Promotion Ideas

Creating and implementing affordable promotion ideas (aka getting your name out there) is one of THE toughest small business challenges. How do you separate yourself from the competition? The first thing is to STOP doing what everyone else does. The second thing is to contact us!

At The Art of Marketing, we help small business owners develop promotion ideas and marketing tactics that will positively influence their target market to a desired outcome. In fact, we purposely ask our clients NOT to spend any more money until we figure things out. How's that for a fresh thinking? Once the ground work has been done, clients are free to implement the ideas on their own – or we can! It’s just another way we help clients control costs. 

Here are 6 promotion strategies and techniques you can use to communicate your message:

Personal Selling

Concept: you/your sales staff presenting your products/services, answering questions and securing orders
Examples: how you prospect and sell, face to face presentations, quotations, networking
Key to success: realizing that people buy (a) people first, then (b) products and services, then (c) the company.
You have a weakness if: you think it’s impossible to sell with just a business card; or believe you’ll have to make cold calls.

Sales Promotions

Concept: short term incentives to encourage retention of your message
Examples: advertising specialties, gifts, contests, demonstrations
Key to success: matching the incentive to the desired goal
You have a weakness if: you attend trade shows without pre / during / post plans

Public Relations/Social Media

Concept: to communicate a company’s image to its publics
Examples: social media (Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter...) media kits, media releases, seminars, awards,
Key to success: communicating – not selling
You have a weakness if: you believe that whatever you publish online will be read by your target market

Advertising

Concept: the non-personal paid form of presenting products and services
Examples: corporate identity, brochures, flyers, business cards, website, print/online/pay per click ads
Key to success: presenting a consistent brand
You have a weakness if: you throw money at print advertising and then are frustrated with low or no response.

Direct Marketing

Concept: delivering a message direct from seller to consumer.
Examples: mailings, email [SPAM = ouch], fax broadcasts, website banner ads
Key to success: having mechanisms in place to monitor results
You have a weakness if: you've placed the wrong message in the wrong place to the wrong target (nothing happens)

Maybe you already have a few ideas – but you’d like to bounce them off someone other than a well meaning friend (who doesn't have any marketing or sales experience and would rather lead you astray than tell you the truth). Contact us today. We can meet in person, by phone or email to review. Check out our e-books for fast and easy answers to your marketing and sales challenges.

Don’t wait another minute to get growing!