What is promotion and what are the key elements of a promotional mix?

"Promotion aims to stimulate demand for a company’s goods or services. Promotional strategy is designed to inform, persuade, or remind target audiences about those products. The goals of promotion are to create awareness, get people to try products, provide information, keep loyal customers, increase use of a product, identify potential customers, and even teach clients about potential services. The unique combination of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, social media, and e-commerce used to promote a product is called the promotional mix. Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal promotion by an identified sponsor. Personal selling consists of a face-to-face presentation in a conversation with a prospective purchaser. The companies and people who are most likely to buy a seller’s offerings are sales prospects. Public relations is the marketing function that links the policies of the organization with the public interest and develops programs designed to earn public understanding and acceptance. A relatively new marketing channel that includes platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram is social media. IMC is being used by more and more organizations. It is the careful coordination of all of the elements of the promotional mix to produce a consistent, unified message that is customer focused."