Introduction To Promotional Strategy and Its Types

Promotion has become an essential part of every business, and businesses are trying their best to increase their brand awareness. They are opting for various techniques and experimenting with ways to attract customers and further inspire a purchase.

This will be better understood with an example. Let us assume that you are a marketing manager for a brand that makes sports shoes. You need to increase the awareness about your product among the people, and of course, you must focus on motivating everyone to at least own one pair of sports shoes manufactured by your company. This is where you need to show your skills and convince people why they should purchase sports shoes from your brand only.

This can be achieved by building a promotional strategy to promote your product. A promotional strategy is influenced by various constituents. Let’s take a dive into the brief details about these constituents affecting your strategy.

Constituents Of Promotional Strategy

1. Know Your Budget

Your budget is one of the major constituents affecting your promotional strategy. While sometimes you get the liberty of deciding your own budget, sometimes you get a budget assigned. Whatever be the case, you should always know your budget before planning your strategy to make the most of your available resources and boost your sales.

2. Define Your Message

When you are ready to market your product, you need to have a strong message that will help your product stand apart from other competitor products. What qualities do your products possess for everyone to have them? You will have a lot of brainstorming to do before finding the right message for your product.

3. Identify Your Target Market

Without a target market, you cannot lead a successful promotional strategy. What if you promote your product to 1000 people, out of which only 5 are right customers? Waste of money, time, and efforts, right? You need to ask yourself – who is this product suitable for? Is it for men or women or both? Find out the demographics to identify your target market before marketing your product. If you know your target market, it will be easy for you to plan your strategy.

4. Decide Your Strategy

There are plenty of strategies that you can opt for the promotion of your product. You need to discover which strategy is going to boost the sales of your product the most. Observing the promotional strategies of your competitors is also a great way to decide on your strategy. For example, there is a pull strategy where companies use high-profile advertising to push its products on their audience. In contrast, there is a push strategy where merely your brand name will pull customers to purchase your product. Whatever you decide, just make sure you choose a well-thought strategy before investing your funds in it.

So, let’s move on to the next part i.e., the various types of promotional strategies.

Types Of Promotional Strategies

1. Social Media

There are different social media platforms that you can use to promote your products and increase a broader range of audiences. Since there is hardly a person who does not have a Facebook or Instagram account, you can utilize these platforms to market your products, raise awareness, discuss its uses, and ways in which it can be beneficial to your consumers. Additionally, you can also demonstrate how your product is superior to other products in the market. You can make sure that your product reaches the audience who are more likely to get converted instead of pushing your products on everyone.

2. Mail Order Marketing

Existing customers are a big reason why your business is still alive. Once a customer uses your product and likes it, there are going to come back to purchase more. Therefore, do not ever underestimate these existing customers. You can ask them for their positive experience with you in exchange for some free rewards or discounts. You can then use this information to promote your products in a new market.

3. Giveaways

This is one of the most popular and effective promotional strategies for both small as well as large companies. This strategy is mostly employed by food or cosmetic brands. They give away a free sample of their product to people and make them try these new products. This strategy can give a significant boost to your sales. You must have come across a small counter of some company in a shopping mall where a representative gives away free products to every person who passes by, or sometimes they ask for your email address, which they later use to promote their products.

4. Referral Programs

Also known as referral marketing, businesses use this promotional strategy to encourage their existing customers to refer their products to their family or friends in exchange for some rewards, incentives, or discounts on their next purchase.

5. Point of Sale Promotion and End Marketing

In stores, the products are arranged strategically so that they catch the eyes of the customers as soon as they enter the store. This is done for two reasons, impulse and comfort. You would often notice a shelf near the walkway of the store, showing appealing discounts on some products. The stores do this on purpose to either increase sales or get their stock moving. This strategy can make visitors purchase some products impulsively while waiting in the queue to check out.

6. Branded Promotional Gifts

This is a rather effective strategy implemented by many brands for their promotion. Instead of handing over business cards, which will eventually be thrown away without even looking at them, you should handover some promotional gifts with printed information about your brand. For instance, you can give a tissue paper with your brand’s name and logo. Since it is useful, it would stay with them for a while. Moreover, people love free gifts.

7. Cause Marketing

People love connecting with brands that address and take initiatives for societal issues and charitable causes. Many businesses, whether small or big, are using this strategy, also known as Cause Marketing, to strengthen their customer base. You can do this by collaborating with a non-profit organization and then advertise about your step towards the particular social cause or charity, which will further convince them to purchase from you and do their bit for the society.

8. Survey After Sale

As a business, your role does not just end once a sale is made. You need to value your customers who have purchased from you as this will make them feel cared for and open doors for further promotions. You can also use their feedback to bring further improvements to your service. During the conversation, you can also educate them about your upcoming offers or deals. This interaction will improve your relationship with your customers and develop a positive brand image.

9. Appreciation Events

Throwing small parties for your customers will not cost you as much as the fancy advertisements do, but these can be an excellent way to improve your relationship with them. During such events, you can arrange little contests and give a gift hamper or a pizza or a voucher to the winner. This will eventually drive your customers to your store.

10. Organizing Contests for Promotion

This strategy is widely used by brands to establish their newly launched products. You must have come across influencers, bloggers, or YouTubers partnering up with several brands, asking people to participate in a contest to win a prize. This is another way to attract customers to your website or store.

So, this was all about promotional strategies and their ten types. What are you waiting for now? Get ready to skyrocket your sales by using these strategies. Make sure you conduct brief research before deciding on anything. Research, prepare, plan, create, execute, and track, and you will be running a successful strategy campaign.

Let us know which promotional strategy you think is the best for your company and why by dropping your responses in the comments below.