There are five different ways to effectively promote your business. These include public relations, sales promotion, advertising, direct marketing and personal selling. In fact, for the maximum effect, a combination of the five should be used.
Although, before you can put these strategies into play to benefit your business, you need to know a little more about them. Fortunately, that is precisely what you will find in the post below, along with some tips on how each type of promotion can best serve your business.
Public Relations
Many business owners wonder whether public relations is a form of promotion at all. However, I can tell you that without a doubt, the way that potential customers see your business is one of the most effective forms of promotion there is.
In fact, you can have the best product at the best price, but if your public image is not positive enough, you won’t get the sales you want or deserve. Although making sure your business PR is right can be a lot more subtle than the other types of business promotion.
Many factors can impact how your business is perceived in the public sphere. These can include the reviews you get online, as well as the alliance you make. For example, companies working closely with charities and environmental causes, often benefit from such associations. Additionally, even the resources and supplies that you use not to mention the way that you treat your staff, nationally and overseas can all have an effect.
With this in mind, it’s essential to do whatever you can to promote goodwill and positive regard towards your business. This often means auditing your own and partner companies for ethics and environmentally friendly practices. While some businesses also choose to work with groups sited in their local areas. Additionally, do not forget that using a PR professional to help you break important news, or respond to criticism in the media can be the most beneficial route in the long term.
Advertising
Probably one of the most direct styles of promotion there is, and when used correctly, advertising can be devastatingly effective. Advertising is all about using direct methods to raise awareness of a brand, product or business.
Traditionally advertising has been a task that revolved around media, print and TV. However, now for success in the area, online platforms also need to be considered, including PPC.
However, before engaging in any advertising activities, a cost-benefit analysis is vital to ensure a good ROI. The reason being there may be other forms of promotion that could be more effective for less cost.
Sales Promotions
BOGOFs! No, we’re not being rude, it’s an abbreviation of a type of sales promotion– buy one get one free! In fact, sales promotions are one of the most straightforward ways to get the message about your brand, business and product out there.
They are a great deal less subtle than the vagaries of PR at least. With that in mind, keeping things clean, clear and straightforward is the best approach. All your business needs to do is offer an added incentive that will tip the customer over into making a purchase. Whether that is 20% off, money back, or a free item. Just be sure to add in a time clause. That is your customer can only access the offer if they buy now, or by a particular time or date. Something that will help close more sales and ensure your promotions are as effective as possible.
Direct Marketing
Another straightforward form of promotion for your business is direct marketing. That is communication from a company that is designed to elicit a direct response from the person receiving it. A more traditional example of this would be a promotional letter, or flyer sent to a customer or potential customers home.
However, as technology has progressed the ability to harness this for marketing purposes has followed suit. In fact, currently, many businesses make use of cookies to discover the types of products people are interested in. Something that allows them to directly target them with their marketing campaigns.
Also, marketing has evolved to encompass for new platforms like social media and video hosting sites such as Youtube. Something that means your business can easily create effective marketing reasonably quickly and cheaply.
Of course, for this type of promotion to be effective, it needs to be constructed conscientiously. In fact, the more personal that a direct marketing effort can be the better. That means matching the different facets of communication to a very specific demographic. We are even seeing the most direct form of marketing there is now online. That is when you are presented with tailored offers addressing the person by name!
However, just because there is a great deal of noise around online direct marketing efforts, doesn’t mean that there is no longer a place for real-world tactics. In fact, many companies find that running online giveaways or incentives that offer real-world prizes, often in the form of branded items to be very successful. The reason is that they increase the community-building aspect of marketing. Such things can even become coveted as a way of demonstrating alliance, support and membership to a particular brand.
Personal Selling
Finally, let’s take a look at personal selling the last promotional option for your business. This tends to be where you have a salesperson that engages the customer and facilitates the sales itself. Whether this is by providing information, customization of the product, and even allying their fears.
Personal selling tends to be most used in business to business environments. However, salespeople in stores, at the end of phone lines and communicating via chat windows also help to perform this function.
In fact, no matter what type of product or service your business is offering. You may wish to consider using a chat window function on your website. The reason being that it can help reassure customers of their purchase and so encourage them to buy even when they have not seen the product in real life.
Final thoughts
Remember that there are multiple ways of promoting your business. In fact, a combination of the above tactics can help to make sure the right people know about you, what you do, and the products and services you offer.