Marketing Small Business – 5 P’s – Promotion
How do you build awareness of your product to your chosen market? This area can be broken up into 5 smaller areas; advertising, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling and direct marketing; all these areas combined is known as the promotion mix. I wont be going into these areas specifically, instead I would like to take an overview of Promoting the business and the product / service.
I have to talk about the use of the internet, in this day and age there should be no reason why a business, either just starting or one that has been established for years not to have a web site. The internet is the modern day “yellow pages” giving potential customer a better understanding of your product / service along with your companies principals and goals. You can use it to sell your products directly, keep clients up to date with product launches and upgrades or use it as a tool to comment on your industry establishing your business as an expert in it’s field. If you have a web site then you need to network that site just like you would do in person but of course the networking now is on line using social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter to name but a few (more on this in a later blog), but you get the idea, get your product / service out into cyberspace to be noticed!!
That doesn’t mean you neglect the more traditional ways of promoting the business, word of mouth is still your biggest friend (get things wrong it will be your biggest enemy), the use of sales promotions to stimulate sales (cellular companies are particularly good at this) and promote new lines, seasonal sales to get rid of older lines, the use of news letters or other types of regular correspondance (including paper advertising) to keep in touch with your customers and not forgetting sales staff who also will provide ongoing customer service as well as creating new sales.
There are many ways of promoting both your company and it’s products, some will work better than others, by studying your target market and creating a strategy to best get yourself noticed, an effective promtional campaign (that doesn’t need to cost a million dollars!!) can make a huge difference to the success of your business.
What makes a campaign successful?
It’s not how you get the campaign to your target market but what you say to them when it gets there. The best way to do that is by surveying your current customers (if that is the market you are trying to target) and get in their words why they use your products / services, understand why they come back to you instead of your competition and once you have all that information ensure that the messages are relayed through the promotion to the rest of your target market in your customers words, you will increase the chances of potential customers better understanding the meassge.
Remember if your message originated from your customer it is more likely to resonate well with like minded people who are your potential customers!!
