What is the promotion strategy?
Promotion is a marketing tool whose specific objectives are to inform, persuade and remind your target audience about the products that your company manages. Within the influence stage, you have to publicize the characteristics, advantages and benefits of your product. In the persuasion stage you will have to get your prospects to proceed to buy your products. And in the stage of remembering your goal is that your brand is always in the memory of your customers. The promotion strategy has the purpose of influencing the attitude and behavior of the customer or prospect using tools such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing and personal sales.
Elements that make up a promotion strategy
To achieve the objectives of the promotion you can base yourself on the aforementioned tools using the following elements:
• Advertising: TV, radio, print ads, brochures, posters, flyers, yellow section, advertising directories, billboards, audiovisual material, Internet, etc.
• Sales promotion: Giveaways, games, lotteries, giveaways, sampling, fairs, exhibitions, demonstrations, coupons, low-interest financing, etc.
• Events and experiences: Visits to factories or companies, outdoor activities, artistic exhibitions, sporting events, etc.
• Public relations: Speeches, trainings, seminars, annual reports, publications, lobbying, association with chambers of commerce, press releases, etc.
• Personal selling: Incentive programs, sales meetings, sampling, fairs, bonus points, buy one get more, etc.
• Direct marketing: Product catalog, telemarketing, Internet shopping, E-mail message, TV sales, etc.
As you can see, there are many tools that you can use in the promotion, with the purpose of informing, persuading and remembering about the products that your company manages.
Advantages of promotional campaigns for promotional items
Within promotional marketing, promotional gifts have always raised doubts about their effectiveness since they can be considered unethical for managing a customer’s willingness to buy. In reality, promotional or corporate items have multiple advantages beyond increasing the sales of certain products:
Promotion as a business strategy is imposed today due to increased competition from similar products and services, less direct customer relationship due to intermediary structures, and the need to respond to the needs and desires of consumers, especially when resources they are limited.
In these cases, offers and discounts, as well as other mechanisms to promote products and services, are aimed at promoting purchase persuasion based on changing consumer habits in relation to their brand; to facilitate the movement of products, services and related information; and for the satisfaction of desires to become a more selective process.
- Improvement of the brand image: when a client receives a detail, the perception towards the company or brand that does it is totally positive. In this sense, the type of promotional detail that is carried out must be in accordance with the values of the company to cause the desired impact as a brand image.
- Positioning of the company: these types of articles allow to reinforce the positioning in the mind of the consumer by facilitating their memory. When the customer has to make a purchase again, the latent memory in his unconscious will make him choose the same company.
- Advertising: companies that use this promotional marketing strategy are benefiting from a very low cost advertising mode. The brand will get a lot of visibility without having to make significant investments. In addition, these articles tend to have a long duration, so the advertising impact is lasting over time.
- Capturing the attention of the consumer: as we have already said, the delivery of a promotional item can lead to the purchase of a consumer in front of another product of the competition. It is very useful when the product is new to the market, through an incentive in the form of an advertising detail, the client will be encouraged to try it despite not knowing it.
- Customer loyalty: engagement between company and customer is reinforced with this type of promotional actions. The customer sees this advertising item as a reward for their purchase and will take it into account in future acquisitions, becoming a recurring customer.
How will this offer and promotion affect the reputation of your company?
This is a key question, which you always have to keep in mind when running a promotion. You should think about how it will be perceived by your market and how it will subsequently affect the credibility of your price list. A good way to deal with both issues is by creating temporary offers and very limited in time, explaining with credible arguments, the reasons for said promotion. In this way we will make it clear that they are specific offers, that it is not our usual pricing policy and we also generate a sense of urgency in the client, with the intention of staying as short as possible in a situation of offers or discounts. This is the place to say, that there are more techniques to attract new customers besides offering new clients a bonus or a special promotion, for instance, some online casinos offer the chance to play free casino games to attract new users, let them try the platform and get to know or practice the game.
How do promotions and offers affect your company?
From the outset, it would be logical to think that when sales slowing down, a good strategy could consist of making an offer or promotion of your company’s services or products. In order to attract attention to customers and thus improve the business figures that you had planned for this year, sometimes you consider making discounts to your customers, there are several considerations when it comes time to carry out this type of Promotions and discounts.
Is it really necessary to make the offer or promotion?
Sometimes the salespeople or the marketers go to the easiest thing: discounts and offers! But we must consider before taking this path if there are no other possibilities that we can highlight from the product or service we offer. Perhaps our quality of service is superior to that of the competition or our product may be made with better materials or perhaps our price is already below the market and this causes us to be perceived with a lower quality.
Therefore, before deciding whether to launch an offer or promotion, carry out a competitor analysis to better understand your position in the market.
