Sales promotions and Incentives- help or hinder a brand?

be it discounting, BOGOF offers, cross category packages or on pack competitions- does anyone have an opinion on this form of brand building? Does it have its place in the marketing mix for established brands, new brands and niche brands?

The line of vision of user and customer gives an answer. These kinf of promotions and incentives generally helps the brand. However companies sometimes also have demarketing programs for hinder a brand.

Cross category brands sometimes are not very useful. Because they confuses the right selection. "Who buy the things for what? " However for the new brands sometimes this is very acceptable.

Firms should think about their real targets.

All in-store activity has a place in building brands. A recent Deloittes report for the American Grocery Manufacturers Association claims that Shopper Marketing is the fastest growing facet of marketing over there for manufacturers AND retailers.

And this can, and should, extend to in-store signage, demonstrations etc. In fact most manufacturers forget that retailers employ 2.5 million people in the UK, and they all get a discount on the products they buy. So in-store activity carries with it a "captive audience" that tends to reflect the local audience.

However, as a company, we spend most of our time measuring the impact of activity on revenue, and on the shoppers. And you will know yourself that as you look around a store, shoppers are bombarded with messages, often conflicting. So you can have an added value promotion this Christmas, sold at a cut price.

Because most in-store activity is coordinated by, but not measured by, the Sales Department they retain the unique ability to spend more, and deliver increasingly less. Which is why Deloittes said that making Shopper Marketing work required a cross business iniitiative to work at all. But, they said, companies implementing like this claimed they were performing 25% better than the category.

promotions and incentives do help out branding depending on how you market it.  If it´s just in-store promotions that shoppers will see it will help some thru word of mouth.  If the company decides to create an advertising campaign out of it thru flyers, mailers, emails and so on than yes, it will help branding.

 However, if they do annoying promotional items like tons of emails it can vreate negative branding.

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Sales promotions and incentives will definitely help branding. This kind of things can easily spread through either a word of mouth (more common) for offline business and through viral marketing if you happen to have an online presence (business websites) and can easily drive more traffic to your business. Thus, generating more sales.

I have to admit Branding is everything in business, in order to start a good and profitable business you need to create your own unique and creative brand or identity.

I've known this site brandmelive.com that helps and guides and individual or startup company on how to create your own unique brand that stands out from the rest. In less than a month, I assure you, you will start to experience great amount of success with the efforts you put in. Believe me, I'm one of the million that benefited from that site.

Hope that helps.