What Is Transactional Marketing? – Examples & Strategies

Every business’s objective is to sustain by increasing sales and maximising its profits. These organisations employ different sales techniques for achieving the same. Some build consumer relationships and capitalise on pull marketing. While some focus on realising a transaction or sale, in a way using push marketing tactics.

Transactional Marketing is one such push marketing approach that targets a large group of individuals to achieve substantial sales. Most companies essentially practice this technique in their initial stages to capture a large audience.

What Is Transactional Marketing?

Transactional marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on concluding a transaction or sale. The objective is to close the deal after reaching a point of sale.

Companies that employ transactional marketing maximise their profits by emphasising the magnitude and efficiency of individual sales. The producers don’t put much effort into building relationships with the buyers. There is no attempt towards customer retention. Thus, there is an absence of any mental or emotional connection with the buyers.

Transactional marketing is a traditional marketing strategy and is commonly used by companies dealing in generic product lines or services. It primarily focuses on single transactions and targets customers for short-term association.

This marketing strategy is highly influenced by the marketing mix – the controllable variables that a firm uses to market its products. Transactional marketing uses the most appropriate mix of marketing variables to make it easier for the transaction to occur.

1. Product – Thebusinessmanufactures an offering capable of satisfying the needs of the customer.
2. Price – It determines a price for the offering, making it affordable for the customers and profitable for the business
3. Place – Itchooses the right and efficient distribution channels to reduce sales barriers.
4. Promotion – Thebusiness also ensures that the product is visible enough to grab the buyers’ attention.

Examples Of Transaction Marketing

Cold-calling is one of the best examples of transactional marketing. Using this strategy, the seller offers the customer a product that initially, they have no intention to purchase. Their job is to convince the customer to buy the product by assuring its utility and price. It is generally conducted over phones but can also involve personal visits such as door-to-door selling.

Quality Value Convenience (QVC), an American broadcast television network, is another example of transactional marketing. It is a flagship shopping channel that offers the viewer a televised in-home shopping experience. The salespersons come up with different products with their demos and bring in as many customers as possible. These traders do not interact with the customers. Instead, they use monologue as their method of transmission. The moderators use eye-catching schemes, discounts, and prices to attract individuals and thus perform a transaction. The orders are generally placed through phone calls displayed on the TV screen or through any website link.

Transactional Marketing Strategies

There are several strategies available in the market that businesses use to utilise the concept of transactional marketing. These are:

• Upselling & Cross-selling: Upselling is a sales strategy where the seller encourages the customer to spend more by recommending an expensive, upgraded, or premium alternative of the current consideration to maximise their purchase value. Cross-selling involves encouraging the customer to spend more by recommending related products that complement what is being bought already.
• Bundling: This technique involves offering complementary products packaged together or services clubbed together to attract buyers.
• Bulk discounts: Sellers often introduce enticing discounts to customers who buy more than specific quantities.
• Sales promotion: Offering attractive short-term initiatives to stimulate the offering’s demand and increase its sales is also a well-known transactional marketing strategy.
• Point of sale promotions: Promoting parasite products when the customer has reached the point of sale is another way of selling products. This product may or may not be related to the initial product.

Benefits Of Transaction Marketing

Though Transactional marketing mainly acquires short-term revenues, it can also yield some long-term benefits and help in cost control.

• Inventory Turnover: Maintaining inventory for long durations is a costly affair and difficult to manage. Transactional marketing helps in cost reduction as it involves rapid sales and thus assuring fast-moving inventory. The products getting off the shelf make way for new products that are more in demand. It essentially benefits in clearing the seasonal items which don’t sell off swiftly.
• Low costs: Usually,the promotional costs are lesser for one-time sales as there is no need for shaping brand image and loyalty.There is no long-term commitment and simply involves the communication of product availability and price initiation.

Disadvantages Of Transactional Marketing

Even though transactional marketing could be a boon for some businesses, there are some drawbacks to using this method because the main focus is price inducement. The drawbacks of transactional marketing are:

• Brand Loyalty: There is no significant personal contact with the customers, which would otherwise ensure customer retention and brand loyalty. There is a lack of the emotional relation which drives sales in future as well.
• Product Development: The business mainly analyses market behaviour and popular demand to build its products. There is little effort in improving product technology to stay ahead in the competitive market.
• Reactive: The companies remain unaware of technological innovations or changes in consumer preferences. They do not react until the changes are processed in the market and it becomes vital for them to employ the same.
• Little Emotional Attachment: The customer only looks for the lowest price while buying the product, and brand image and brand connections are blurred visions. As the customer does not remain connected with the business for long; there is less time to develop any attachment. The competitors can undercut the pricing in future times.

Transactional marketing Vs Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing, as opposed to transactional marketing, focuses on building natural relations with the customer.  It aims to engage with buyers and retain them for future repetitive purchases. Patience and continuous efforts play a key role in achieving the same. People are accustomed to traditional advertising, and thus these personal connections break barriers and make way for sales.

Basis for comparison	Transactional Marketing	Relationship Marketing
Objective	To achieve a transaction or sale through single sale criteria	Retain and satisfy customers by building brand loyalty.
Duration	Short-term commitment	Long-term commitment
Customer Interaction	Short-term interaction	Frequent
Focus	Gaining new customers	Retaining existing customers
Benefits	Short term, as based on single sales	Long term, as based on repetitive sales
Competing for	Price induction	Consumer satisfaction

In the end, it all narrows down to the business objective. Both the strategies have different executions and approaches but cannot prevail for long without the other. 

Bottom-Line?

Nowadays, it isn’t easy to catch a potential customer’s attention and attract them towards an item. People have become accustomed to the concept of forced introduction to products through rapid interruptions. They tend to overlook and move forward. Product manufacturers have to become innovative and employ such techniques that are easily spotted among the crowd.

The dynamic business environment and saturation of push marketing tactics may result in a rapid downfall of transactional marketing in the future. The digital era of the internet, mobile phones, and handheld devices will only be a catalyst as these technologies make it easier for buyers and sellers to exchange views and establish long-term connections.

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