A recent Promotion Trends Report by Promo Magazine shows that promotional marketing was incorporated into an overall marketing strategy for over two-thirds of all firms. This report indicates the importance of including promotional marketing as part of your integrated marketing communications strategy and accounting for it in annual budgets.
At SRJ Marketing Communications, we believe that promotional marketing can be an effective and important tactic to be considered in your strategy development process.
Promotional marketing is a business marketing strategy with the goal to stimulate a customer to take action towards a buying decision. Promotional marketing can include several different types of techniques including:.
Contest
Contests are an attractive marketing solution for small businesses to gain new clients, increase database size, and create buzz.
Coupons
According to CMS, one of the top coupon processing agents, businesses issued over 302 billion coupons in 2007. Over 76 percent of the populous use coupons. Coupons still work, and in a slow economy, have the power to drive new business.
Sampling
We are all familiar with Costco and Sam’s Club where sampling is endless. We all love to try before we buy, and sampling is an effective solution to offer clients so they can see for themselves the benefits of your product.
Before launching a promotional marketing campaign for your business, it is important to clearly identify the objectives to be achieved by such a campaign. If your tactical implementation cannot contribute to your overall mission or support your bottom line, then it probably isn’t a good tactic.
Promotional marketing also isn’t suitable for all companies in every industry. It has all has to do with what your target markets want and how it can benefit them (and you). Promotions give people a reason to buy your product or service, and to select your brand over the competition.
Have you tried promotional marketing lately? What were the results of the program? Do you know how you could make it better if it didn’t perform as well? These as just some of the questions you can ask yourself following the implementation of your program. Sometimes, the smallest tweaks the next time can have a huge impact.
In a time when we all want to gain new customers and keep existing ones from switching to the competitors, we have to make sure we cover all the basis. It could be the turning point for your business in this recession.
