When it comes to the classic “4 Ps” of marketing — product, price, place and promotion — most businesses have a solid grasp of the first three, but often struggle with the fourth: promotion.
Obviously, it’s not that businesses don’t know what promotion is, or why they need to do it. The problem is identifying the optimal promotional marketing strategy that is going to create marketplace visibility and generate new customers, but without costing a small fortune.
Indeed, if money were no object, businesses could create a brilliant Super Bowl ad, launch massive public relations campaigns, offer loss leaders and so on. But as we all know, money is always an object — and signing a blank check in the hopes that a promotional marketing strategy will deliver ROI is bad idea (to put it mildly).
The good news is that developing an optimal promotional marketing strategy isn’t risky and won’t blow your budget – provided that your approach includes the following four elements:
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Define your target audience.
Before focusing on what you want to promote or how you’ll want to promote it, take a step back and focus on who you need to reach. It’s not enough to simply say that you want to “connect with customers.” To launch in the right direction, you need to drill deeper and identify the specific buyer persona(s) that are going to be targeted by your promotional marketing strategy.
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Identify your method.
Some schools of thought suggest that it’s wise to focus on messaging before method — i.e. you should figure out what you want to say, before you focus on determining how to say it. The problem with this approach is that messaging and method are integrated, and the latter will shape — and in some ways, limit — the former.
For example, if you plan on launching your promotional marketing strategy across social media, then you’re much better off designing your messaging in light of social media-friendly assets such as infographics and short videos. Alternatively, if you want to create a full-blown inbound marketing campaign, then you’ll typically want to create assets like ebooks, landing pages and blog posts (of course, social media is still going to be part of the package).
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Create your messages.
Yes, you’ve waited long enough to get to the fun part: now that you’ve defined your target audience, identified the life cycle stage of your product/service, and identified your method (or methods), it’s time to go ahead and create your messages. Essentially, these are the words (and sounds and visuals) that will pull leads into your promotional marketing funnel, so they can be nurtured appropriately — and ideally, converted into happy, profitable customers.
The life cycle stage of the product (or service) that you want to promote fundamentally shapes your messaging and overall strategy. For example:
- If you’re looking to introduce a new product, then you likely want to focus on informing your marketplace.
- If you’re looking to drive adoption and growth, then you will likely want to focus on influencing and persuading your marketplace.
- If your product is at the maturity stage and experiencing tough competition, then you will likely want to focus on feature, value and brand differentiators.
- If your product is reaching the end of its lifespan, then you will likely want to focus on next generation and/or other product lines to keep customer relationships dynamic when the inevitable happens.
Learn More
To learn more about defining, developing and deploying your promotional marketing strategy — or strategies, since it’s typical to run multiple campaigns at the same time — then contact the Leap Clixx team today. Your consultation with us is free.
For more information on how to run a successful campaign, learn about inbound marketing best practices by download our FREE eBook:
Topics: Inbound Marketing
