store. If your product is something that people generally have an idea about already such as shoes and clothing, you advertise to set your brand and company apart from the others that are selling in the same category as you. There needs to be something special or different about your product that is going to make customers want to wait in line to buy your shoes rather than going to the next store where there is no line and no wait to buy a pair of shoes. The purpose of shoes is to protect your feet and get your from point A to point B..but in Tom's Shoes case their shoes are known for an entirely different reason. Tom's Shoes is known for being the shoe that gives back and for being the environmentally friendly shoes. The founder of Tom's Blake Mycoskie has done a number of interviews and has had his shoes seen on the likes of well known celebrities. There is also a good chance that if you own a pair of toms that you will make a second or third purchase, because their shoes really are comfortable and the fact that your helping a child in a third world country that cannot afford shoes is the icing on the cake. One of the largest promotional events that was held by Toms was "a day without shoes" event. It is a day where you go without shoes to get a feel for what thousands of children suffer through day after day. It was talked about in many news articles and featured on Oprah. I personally attended "a day without shoes" event and it was an eye opener and cemented my place as a loyal Toms customer.