Top 10 Marketing Promotion Strategies for Business Growth    

No matter what you are selling, chances are there are many similar products and services competing for customers. The key to positioning your brand on the market is the right promotion strategies. By influencing the way your target audience thinks about your product, you can set yourself apart from your competitors who are also fighting for their attention.

Your promotional strategy will be the compass for your promotion. 

The goods or services you are offering and the markets in which you do business will play a big role in the promotional techniques you choose to influence the consumer decision-making process. 

But every business, small and large, needs a solid promotional strategy to grow and thrive. Read on to learn how you can make your business stand out in a crowd.   

What Is a Promotion Strategy?

Perhaps the best promotion strategy definition is the act of changing people’s opinions of your company, bringing in more prospective customers, and improving customer participation.

Your promotion strategy is defined by the plans and tactics your business implements in its marketing plan to increase demand for your product or service.

Promotional strategies play a vital role in the Four-P Marketing Mix (product, price, placement, and promotion). 

The success of your business hinges on these four things, and each depends on and is influenced by the others. You cannot  produce an effective promotional strategy without a solid understanding of your product, price, and placement.”    

Main Roles of Promotion Strategy in Marketing

Promotion strategy is a component of marketing communication that reaches your target market to improve brand awareness and drive engagement with new and existing consumers. 

Promotional marketing spreads knowledge about a brand, product, or service to a wide audience to increase brand awareness and sales.

A good promotional strategy has clearly defined promotion goals like:

• gaining the attention of your target audience
• raising the demand for your goods and services
• generating interest in those goods and services
• differentiating your product from competing goods or services
• convincing your target audience to buy from you    

Build Awareness

Building awareness is vital to promotion success. To do that, your promotion strategy must:

• Focus on your target audience: Know your market.
• Find their profile in detail: Learn as much as possible about prospective customers.
• Show them your brand: Put your promotions where your audience will see them.  

Increase Interest 

Your promotion method needs to attract interest and curiosity from your target audience. To make your business stand out from the competition, you need to make customer participation and interest in your firm a top priority. Engaged customers are more likely to buy and to keep coming back.    

Generate Demand

Not only do your promotional tactics need to make your products and services interesting. They must also make them desirable. Your target audience needs to know not only what your products are, but also why they need your products and how they will improve their lives.    

Make People Take Action

The final goal of all promotional tactics is for the prospective customer to take action. 

Getting audience attention and interest is great, but you want your target audience to visit your store, fill out your forms and, ultimately, give you their money in exchange for your goods or services.  

Types of Promotion in Marketing

Like you, your target audience wants to know something about a product or service before they spend their money. 

To succeed, you need to get the word out about your business and what you offer. A strong promotional marketing strategy can position your company in a favorable light and bring your services to the attention of prospective customers.

Below we’ve listed some of the ways you can reach out to your target market.  

Traditional Marketing promotion

Today many businesses do the lion’s share of their advertising online. 

While you definitely need to think about internet marketing, many traditional offline marketing promotions are still useful for attracting potential clients. 

Your target market is accustomed to these time-honored promotional methods, and they remain an excellent way to connect with your audience and share business information.   

Face-to-face Selling     

Face-to-face selling is a promotional technique that relies on direct interpersonal communication. 

Door-to-door sales may be the best-known example of these types of promotional strategies. But face-to-face selling also covers promotional booths at local fairs and customer engagement in a brick-and-mortar store.

You don’t have to be a great salesman to do face-to-face marketing. Simple conversations with prospective customers help put a human face on your business and build a foundation for future sales.    

Traditional Advertising     

Paid advertisements on TV, radio, billboards, and other traditional media remain an effective way to reach a bigger audience. 

These old promotional techniques still work for prompting short-term engagement and building brand awareness. 

Many customers place more trust in traditional ads than digital ads, and a billboard or TV ad stands out in a way that is hard to achieve amidst the cluttered and ad-clogged digital landscape.  

Customer Appreciation Events    

In-store customer appreciation events with free refreshments and door prizes are a great way to draw customers into the store. These events also help to build brand loyalty and a sense of connection with returning customers.

You can take advantage of customer appreciation strategies even if you don’t have a store! 

Loyalty discounts for returning customers and special gifts and privileges for high-spending VIP customers are a great way to develop online brand loyalty too.   

Content Promotion Strategies

Content marketing is a key marketing promotional strategy for bringing your brand before an audience. 

Content marketing promotes your business by putting your logo and name in front of the public. It is aimed at building awareness rather than making money through a hard-sell campaign.

Content marketing is an excellent indirect promotional strategy that can educate customers about the products and services you offer, but should be followed up with other digital content marketing strategies.    

Blog Posts    

Blog posts can be one of the most powerful and inexpensive types of promotion strategy. 

By using your blog wisely, you can raise brand awareness and build customer loyalty by educating your audience about topics relevant to your business niche. 

Today many companies large and small have official blogs because blogging is a powerful form of marketing and a great way to get the word out about your goods or services.     

Infographics    

Infographics transform complicated data into engaging and easy-to-understand images. They can also be a very useful content promotion strategy, especially for consulting and tech firms. 

When you’re trying to explain tax law or network subdivision, a picture can be worth a thousand words.

A good infographic that provides a clear explanation of a complex topic may be shared across the Internet, so be sure your name and contact info are included prominently in the image.   

Paid Ads    

Paid ads are a key part of any advertising and promotion strategy.  

Paid online ads help you to reach a broader audience, and can be carefully targeted and filtered to reach the audiences most interested in your products and services. 

And paid ad manager dashboards let ad buyers see in real time which ads are getting the most support so they can allocate their budget accordingly.    

Podcasts    

Many people enjoy listening to educational content while working out or commuting. Podcasts are a great way to provide your prospective customers with useful information while building brand awareness and promoting your business.

Podcasts are a great marketing promo for reaching niche audiences. If you are selling a product or service with a small but devoted customer base, your podcast will reach the ears of people who are already interested in what you are selling.   

Video    

Online video marketing drives a lot of engagement, and many small businesses have found that vidcasts and video streams can be great tools for promotion and marketing. 

Video marketing is a powerful way to boost conversions and improve your ROI.  

And if your channel becomes popular enough to qualify for advertising, it can become both a promotional tool and a secondary source of income!     

Direct Marketing     

Direct marketing is direct communication with a highly targeted audience through marketing channels. 

Direct marketing is aimed at people who have already engaged with your business in one way or another. It is a marketing promotion strategy focused on building and maintaining relationships.

Direct marketing can also provide you with quick feedback, so you can take care of problems immediately and turn a dissatisfied customer into a happy return visitor.  

It allows for a personalized and cost-effective approach that can help you turn prospective customers into buyers and one-time customers into regulars.                                       

Social Media Promotion     

Social media platforms offer your business a relaxed and friendly way to promote your products and services to a world of potential customers. 

If you are looking for efficient direct promotion and marketing, you definitely need to include social media in your promotional strategy. 

Social media lets you show your company on a more personal level, and presents you as people rather than simply people trying to sell something.    

Email Marketing     

Email marketing promotion strategies got off to a bad start with spam mails. But email marketing is a great way to keep customers informed of sales and changes in the market. 

And while indiscriminate slash-and-burn email campaigns will at best languish in junk mail folders, targeted email campaigns can be an important part of any business promotional strategy and a great way to move your customers through the sales funnel.   

Branded Promotional Gifts   

Branded promotional gifts are practical items that include your company’s name, logo, and contact information. 

Pharmaceutical salespeople have become famous for giving away the pens doctors use to sign prescriptions as a push promotion strategy, but keychains, mouse pads, and beer cozies are just a few of the other Creative Marketing promotional options available. 

Whether you are running or participating in an event, promotional gifts are a great alternative or supplement to business cards.                                          

Public Relations

PR strategies are types of promotional strategies that focus on the effectiveness of an organization’s public relations tactics over time. 

Public relations promotions are designed to build a good corporate image and cultivate strong customer relationships. 

Important parts of that task include providing appropriate information and responding to both positive and negative voices from consumers. 

A good PR strategy should also regularly measure the effectiveness of its public relations responses and tailor future campaigns accordingly.     

Sales Promotion

Sales promotion strategies are temporary marketing activities like flash sales and buy-one-get-one-free offerings that encourage customers to make a conversion or purchase the product or service. 

These short-term marketing campaigns can attract immediate buyer attention and lead to increased sales (albeit with a reduced margin). 

But while they can lead to brief traffic increases, on their own short-term sales promotions are not particularly good for developing long-term customer relationships.    

B2B Promotions

B2B companies offer materials and services that other businesses need to work and get benefits. 

A promotion marketing strategy for your B2B company should focus on how people will benefit from using your goods or services. 

Your B2B campaign also needs to be tightly targeted toward the individuals who are authorized to make purchases for or on behalf of their organization and the stakeholders involved in making that final decision.  

Customer Loyalty Program

A customer loyalty program is a marketing promotion designed to reward regular customers. 

These rewards help retain good customers, and also motivate them to share information about your products and services with others.  

You can reward your loyal customers with points, discounts, free shipping, or other perks that encourage them to continue doing business with you. 

Loyalty programs keep your bread-and-butter customers happy and lead to increased sales and positive publicity.    

Referral Program     

Customer referral programs are a promotional strategy that leverages your customer base as a sales force. 

Free products, big discounts, and cash rewards are just some of the incentives you can use to encourage your current customers to refer new customers to your store. 

Since people trust words from close friends more than advertisements from a company, customer loyalty programs are also a great way to bring in qualified leads.    

Word-of-mouth Marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing is not only one of the most effective types of marketing promotions for gaining new clients — it’s free!  

A word-of-mouth marketing campaign encourages your current customers to communicate about your company’s products and services with other people who are a part of their social networks, such as friends and family. 

Soliciting reviews and user-generated content on social media is another way to leverage word-of-mouth marketing for your business.    

Become Visible    

One awesome promotional technique to attract customers is to make yourself visible. Be sure to attend local community functions, public dinners and gatherings, and business conferences. 

Whenever you can, set up a booth and begin talking to people about your product or service.

The more that people see you at community events, the easier it is for them to place a name and face to your company and the more likely they are to become customers.  

Influencer Marketing   

Influencer marketing is a digital hybrid between old-fashioned celebrity endorsements and word of mouth marketing. 

But in this digital landscape, you can measure your influencer’s performance through likes, shares, social media engagement, referrals, clicks, and conversions.

Giving away your products or service to influencers who are popular and followed by your target audience could be a good marketing promo for your business. 

As with celebrity endorsements,  you are using the influencer’s credibility to introduce your business.  

Free Products    

A good push promotion strategy to encourage valuable “word of mouth marketing” is to provide free product samples to people who will spread the word amongst their friends and followers. 

By allowing people to have a free sample of your product, you are planting a seed that will grow as their social circle learns about your product and its benefits.  

A free sample to the right person may provide a whole new crop of customers.    

Customer Review    

Good customer reviews can make a huge difference in your bottom line, and the best promotion marketing strategy for getting good reviews is going above and beyond the expectations of your best customers.

Offer your best customers free shipping on occasion or send them memorable gifts. 

The more you pamper your most loyal customers, the more likely they are to talk about you and your company to the people they do business with.    

Customer Survey After Sales    

Contacting customers by telephone or mail after a sale is a type of promotion strategy that focuses on customer satisfaction while leaving the door open for promotional opportunities. 

Skilled salespeople survey customers with questions about the products and services they received. 

These calls or letters show your company’s concern for customer satisfaction and providing the best services and products. 

They also provide you with useful information about how customers feel about your offerings.     

Offer Refunds or Return to Keep your Customers Happy

Refunds and returns are a classic product promotion and marketing strategy. 

Many customers feel more comfortable buying a product when they know they can get their money back if they are not satisfied.

Refunds are a way of guaranteeing to your customers that you stand behind the quality of your goods. But before you embrace this kind of strategy, first make sure that you are offering a good quality product.    

Why Promotional Strategies Are Important for Businesses?

Business promotional strategies are one of the most critical processes in any marketing campaign. A good marketing promotion can attract the right audience to your business. 

It can introduce new people to your product and service, and convince interested shoppers to become purchasers and repeat customers. 

Good promotional strategies not only bring new customers in, but they also keep old customers coming back and provide you with valuable information about what your customers want.  

Benefits

Wondering how a good promotion marketing strategy can help your business? Here are just a few of the ways:

• Target the right audience and provide valuable information on the customer’s sales journey.
• Increase brand awareness.
• Attract prospects and customers through various channels.
• Publish your promotion at the best time based on prior data.
• Increase qualified customer traffic through targeted advertising campaigns.
• Create and improve customer relationships.
• Build your reputation on social media and elsewhere.
• Improve word-of-mouth opportunities.
• Stay ahead of the competition on market share.
• Grow sales and profits.   

Tips to Find Best Promotional Strategy that Suits your Business

Here are a few tips for building a good marketing mix promotion strategy:

• Set realistic promotional goals:  Know how many people you want to reach and what ROI you want.
• Set your budget: After you prioritize your actions, allocate your funding appropriately.
• Define your target audience: Learn as much as possible about your customers and what they want.
• Choose the promotion types: Determine what approaches are most effective and appropriate for your goals and budget.
• Define the key message of your campaign: Consider your market, your competition, and your customers when determining how you approach your promotions.
• Regularly measure your campaign’s results: Take advantage of ad tools that provide ongoing and immediate information on your campaign, so you can see what works and what needs to be tweaked.