Promotion in Rural Marketing

Promotion is a process of verbal exchange with the target audience with the objective to tell, persuade, remind and impact the customers and prospects in favour of the product or service. Promotion persuades and convinces the consumers or target audiences and aims to impact their preferences. A promotion strategy lays down the principles through which an organisation can expect to secure gain over competitors.

Promotion methods in the rural markets are unique and customised according to the target audiences there. Hence, the promotional tools in rural markets comprise advertising, publicity, etc., with numerous types of promotion especially designed for advertising in the rural regions for example rural vans, local press, local/regional radio channels, local/regional television shows and specifically sponsoring prizes in sports & video games performed at villages and additionally organising the village fairs, drama shows and group conferences, etc.

Developing Effective Rural Communication

In rural market, for advertising a product or organising a sales promotion campaign or carrying out personal selling, the key decision to be taken is the decision on communication. To communicate effectively with rural customers and expect success out of the campaign, it is important for a company to first understand their fears, aspirations and motivations in relation to each product category.

For example, a few decades ago, a well-known shampoo brand entered the rural market of Rajasthan. The advertisement of the shampoo brand featured a beautiful model showing bouncy hair. However, after a research, it was found that it is considered indecent in those rural areas for a girl to show-off her hair.

As a result, the customers refused to connect to the brand. Thus, it is important for a company to develop an effective communications strategy. However, a sound communication strategy involves knowing the target audience and determining communication objectives.

Knowing the Target Audience

‘Knowing the customer’ is the first principle of marketing whether it is for rural or urban areas. The following are the examples that organisations consider while knowing their target audience: ‰‰ Audiences that are less literate and less exposed to the outside surroundings require a linear conversation message that is easy and clean to comprehend.

Urban women tend to be more liberated, unbiased and decisive in comparison to rural women. Urban-orientated commercials typically display the women consumer in the city as a hard-working and loving partner to her husband, a worrying and fun-loving buddy to her kids and an achiever and honest employee in her career. In contrast to this, a rural women is depicted as a hard-working, domesticated women, a worrying mother, who takes care of all the family members and the household chores.

Understanding the decision-making process and the roles played by family members in different purchases, is very important. A process of collective decision making prevails in rural areas. In case of the purchase of a daily use product such as tea, the housewife may be the decision maker, the breadwinner of the family, who contributes to the family income, may be a co-decision maker, the customer buyer may be the household youth who is going to a close-by feeder city and the influencer may be the retailer. These roles played by family members may change completely when the product changes to a more high involvement product such as tractor or agricultural inputs or a motorcycle.

Determining Communication Objectives

After knowing the target audience, the next step is to set the communication objectives. In urban markets, objectives of companies with mature brands, are simply brand switching and promoting product usage. However, in rural markets, companies aim to firstly build brand awareness and promote trials. The following are the communication objectives of companies in rural markets:

• To achieve awareness among a certain percentage of the target audience
• To improve product knowledge among target customers
• To persuade consumers to try and later buy the product
• To strengthen the liking or preference to buy the product

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Message Design and Structure

Messages are created to induce, inform and persuade the target audience. A message should always contain a theme, appeal or Unique Selling Proposition (USP) that should touch the heart and mind of consumers. There can be three types of appeals in a message, namely rational (quality, value, performance), emotional (humour, love, pride, joy, fear, guilt, shame) and moral (right behaviour, social cues).

The appropriate arrangement of a message for presentation is as important as formulating the message. The message is structured by words, sentences and paragraphs. Lengthy message structure is used when the marketer desires to explain the product benefits in detail and the product is high involvement. In case of rural marketers, pictorial presentations are proved to be more effective.

Message Format

The advertiser must keep a strong layout for the message. For example, in a print ad, the advertiser needs to determine the headline, copy, illustration and colour. To appeal to the target audience, advertisers can use novelty and contrast; fascinating photos and headlines, different formats; message length and position; and colour, shape and movement.

Source of the Message

Target audiences are significantly motivated if the source is credible. If an audience perceives a communicator as credible, then they will be much more likely to simply accept his or her views. If, on the alternative hand, the target market believes that the communicator is not credible and has underlying motives, especially ones of private gain, then she or he may be less persuasive than a person the audience perceives as being objective.

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Promotion Mix Design

Promotion is the coordination of all efforts to promote the goods and services or ideas to the target audience. Promotion mix is the careful selection of all the promotional tools which can be effective at promoting the brand to the audience.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is a form of communication which communicates directly with the target audience such that the messages can be customised according to the customer. Direct mail, telemarketing and email marketing are all popular types of direct marketing. It allows marketers to reach the target audience with direct messages, without using traditional and costly advertising methods such as TV, newspapers and radio advertising.

Personal Selling

Personal selling is also known as face-to-face selling in which one person who is the salesman tries to convince the customer in buying a product. It is a promotional method by which the salesperson uses his or her skills and abilities in an attempt to make a sale. Personal selling takes place at retail stores where sales staff help consumers select the best products as per their needs.

Rural Media – Mass Media

Rural media may be broadly labelled into traditional mass media, non-traditional media and customised media. Conventional mass media a medium known as a mass medium as it reaches millions of people. But poor exposure to the mass media and the ineffectiveness of universalised mass message geared toward heterogeneous rural audiences, make it hard for the mass media to cater to the communication needs in rural markets in a powerful manner.

Typically mass media tools are:

• Radio
• Television
• Cinema
• Print

Folk Media (Theatre, Songs, Dance, Puppet Shows, Haats, Melas, Etc.)

In rural India, puppetry on the street is ideal for amusement and innovative expression, which is also a significant way of social conversation and sometimes even a vehicle of social transformation. It is a terrific manner of storytelling via the moving pix known as puppets, this medium costs very much less and sis popular in Rajasthan, Orissa and Haryana. This folklore is not always very famous, however, has no stigma connected to it. People of every age and genders may get interested to get aware about the product in the narrative. Companies make use of puppets in their campaigns to promote their products.

Folk theatres are particularly brief and rhythmic in form. The easy tunes assist in informing and teaching the humans in casual and exciting manner. It has been used as an effective medium for social protest in opposition to injustice, exploitation and oppression. Folk songs had been effectively used for the duration of revolts of Telengana and Naxalbari. Government has used this media for popularising advanced variety of seeds, fertilisers, etc.

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Agricultural Marketing

The term agricultural marketing consists of words-agriculture and marketing. Agriculture, in the broadest sense, way sports aimed toward using herbal assets for human welfare, i.e., it consists of all of the primary sports of manufacturing. But, generally, its miles used to intend developing and/or elevating plants and livestock. Marketing connotes a sequence of sports worried in shifting the goods from the factor of production to the factor of consumption. It consists of all of the sports worried within side the creation of time, place, shape and ownership utility.

Nature and Types of Agriculture Produce

Agricultural products are characterised by uncertainty as they essentially depend on the rainfalls, which necessitate advertising for them. The tropical weather has a great impact on agriculture. A cultivator can plan the production of a sure crop, however, the very last output notably relies upon weather, disease, pests, flood, storm, etc., over which he does now no longer own any control. On the alternative hand manufacturing within side the factories may be managed, regulated and changed according to the present or predicted demand.

Agricultural products may be categorised on the basis of seasons; Rabi, Kharif and Zaid.

• Rabi: Sowing is achieved from October to December and harvesting season is from March to May. The various Rabi crops consist of wheat, gram, peas, potatoes and barley.
  
  
• Kharif: Sowing for the crops is achieved from April to July and harvesting is achieved from September to December. The numerous vegetation of Kharif season consists of rice, sugarcane, jowar, jute, bajra, maize, cotton and groundnut.
  
  
• Zaid: April-May; July-August

Agricultural Markets and Its Types

Let us classify agricultural markets into primary, secondary and terminal markets.

Primary Markets

These are periodical markets locally known as ‘Haats’. They are commonly held a couple of times a week. The days on which those markets meet are constant in order that traders can go to the area. They are commonly held in open and alongside roads in important or centrally located localities. These markets are located near producing regions and commodities produced. A part of the produce is bought through the small outlets that further, promote it to the non-farm rural population.

Secondary Markets

These markets, also recognised as ‘Mandis’, are everyday wholesale markets and offer an everlasting region for every day transactions. The worker begins off evolved in them early morning and maintains until all transactions are over. These markets are generally located in the towns, districts and crucial alternate centres. Usually they may be located close to railway stations. Shops or ‘Arhats’ are constructed in those markets. Postal, Banking and Smartphone centers are to be had at such places.

Terminal Markets

A terminal marketplace is the region where the produce is both subsequently disposed of to the purchaser or to the processor and assembled for exports. Such markets are commonly located in metropolitan towns such as Delhi, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. In those markets, traders had been nicely prepared and use current marketing methods.

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Marketing Channels, Methods of Sales and Market Functions

Every business enterprise attempts to use the best distribution channel for its products. It will depend upon a selection of things together with the attention of the marketplace, shelf existence of the product, business enterprise’s capital necessities etc.

A marketing channel refers to a mode through which a company’s products and services are taken from the point of production to the end-user. It is created through a series of relationships between middlemen, or intermediaries, who sell the product or service on behalf of the company.

The marketing channel includes a mix of people, organisations, and activities that enable the company to bring its product or service to market. Generally, this mix includes retailers, agents, wholesalers, brokers, transportation companies, and others.

Marketing channels can be categorised into direct and indirect channels depending on the structure of the channel. The indirect channels are further divided into three types: one-level, two-level, and three-level channels based on the number of intermediaries present. You have already studied about these channels in detail in the previous chapters.

The physical movement of the products from its location of manufacturing to its location of intake is transportation. It is a completely vital characteristic of marketing. The business enterprise should examine the geographical limitations of its marketplace. This will assist them pick out the best modes of transportation.

As we’ve got seen there may be usually a lag time among the manufacturing and the consumption of most goods. Sometimes the goods are seasonal or the deliver is abnormal or there are manufacturing difficulties. But organisations want to keep an easy waft of products. So garage and warehousing of products are necessary.