Promotional Mix and Activities of Virgin Media

PRINCIPLES AND
PRACTICES OF
MARKETING

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
Introduction to the company........................................................................................................3
Promotional Mix and Activities of Virgin Media........................................................................4
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning..................................................................................12
TASK 2..........................................................................................................................................12
AIDA Model..............................................................................................................................12
Above/ Below the Line..............................................................................................................18
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................22
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................23

INTRODUCTION
Marketing plays a major role in promoting the products and services of a company. If the
marketing strategies are effective, then it can attract large number of people and convert them
into customers. The four Ps of Marketing are product, price, promotion and place. It helps in
increasing the customers base and thereby the profitability of the company (Akash, 2020). The
report below will describe the promotional and marketing activities performed by Virgin Media
by using various marketing theories.
TASK 1
Introduction to the company
Virgin Media is a British company of telecommunications which deals in providing
telephone, television and internet services in UK. It is headquartered in Reading, England, UK. It
is subsidiary type of company in the Telecommunication Mass Media industry. It performs its
operations and provide services to the people in UK. The products provided by Virgin media are
broadband internet, digital television, fixed line telephony and the mobile telephony (Gbadamosi,
2019). The number of employees in performing various operation in Virgin Media are about
14,0004 in number. The operating income of the company is £0.699 billion and the net income is
£2.852 billion. The market share of Virgin Media is 19% which is less than that of its
competitors BT (32% market share) and Sky (23% market share) (Virgin Media, 2020). Its
subsidiaries are Virgin Media Business and Virgin Mobile. Its parent company is Liberty Global.
The Virgin Television has 3.4 million subscribers in which 3.2 million are digital cable
customers while the other 200,000 are the analogue cable customers. Therefore, 15% of the
UK’s TV distributors come under Virgin. Its cable customers are approx. 4.8 million, broadband
customers 4.2 million and the number of fixed telephony services are 4.1 million. Its annual
revenue is about 4.5 Billion Dollars having the major competitors as BT Group, SKY PLC and
cable & wireless worldwide (Virgin Media Marketing Mix (4Ps) Strategy, 2020).
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Figure 1: Logo of Virgin Media
Source: Virgin Media Cover 125k More UK Premises as New TV Service Looms, 2020
Promotional Mix and Activities of Virgin Media
Virgin Media implements various promotional activities and strategies in order to
promote its products and services and they are as follows:
Advertising: This is basically a paid form of presentation which is non-personal and ideas
promotion. This can be done via newspapers, radio, billboards, television, direct mail etc.
Among all these, Virgin Media advertise through radio, billboards, television and internet (Tracy
and Flynn, 2019).
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Figure 2: Advertising of Virgin Media
Source: Burns, 2014
This was also observed that the most of the advertisement of Virgin Media are done through
Television or via Tivo which is for existing customers only.
Figure 3: Advertising of Tivo on the vans of Virgin Media
Source: Promotional Mix used by BT and Virgin Media, 2020
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Direct Marketing: This is done by advertising or promoting the products or services directly to
the consumer by any business. For example: Leaflets, Packaging, Emails, Letters, Business
Cards and Telephones (Tereszkiewicz, 2019). Virgin use the direct marketing by direct mail. In
order to promote the product or to promote the offers to the existing customers, the company
used telephones, letters and emails in order to offer the existing customers with the new product
or services or to offer them with an upgrade in certain products.
Virgin Media also use direct mail in order to promote the Tivo service by performing door to
door sales, making ring to the existing customers for upgrading, through emails or can be in their
shops which are on the high street.
Figure 4: Feedbacks from customers through online platforms
Source: How Virgin Media is using social media for customer service, 2010
Sale of Promotion: These are the sets of marketing activities which are undertaken for boosting
the product sales or service. For examples, Buy One Get One Free, ½ price sale, £30 of your first
order line, student discount etc.
Virgin Media also uses various types of sale of promotion for both the types of customers’
existing and potential. For example, broadband contracts of 9 months for students, Buy On of the
packages and get 12 months half price, get 6 months free on upgrading to movies and sports for
complete 2 years. For Tivo, there are three packages offered by virgin media which were Basic
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