Many businesses make the mistake of considering only their advertising material as promotion. Promotion is more than this. Promotion is all about the way in which you communicate with your customers. In plain terms, it is saying the right thing to the right people. This means that everything that you do, from your stationery and business cards through to the format and presentation of your advertisements, must convey the right message.The mix of communication strategies that you can use for promotion is virtually endless. The important part is selecting those that will provide you with the most return. Always remember that the most expensive option is not always the best option. Reputation and image also play a large part and these cannot be bought; they have to be earned.

Understanding The Importance Of Promotion

Unless potential customers know about you and your products it will be difficult for you to make any sales. You may have the finest, most innovative product in the world, but unless you communicate how and where it can be bought, and at what price, nobody will even be aware of its existence.

Promotion strategies, or perhaps to give them more direct meaning, communication strategies, are therefore vital to your business. In order to communicate successfully with your potential customers you need to understand:

• who they are
• what they are looking to purchase
• what makes them decide to buy a particular product
• how much they are prepared to pay
• where they expect to buy from.

You must also have clear promotion objectives before you can begin to consider strategy. It is not sufficient to concentrate your promotion methods purely on sales objectives. The question of linking your objectives to your promotion strategy is important and is looked at later in this chapter. For the moment, though, you should understand the five essential components of promotion strategy:

• Potential customers must be made aware of your existence.
• They need to know what products you are offering.
• They must be advised how your products will satisfy their needs.
• They must perceive your product as being the best to suit their needs.
• They must then be persuaded actually to make a purchase.

As with all forms of communication there are at least two interested parties – the sender of the message and the recipient. In order to make the communication meaningful it must also have four essential components:

• who it is to be sent to
• what it will say
• how it will be sent
• the desired effect.

The first of these should have been covered in your market research where you identified your target market. The last one is, of course, the desire that potential customers will make a purchase. The middle two, however, require extensive thought. If you send the wrong message you could alienate your target audience. The message also needs to be sent by the most appropriate medium. There is little point, for example, in advertising your golf products in a gardening magazine.

One of the most important aspects of your promotion strategy will be the unique selling points that were looked at in Chapter 6. These will form part of your competitive advantage and, as such, should be clearly communicated in all of your promotional activities.

The Marketing Promotion Mix

There is no perfect mix of promotion techniques that will be suitable for all businesses. What you do need to do is use a number of different techniques and keep statistics to enable you to evaluate those that are working and those that are not.

A good business will always keep pace with changes in communication techniques, trying out new or different ones, and monitoring the effect on sales. Unless you know how you are gaining business it will be difficult to concentrate your efforts on those that are profitable and avoid those that are not.

The marketing communication mix is comprised essentially of four different types of promotion techniques:

• advertising
• public relations and publicity
• sales promotions
• personal selling.

With the increasing use of the Internet for promotion and sales purposes, a new dimension is now added. For any business looking to keep pace with technological advancements it must be separately incorporated into your promotion techniques.