Promotion Marketing

6 Overlooked Facts that Can Affect Your Promotion Marketing

Table of Contents

Promotional Marketing

 

Within the past several years, the various places I have worked include the travel, advertising, publishing, and not-for-profit healthcare industries. All of them relied heavily on promotion marketing but using a unique and different promotional marketing strategy.

Just What is Promotional Marketing?

The aim of promotion is to increase brand awareness, create interest, generate sales or create brand loyalty . It is one of the basic elements of the market mix , which includes the four Ps, i.e., product, price, place, and promotion.

Direct Marketing

 

Creating brand loyalty is often one of your key marketing goals, along with increased sales. While it is one of the basic elements of the market mix, promotion marketing via direct marketing is also one of the elements in the promotional mix or promotional plan.

 

Elements of the Promotional Plan

 

These are personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing publicity, word of mouth and may also include event marketing , exhibitions and trade shows. A promotional plan specifies how much attention to pay to each of the elements in the promotional mix, and what proportion of your marketing budget should be allocated to each element.

 

Marketing Mix

Promotional marketing is designed to spread knowledge about a brand, product, or service to a wide audience with the aim of increasing brand awareness and sales. Its purpose is to inspire a potential customer to take action. Promotional marketing is part of the famous marketing mix that refers to a group of tactics that a company chooses to take a product or service to market with.

 

Promotion via Contests and Fundraisers

Offer Tailored Promotional Marketing Ideas

 

The travel agency held many contests to promote budget tours worldwide. The non-profit hosted fundraisers where many businesses would promote their products with free sampling.

 

Advertising Agencies Employ Many Promotion Techniques

 

Of course, the advertising agency I worked for dabbled in all sorts of promotion marketing, which included direct mailers and point-of-purchase displays.

All of them participated in promotional item giveaways such as pens, T-shirts, and other items.

 

Kick-Start a Marketing Campaign Using Promotional Marketing

 

Promotional marketing is a smart way to kick-start a campaign and lure in old and new customers to try out a new offer. There are a variety of ways to use promotional marketing to a business’s advantage as long as the main goal is clearly set and the incentive targets the consumer appropriately.

 

Set Promotional Marketing Objectives First

Like any business activity, effective market promotion starts with first defining your objectives, so that you can both recognize and measure objectively the outcomes of your promotional marketing activities.

 

 

Detail Orientation

 

Of course, there are obvious ways that some marketing promotions can go wrong. For instance, neglecting to proofread your logo, offering beer cozies to an audience that frowns upon alcohol consumption or distributing pens that fall apart at the point of contact.

 

promotional marketing

 

Stay Aware of and Avoid Obstacles

 

Most businesses are aware of these obstacles that may come into their path but there are also some other overlooked facts that could be extremely beneficial when taken into consideration, which includes the following:

 

  1. Look to vendors for inspiration – Vendors who specialize in promotional products need to be on top of the creative game. They are a fantastic source for new ideas for a business’s promotional needs and will often give inspiration for promotional concepts.  

  2. Weigh the value of your promotion – Offering coupons or free items is an easy way to bring in the number of customers you want but it can be risky at the same time. Make sure that it does not come back to haunt you with low numbers and budget losses.

  3. Make sure your promotional marketing efforts are legal – Believe it or not, not every promotion effort is doable, so be sure that you check with the city to see if your campaign is infringing on any local laws.  If your promotional marketing strategy also includes social media marketing, you will to ensure that all of your promotions are in full compliance with their community rules.

  4. Do your research – It is important to always delve deep when seeking a valuable and relevant promotion for your customer. Look into what other businesses have done in their past promotional campaigns to see what has succeeded and what has failed.

  5. Always consider how your promotions reflect your brand – It is important to be creative in your endeavors but it is also crucial that the campaign remains sensitive to its surroundings and reflects your brand in a positive light.

  6. Become a partner with your vendor to save costs – With the “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine” mentality, a vendor can possibly provide promotional items for your campaign at a low cost if you can help promote them too.

 

Make Promotional Marketing Fun!

 

Offering a fun and eye-catching promotional campaign can assist in targeting the audience you want and promoting the image that you want to convey whether it is through an online contest or free samples at a festival as long as it is executed in the right way.

 

Digital Marketing Offers Unlimited Possibilities

Platforms like Hubspot when combined with ecommerce platforms like Shopify, offer an incredible array of promotional campaigns and strategies.  Here's a few of them.

Influencer Marketing

 

Influencer marketing can be very cost-effective, especially if you choose to work with micro-influencers, which is also an extremely efficient and trustworthy option. This type of partnership benefits the brand in more than one way: You will quickly build a trustworthy brand; Your products/services will reach your target audience.  With the right approach, you will uncover additional influencers with which to work with.

 

Brand Ambassadors

While slightly different than an influencer, a brand ambassador can nevertheless have a huge impact on your promotional marketing efforts.  Having impartial people praise your business and become your brand ambassadors on social networks is the most natural form of advertising.  Having dozens or even hundreds of brand ambassadors, which is entirely possible if your product appeals to certain subsets of people, is invaluable.

 

Free Shipping - Ecommerce Catnip

Free shipping is one of the most popular (and profitable) promotional tactics for online retailers. When you offer free shipping, you might get your customers to pay more than both of you expect.

 

Get Creative with Promo Codes

Sometimes you may need to incentivize dormant customers as part of a win-back campaign strategy. There is no better way to do it than with a fun re-engagement campaign. If your customers didn't use your app or haven't made an order in quite some time, send them a promo code for a new product line to give them an extra push. You can also use this kind of promotion with shoppers you haven't converted yet.

 

BOGO Campaign

Buy One Get One is a promotional campaign strategy that can work wonders to move product off the shelf in large quantities.  You can rest assured that when it comes shopping events like Black Friday, your audience is looking for these types of campaigns.

 

Bundle Campaigns

 

One of the more powerful promotion marketing campaign tactics I've seen are Bundle Campaigns.  You frequently see these by the major CPG brands, wherein they 'bundle' something like toothpaste and a package of toothbrushes.

 

Subscription Box Campaigns

If you can sell someone something once, with a subscription offer, you can get them to buy from you regularly.  I've been a subscriber of lady's shoe surprise boxes for years now.  I am going to need a bigger closet soon:)

 

Subscription Boxes Generate Customer Loyalty

May subscribers to subscription services love to post their latest shipment on social media.  In fact, most like to post on different social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Pinterest or even Twitter.  This also acts a closed loop customer viral loop referral program.

  

Free Shipping Can Increase Average Order Value

 

A useful tactic for ecommerce retailers is to use free shipping in conjunction with a minimum purchase requirement to increase your average order value. Of course, you need make customers hear about your free shipping campaign by including it in your direct communication channels

 

Go Multi-Channel For Maximum Effectiveness

 

Along with promotional marketing, it is important that a business also market their product across all marketing channels during any promotional marketing campaign.  This requires integrated marketing communications so that you can monitor, manage and make mid-course corrections to your promotional marketing campaigns.


. To learn more, please take a look at our FREE 10 Step Guide to Cross Channel Marketing Success.

 

 

10 Step Guide to Cross-Channel  Marketing Success

 

Until next time…

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Cristina Keleshian

Cristina is an Inbound Marketing expert with international experience in a variety of industries

View All Articles by Cristina Keleshian

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