how to make promotion in business plan

• Digital Marketing

How to Create a Promotion Plan? (With Examples)

Irem Gokcan

Updated July 29, 2024

What will we cover in this article?

Promotion planning is optimizing every element of the marketing plan of your services. It requires thinking and making decisions for the utilization of a promotion process. These include consideration of resources, strategies, marketing tools to use, and services that carry your objectives and demands. Let’s take a look at how to create a promotion plan.

An Overview of a Promotion Plan

The promotion plan is the outline and shows significant aspects of the promotion. Thus, creating your promotion outline of the campaign should consist of sequences of components. Each of them has its aims for creating a successful promotion. These aspects also have vital relationships and impacts on each other to lead to achievement or failure of promotion plan.

Your promotional plan will be unique to your business relative to your marketing campaign. Therefore, your promotion plan varies in each element to achieve your goal. As each marketing campaign stands in different aspects and serves a purpose, promotion plans should differ for goals. Even in a single campaign plan, you might need several or more objectives which add more distinctiveness to your business.

In a word, creating a promotion plan shows your aim to get a successful outcome at the end of the promotion, and you believe that you need a roadmap to launch into the market.

How Does a Promotional Plan Benefit?

As it seems, a promotional plan seems more necessary now for any business with different ambitions. The company’s purpose of creating promotions can change. Therefore, it needs to follow structures about trying something new. The promotion plan gives a clear roadmap to your business and investors. Promotion plans are an outline of trying new strategies.  It is straightforward, and almost all aspects of promotion are planned before implementing it. Indeed, a promotion plan illustrates the company’s strategic characteristics of any promotion. It creates ways to achieve and describes how it is possible. 

The end of the promotion plan helps in achieving long-term goals. It can grab attention and make you known to your target and turn them into long-term customers. A promotion plan can function as inform, influence, or persuasive purposes. It is also adjustable and can change to any part of the plan.

Components of a Promotional Plan

Promotional plans don’t have a specific structure in terms of components. While creating a promotion plan, there are some components to set off. However, some things need to have in a promotion plan. Namely, they are elements to take into consideration for every promotion plan. These segments are equally important in creating any promotion. You can find the most probably efficient ones stated in this article.

Create Your Promotional Plan

You may want and have different reasons to start your promotion. For instance, the promotional plan process aims to inform, reach target audiences, persuade and engage with the company in basic terms. A promotion plan requires thinking systematically. Before starting your promotion plan, consider the most convenient elements shown below.

Creating Your Promotional Plan Includes

To create your promotion plan, you can look for the components covered in your promotion. Some of them are listed and explained in this article.

A Promotional Plan

• Define Aims And Problems

Identify Objectives

Know target audience.

• Promotion Type And Strategy

Key Messages

Name promotion plan, promote products and services, plan resources, test your promotion plan, implementation of promotion plan, monitor and evaluate promotion plan.

Define Aims and Problems

Why do you want to promotion plan? Any issues you are concerned about and lead to planning? It is one of the crucial parts to know and get more clear about starting your promotion plan. Define and state your reasons, goals, and problems to create a promotion. Make sure about your motivation and be specific for creating a detailed promotion plan. Defining aims might be the very first step to start your planning.

After you define your reasons to start a promotion plan, the next thing to do is make clear objectives. Objectives are goals to at the end of the promotion plan, outcome to get through the company efforts. Identify your reasons for creating a promotion plan with your objectives. Objectives will guide particular strategies and shows how you will market them. They also should match with your promotion type in the promotion plan. You can decide your objectives by keeping in mind your target audience. Objectives should be specific, achievable, realistic, and measurable. Promotional objectives would be specific to your intents in your campaign, and you can find some examples:

• Your promotional objectives would be to launch a new product or service, inform customers about the product, build loyal customers, expand your market. 
• The objective can be specific to get traffic to your website or registrations.

Think about the target audience before deciding anything about the promotion plan, and try to have their perspectives in marketing. In every marketing, there is always a target audience. You can not think of objectives or strategies without considering audiences. So, try to learn or conduct research about your possible target audiences. Without knowing them, any business could not make it and be successful.

 One of the first things to start in a promotion plan is to know your target audiences. The target audience can be people who probably would be interested in your product. When you know about your target audience, you will save time, deliver the right services and provide knowledge about marketing efforts to take. It would help the company is more likely to meet with the right people and use the right offer to lead solutions to any problem.

 Define the target audience to make a clear vision for the products, like things the audience needs to know. 

In general, know or pick some of them, possibly worth knowing:

• Audience demographics (gender, age, etc.) 
• Behavior patterns most probably benefit the promotion plan.

Design of Promotion

Promotional design is like launching your execution plan. You have to find the type, the strategies and add some of your creativity. Decide on the promotion types and strategies that consist of the target audience and objective of the promotional plan. In addition to that company should analyze the pros and cons to select appropriate promotional tools with their resources.

Promotion Type and Strategy

Promotion type and strategy is about how to apply your objective to marketing. While looking for a promotion strategy, you need to focus on the target audience, objective, product, or service for promotion type. 

Create your promotion type which is suit best to the company and campaign. With the promotion type, you decided that is a way to attract the target audience. It will encourage people to know your business or change the image of your company and pursue. Also, simple promotions are easy to understand and respond high within the market. 

You can choose from the various promotion types:

• Advertising
• Personal selling
• Sales promotion
• Public relations
• Social Media

If you decide what type of promotion you will use, start implementing it into your promotion strategies. You may promote with these strategies:

• Free shipping
• Percentage discount
• Give free items
• Loyalty-coupons
• Special offers at weekends

What is the mission statement of the company in that specific promotion? Find massage, name promotion, and products or services to reflect your promotion. Let the audience know about your promotion product or service with simple and catchy phrases. This phrase needs to infer the company and its promoted service. 

Make promotion more unique by giving a name. Name promotion plan with the campaign, find catchy and related to promotion campaign. Try to title it to grab attention just hearing that. 

You can present promotions with products with their messages. Choose something relevant to the promotion plan. It could be classic as shirts and hats. Products that include the company logo or slogan will say more about the current promotion plan. It allows to high chance of grabbing attention and meeting with audiences to deliver the campaign. 

Plan your resources, should decide the duration of the promotion, strategies, or tools to have in the promotion plan. The budget you have and incentives need to take consideration during the planning.

Check the resources that you are going to invest in marketing. Set budgets because you will know your expense of promotion, services, and marketing tools you can choose.

Once you have a promotional plan, you should test your plan. It would help to realize potential problems and identify the things you need to change in the promotion plan. To test the promotion plan and try it with selected markets. Similarly, you can test your strategies once you set a goal and objective. A key performance indicator is the simplest way to test your revenue goal at a particular time.

Until this part, you make a plan and decide on an objective, target audience, strategies to use in implementation. It is time for promotion to launch. You are in the market and assess your processes with the outcomes of the promotion plan. It allows you to adjust the promotion plan or change it completely.

A promotional plan is a great way to evaluate your business. In planning processes, you think about your current resources, target audience, objective, strategies. After you launch, you see the performance of the promotion plan with the result in the real market now. 

Promotional Plan Template

Create your promotion plan with components of it.

Yet, a simple promotional template can include of following elements:

• Overview of the current status of the business and products or services you offered (resources, products, and budget)
• Mission statement to start promotion plan
• Long term goals and KPIs
• Target Audience (information about your target audience)
• Promotion strategies

Conclusion About How to Create Promotional Plan (With Examples)

In this article, you can find almost everything about the promotional plan. So, start your promotion plan while sticking with its fundamental aspects. Also, consider your business and services to create your unique promotion plan, know your target, and always keep into your mind the objective and goal in each promotion plan. We hope this article will help all you need to know about the promotion plan.

Frequently Asked Questions About

A promotion plan is a process of optimizing your marketing. You need to know about aspects of a promotion plan to create your own. It means more emphasis on thinking and deciding on implementing it. Think of your promotion plan as an outline with elements that shows your goal to create a plan. It’s a unique roadmap to your business

The company’s purpose of creating promotions can change. So, it needs to follow structures about trying something new. Promotion is easy to get attention,  and people are most likely to purchase. Those build brand loyalty.

There are not certain fundamentals of a promotion plan. But a promotion plan has components to include in every promotion plan to achieve its goal. Each of them is equally important and impacts on results of the promotion. Therefore, to create a successful promotion that should consider and have every plan. Cover these in a plan: mission statements, objectives, audience, strategies, and assessment tools.

A promotion plan is a process, so you don’t need to do anything special but start creating and thinking about your promotion. You can try the promotion plan by asking the following questions as a start, Why do you want to promote a plan? What is your current company doing?

A promotional plan is for various purposes so, there are many different templates that you can find or create your unique template. However, in a basic promotional template, you look for components such as current status, state reasons for promotion plan, define an objective, know the target audience, find promotion strategies and test the process.

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Boost Your Growth

How to Create a Promotional Plan to Maximize Business Growth (with Examples & Strategies)

Updated July 2023.

You can elevate your business to new heights with a stellar promotional plan. In an increasingly competitive world, this tool has become indispensable for businesses big and small.

From identifying your target market to choosing a catchy promotion name, from selecting an effective promotion type to deciding on key messages and promotional products, we’ll journey through the creation of a powerful promotional plan.

Get ready to excel with our comprehensive guide and downloadable promotional plan template. You’re one step away from transforming your business goals into a reality!

We can count on them to bring new ideas to the table consistently

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

What is a promotional plan.

• Public relations
• Sales promotion
• Social media marketing
• Online marketing

Advertising

• Personal selling
• Conduct a SWOT Analysis

What Are the Main Components of a Promotional Plan?

• Define Your Target Audience
• Name Your Promotion
• Determine Your Promotion Type
• Craft Your Key Messages
• Create Your Promotional Products and Swag
• A Promotional Planning Template to Help You Get Started

Brand Promotion

6 types of marketing & sales promotion strategies to boost your sales.

• How to Create a Promotional Plan: A Final Recap

Before we dive deeper into the main components of a promotional plan, I think it’s absolutely necessary to understand what a promotional plan is. This will help us be more accurate in defining the future steps of a business plan, thus making it more likely for us to achieve our marketing objectives and grow.

A promotional plan is a strategic document that outlines your company’s marketing and advertising efforts over a specific period. It details the actions your business will take to promote its products or services to its target audience.

A promotional plan is an element of a marketing plan for a specific product or service. It includes the types of promotional methods you’ll use, such as social media marketing and print advertisements, as well as key components like target market and key messages.

Here are some of the key elements that you might find in a promotional plan:

• Objective : Clear, specific goals that the promotion seeks to achieve, such as increasing product awareness, driving sales, or attracting a new audience.
• Target Audience : Identification of the group of people who are most likely to be interested in the product or service. This can be based on demographic information, lifestyle, consumer behavior, and other factors.
• Promotion Name : A catchy name for the promotional campaign that aligns with the brand and resonates with the target audience.
• Promotion Type : The specific form of promotion that will be used. This might include advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations or digital marketing, among others.
• Promotion Mix : This refers to the combination of promotional tools and methods that will be used to reach the target audience. It might include a mix of traditional advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, event marketing, and more.
• Key Messages : The main points that the promotional campaign seeks to communicate to the target audience. This could include information about the product, the brand, or other important aspects.
• Promotional Products or Services : The specific products or services that will be promoted. These might be a new product, a seasonal offering, a special deal, etc.
• Budget : The financial resources allocated to implement the promotional plan. This should cover all costs associated with the promotion, such as advertising costs, production costs, and event costs.
• Timeline : The start and end dates of the promotion, including any important milestones or deadlines within the promotional period.
• Evaluation Metrics : The measures that will be used to determine the success of the promotional campaign. This could include sales data, website traffic, social media engagement, customer surveys, and more.

It’s essentially a roadmap that guides all of your promotional activities, helping to ensure they align with your overall business goals and objectives.

What Are Promotional Strategies?

As you can see from the definition above, this plan details the tools and you need to implement various promotion strategies. But what exactly are promotional strategies?

In a nutshell, promotional strategies are the tactics, techniques, and activities you use to promote your product or service. Promotional strategy examples can include:

Public Relations

Playing a major role in getting your key promotional messages out to as wide an audience as possible, Public Relations (PRs) uses various communications strategies designed to influence public perception and opinion of a brand, its products, or public-facing figures.

These strategies include:

• Media relations and pitching stories to journalists
• Organizing press conferences and media events
• Community engagement events covered by the media

Sales Promotion

Sales promotions typically involve enticing customers with a discount, freebie or other perk.

Examples include:

• Buy-one-get-one-free offers
• Percentage-off sales
• Limited-time only discounts
• Seasonal sales
• Free trial periods
• Free shipping when the cart total reaches a specific volume

Social Media Marketing

Few brands (if any) can truly thrive in today’s digital society without an effective social media presence.

With an array of social media platforms available, brands have unprecedented opportunities to connect with their target audience and drive engagement.

Examples of social media marketing include:

• Partnerships with social media influencers
• Creating and sharing relevant and useful content
• Running contests and giveaways
• Using paid social media advertising such as Facebook ads
• Improving brand loyalty and reputation by engaging with followers

Online Marketing

Online marketing can take many forms, including:

• Content such as blogs and videos
• Email marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Social media
• Affiliate marketing

Advertising remains a tried-and-true promotion method that continues to generate significant revenue for brands, even at a time when those brands have more marketing and promotional options at their disposal than ever before.

Examples of advertising as a promotional strategy can include:

• Display ads placed on websites and video sites such as YouTube
• Print advertising
• Television , radio and streaming media spots
• Billboards and street furniture (like bus benches) advertising

Personal Selling

Personal selling is all about building direct connections and relationships with potential customers. It’s a hands-on approach that involves face-to-face interactions and persuasive communication techniques such as:

• Presenting products at tradeshows and exhibitions
• Product demonstrations at locations your audience is likely to populate
• Networking at events
• Personalized lead generation and follow-ups

Together, these strategies can prove highly effective for achieving marketing goals relating to your website or digital presence.

Related Content:   10 Inspiring Examples of Promotional Campaign Videos for Startups

Conduct a SWOT Analysis for Your Promotional Plan

After having outlined your activities and marketing efforts, you then need to put your plan out there. What’s extremely important is to make sure that you conduct some sort of situation analysis or SWOT analysis.

SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats:

To put it simply, such an analysis will help you track and measure the effectiveness of your promotion plan as well as your marketing plan as a whole.

Author’s Note:  Keep in mind that conducting a SWOT analysis can also be beneficial for your business’ content marketing strategy, social media plan, SEO, and – in general – any other actions that your marketing department might be taking, like creating a marketing plan template.

Measuring the results and monitoring your metrics will help you understand whether you’ve put some smart goals in place when designing your plans or if you should reconsider. It’ll also give you a clear idea of how close you are to achieving your marketing goals and what your future steps should be.

Simply put, to be aware and keep track of the results will help you make sure you’re not losing time or money on an ineffective promotional plan.

The promotion plan template below illustrates the main components you’ll need to use in your plan, including (we’ll go into details about each one in the next section):

• Target audience
• Name of your promotion
• Type of promotion
• Key messages
• Promotional products and swag
• Additional notes

This template illustrates various examples of promotional strategies inspired by a UK government promotional campaign that ran across the country after the reopening of restaurants. The campaign’s goal was to help the industry that had been hit hard by the pandemic:

How to Create a Promotional Plan

I’ll use the example of a fictitious London restaurant participating in this campaign to demonstrate how to create a promotional plan of your own in the following step-by-step tutorial.

1) Define Your Target Audience

No promotional plan can ever be successful if you don’t know who it is you’re promoting to. This is why it’s so important that you start this process by defining who your audience is and what they want.

In the free promotional strategy template included with this guide, you’ll see that the target audience doesn’t have a specific audience, as the campaign was essentially an appeal to the entire country.

That may be fine if you’re a national government with a bottomless budget, but let’s face it: The products and services produced by most businesses were never designed to appeal to everyone.

Whether you sell classy-but-comfortable business shoes to female executives or performance monitoring watches to marathon runners, practically every business has a specific ideal customer they want to reach.

So, before you do anything else, determine who that ideal customer is for your brand.

If your business is brand new, you’ll benefit from learning how to develop buyer personas , a process that can be invaluable for helping you think about the type of people your promotional marketing strategies are aimed towards:

If you’re already well-established, think about your long-term customers:

• Who are they?
• What do they like?
• What would appeal to them from a promotional stand point?

These insights into your target audience will make a world of difference when it comes to making informed decisions about the kind of promotional message that is most likely to hit home with your customers and the best approach to deliver that message.

To show you what this might look like, we can refer to our fictitious London restaurant, which might come up with the following:

Our target audience is young executives working in the nearby business complex. Most of our existing customers fit these audience demographics and we know that they value fast, efficient service. We also know that the majority of bookings and enquiries from this demographic are made on social media.

2) Name Your Promotion

Now that you know who your audience are, you need to give your promotion a name that will appeal to them.

“Eat Out to Help Out” was a great name for this campaign because it was catchy, memorable and appealed to people’s sense of patriotic duty in the aftermath of major crisis while also answering that fundamentally important question: “What’s in it for me?”

You mean all I have to do to help out my country is go to a restaurant for a hugely discounted meal? Sure, I’ll do that, sign me up!

To give a more recent example from here in the United States, Taco Bell’s “Freeing Taco Tuesday” campaign is fast gaining a lot of attention partly because it’s such a unique idea, but also because it genuinely engages the curiosity of its audience.

Why does Taco Tuesday need freeing? Who from? I don’t know! Tell me more Taco Bell, and tell me how I can help!

LeBron James was featured in an ad called “Taco Bleep,” which emphasized the campaign message: the absurdity of “Taco Tuesday” being trademarked:

This is what you’re trying to do by naming your promotion. Come up with something that grabs the attention of your audience, sticks in their mind, and compels them to want to take action, whether that action is signing a taco-related petition , eating at a restaurant, or buying a pair of shoes.

3) Determine Your Promotion Type

Next, you need to determine what type of promotion you’re planning for.

Some of the most effective promotion types  include:

• Discounts (percentage off or dollar off)
• Loyalty schemes
• Referral rewards
• Free shipping
• Spend a set amount and get a free product or service

To determine which promotion types are bested suited for your campaign, it pays to think about what your goals are.

With Eat Out to Help Out , restaurants were offering customers £10 off (almost $13 USD) per person:

This type of promotion would be classed as a discount and is the right approach for our restaurant, as it aligns with the business goal of getting more paying customers through the door and increasing profits.

However, for the aforementioned Taco Tuesday  campaign, a discount would be less effective as the main goal of this campaign is essentially boosting Taco Bell’s brand reputation and visibility by presenting themselves as “the good guys” who want to liberate the Taco Tuesday trademark from the evil clutches of their competitors.

If you were selling shoes, you might also run with (pun intended, of course) a discount promotion, while a company selling performance monitoring watches might run a promotion in which customers who upgrade to their newest device get an additional product for free.

4) Craft Your Key Messages

Your next task is to come up with a compelling marketing message that tells your audience what you want them to do and how they’ll benefit from doing it.

Again, the Eat Out to Help Out campaign did a good job with their message:  Support your local restaurant by eating out with a 50% discount on food or non-alcoholic drinks.

This one has it all.

It provides a clear call to action to eat out at a local restaurant and answers the “What’s in it for me?” question by telling people that they’ll benefit by enjoying a half-price meal .

Here, the word “support”   lends this promotional message added gravitas as it subtly tugs at our emotions and appeals to that part of human nature that makes us want to help others.

Your message should be equally as clear, concise and compelling as this one.

If you’re struggling with this, here are a couple more examples to get you inspired:

• Upgrade your TechX Performance Monitoring Watch to the latest new model and get a free pair of headphones.
• Save 50% on this season’s most popular shoes when you shop at Big Foot’s Shoe Store.

Both of these messages contain all the vital components.

They make it clear what action the audience should complete (upgrade their watch or shop at a certain shoe store), and they outline a clear benefit (save 50% or get some free headphones).

Each example also appeals to the audience’s emotions in different ways. The word “free” triggers a certain level of excitement in all of us, while the promise of a discount on “this season’s most popular shoes” appeals to customers who love staying up-to-date with the latest styles.

6) Create Your Promotional Plan’s Swag

Promotional products serve as a kind of distribution channel which help draw attention to your current campaign and your business as a whole.

What’s great about branded merchandise is that it can be almost anything, through the closer your swag ties into your campaign, the better.

In my hypothetical promotional campaign, I’m using promotional t-shirts  to convey my message and promotion name:

Promotional hats are also among the most popular branded products, so why not include them as well?

Both the t-shirts and hats can be worn by members of restaurant staff, but also be given to customers as a “thank you” gift.

Elsewhere, our shoe store might create high-quality, reusable bags that customers can take away their purchases in, while our company selling performance watches for marathon runners would naturally opt for branded running apparel to help boost their campaign’s visibility among their key demographic.

You might even choose to create a swag box  in which you put several useful items relating to the promotion and your brand:

When it comes to creating products of your own, keep the following tips in mind:

• The more useful your promotional items are to your target audience, the more they’ll be used, and therefore the more effective they’ll be at increasing brand recognition.
• Use your company’s logo and usual branding colors across your items. If your logo, website, and storefront all use a blue and white color scheme, don’t suddenly start giving away yellow and black t-shirts.

6) Take Notes

Creating a notes column in your promotional plan template will be a huge help when it comes to keeping track of new ideas or other relevant details that could help you run your campaign more effectively.

I’ve definitely used the notes column in my promotional plan template to write down a few additional ideas for promoting my campaign.

For example, I thought promotional banners outside the restaurant, alongside digital banners posted on social media platforms, would significantly help me bring more awareness to my campaign.

A Promotional Plan Template to Help You Get Started

After having broken down the components of a promotional plan, here’s the promotional plan example I promised I’d give you.

👉 Click here for access to the Promotional Planning Template 👈 ( be sure to save a copy to your own computer first ):

The columns are as discussed above and include all essential information about the promotion. Make sure to copy/download it first and then start using it to build your promotional plans!

Related Content: Just Do It: What We Can Learn from Nike’s $39B Marketing Strategy

Promotional Plan Examples

1) Johnston County 2022-2023 Marketing Plan

Johnston County in North Carolina put together a comprehensive marketing plan outlining how they plan to increase visitor numbers:

The plan outlines the challenges faced by the tourism board: “In year two of recovery from the pandemic, travel seems to be on the rise, however, new challenges continue to plague the tourism industry.”

To overcome those challenges, Johnson County first defines its target audiences and then sets forth a list of clearly defined marketing goals.

The plan then outlines the strategies they’ll use to achieve those goals, such as increasing email marketing efforts and upping the game in online paid advertising.

2) Viral Spiral Marketing Plan

Viral Spiral (VS) is a Taiwanese biotechnology company that used its marketing strategy to promote at-home covid testing kits:

Containing everything from an analysis of current market trends and the company’s competitors to a thorough SWOT analysis and detailed information on their promotional strategy, this is an excellent marketing plan example for those going to market with a new product.

1) Unicef PPC

An excellent example of a promotional strategy focused on advertising comes from Unicef:

The charity frequently uses pay-per-click advertising on YouTube and social media as part of its fundraising efforts.

If you read our round-up of multi-channel PPC case studies , you may recall that one campaign served display ads to around 5 million people, resulting in Unicef tripling their anticipated fundraising total.

2) Boston Red Sox Media Campaign

The Boston Red Sox had an image problem:

“Despite coming off two straight division titles, there was an inexplicable yet palpable “ho-humness” among the team’s fanbase that not even a new manager or a $100 million slugger could fix. We needed to find a way reignite the city’s passion for the team.”

Since a disengaged audience can harm brand reputation and sales, the Red Sox launched a new advertising campaign to foster a personal connection between the team and their fans:

“’More’ became a foundation for our work: the idea that to the city of Boston, baseball is more than just a game. And those who play for the team are more than a collection of names and uniform numbers. They’re our family. It was a deliberately intimate campaign that provided snapshots of the team and players, thereby giving fans a more personal connection with the team.”

The Opening Day spot earned over one million impressions within the first two weeks of airing.

1) Boohooman Personalized Promotions

In men’s fashion, boohooMAN was experiencing some frustrations when it first began sending SMS campaigns to customers:

• They used the channel mostly as a one-off on big shopping days such as Black Friday.
• They sent non-personalized messages to unsegmented customers.
• They sent these messages to largely inactive customers.

Their ROI was, as they stated, “subpar at best.”

So they created a new promotional plan in which they sent personalized SMS campaigns to drive more sales:

With messages relating to each customer’s purchase history, birthday and other key data, the company generated increased ROI on promotional activities 25-fold.

2) Industrial Tool Supplies Customer-First Approach

Further proof that focusing on your audience can lead to better sales comes courtesy of UK-based Industrial Tool Supplies :

A case study  showed that focusing on giving users the best shopping experience and putting customers front and center of every decision helped them increase orders by 21% and revenue by 23%.

1) Glossier Brand Promotion

This case study details how beauty company Glossier grew into a $1.2 billion enterprise by placing a heavy emphasis on branding in its promotional plans:

The company focused on getting to really know its audience and developing a unique signature style that proved irresistible to its target customers.

2) Visit Baton Rouge

Here’s another example of a tourism board making good use of its promotion plans. This time, it’s from the folks over in Louisiana who came up with a detailed campaign to promote their “Visit Baton Rouge” brand:

Their strategy involved a complete rebranding with a new logo, tagline, and vision that appealed to tourists and local Louisiana folk alike. They used the SWOT template for a deep analysis, deeply segmented their target audience, and outlined specific goals.

In the dynamic world of commerce, employing a diverse mix of marketing and sales promotion strategies is crucial for driving growth and achieving your revenue goals. These six strategies encompass a blend of paid and organic methods to attract, engage and convert your target audience.

We can help you skyrocket your sales and grow your business with these strategies:

• Paid advertising :  Harness the power of targeted advertising platforms to reach your ideal audience with compelling messages that drive conversions.
• Content marketing : Create and distribute engaging, informative and valuable content that attracts and retains a clearly defined audience — and ultimately drives profitable customer action.
• Sponsorships and Influencer Marketing :  Collaborate with reputable brands and individuals to tap into their established audiences and gain credibility in your industry.
• Email marketing :  Build strong relationships with your subscribers through personalized and relevant email campaigns that nurture leads and drive sales.
• Retargeting :  Reconnect with website visitors who have shown interest in your products or services by displaying targeted ads across the web.
• Referral marketing :  Encourage your existing customers to refer their friends, family, and colleagues to your business through incentives and rewards.

Final Recap: How to Create a Promotional Plan

Once again, here is your free Promotional Planning Template  ( be sure to save a copy to your own computer first! ).

In this post, we’ve discussed the definition and importance of a promotional plan, some of the main activities that such a plan might include, and what the components of a promotional plan should be in order to be concise and successful in achieving your goal.

After presenting the main components of a promotional plan, we’ve also shared with you a free promotional planning template.

If you’re ready to level up your business, Single Grain’s marketing experts  can help!👇

Additional content by  David Borgogni .

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Developing a Winning Promotion Plan

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Introduction

Creating a promotional plan can be an incredibly powerful tool to help you direct both your daily operations and long-term goals in order to achieve success. By having a comprehensive promotion plan in place, you have the potential to realize substantial benefits related to your business growth.

A promotional plan is a strategy that outlines the objectives, goals, and tactics relevant to the promotion of your business. It typically includes identifying the key audiences you hope to target, setting forth short-term and long-term promotional objectives, determining a budget for your promotions, and should pinpoint any measurable results.

Having a promotion plan in place allows you to maximize your impact and influence on the people you are seeking to reach. Let’s explore the purpose, benefits and components of creating a promotional plan.

Develop a Target Audience

When developing a promotional plan, you need to start by identifying your target audience. This task is critical as it helps to determine the objectives of the plan and set realistic expectations. Additionally, by having a narrow focus on the right people, you can ensure that your message resonates and is distributed to the right channels. Here are a few steps to ensure that you develop an effective target audience.

Define Objectives of the Plan

The objectives you set in your plan will help you determine who should be considered in your target audience. Quality, rather than quantity, is important here. Prioritize your main goal of the promotional plan, such as increasing brand awareness, building customer relationships, or driving sales. This way, you can narrow down your target audience to those that are most likely to achieve your objectives.

Research Target Market

Once you have determined your objectives, you can begin researching potential target markets. Start by collecting valuable information about your customer base - consider demographics, lifestyle, location, and income level. You can also look at current and past customer data to identify any shared traits or preferences.

Analyze Promotional Channels

Once you have identified your target audience, you can start to analyze which marketing channels represent the best opportunities. For example, a younger demographic might respond more positively to content on digital channels, while older generations might prefer traditional media such as print or television. Consider what types of content (images, videos etc.) would be best suited to each channel too and which mediums would give you the most bang for your buck.

• Define objectives of the plan
• Research target market
• Analyze promotional channels

Establishing a Budget

Creating a promotional plan without establishing a budget is like attempting to construct a house without any building materials. Having a budget gives you a comprehensive guide and resource to setting attainable goals and making sure you’re not overspending. Follow these steps to develop an effective budget for your promotional plan.

Determine Goals and Resources

To begin establishing your budget, determine what your objectives are. Depending on your business, goals could include increased brand awareness, higher conversion rates, improved customer engagement, or a mix of any of these. Once you have an idea of your desired outcome, move on to consider the resources you will need to achieve these goals.

Some common resources include advertising, marketing materials, and the time and expertise of team members or contractors. You’ll also want to factor in any additional costs associated with travel to events or conventions, and any new software or equipment that can boost your efforts. Taking into account all the resources you will need to meet your goals will help you determine the necessary size of your budget.

Set Budget Targets

After you know what resources you need, you can then set target numbers for your budget. Use research or industry standards to benchmark your budget against other businesses in the same field. Their prior successes and failures can give you a good idea of what you should spend.

If you are launching a new venture, be prepared to devote more money to the promotional plan to ensure it is successful. Allocating a larger budget up front can help you hit the ground running, without needing to go back and adjust anything.

Allocate Budget Among Promotional Activities

Once you’ve determined the size of the budget, you can distribute funds appropriately among the promotional activities. Allocate your resources according to what will give you the best return on investment. Using data from past campaigns, you can quantify the value of each promotional activity and develop a budget that fulfills your goals with the best impact.

Budgeting is one of the most important tasks when creating a promotional plan, so make sure to research and consider all of your options. Create realistic goals and allocate resources appropriately to maximize your promotions with the most efficient budget.

Promoting Through Social Media

A strong social media strategy is an important part of any successful promotional plan. With the sheer number of social media platforms now available, your campaign should include channels that are appropriate for your company and target audience. Follow these steps to create an effective promotional campaign on social media.

Select social media platforms

Your promotional plan should include the most popular social media channels that are relevant to your target audience. To determine which platforms are right for your company, take some time to research the demographics of each platform, examine their features, and determine how they fit into your wider promotional goals.

Create messaging strategies

An effective social media messaging strategy should include posts that communicate your company’s message in a clear, engaging, and creative way that resonates with your target audience. Consider creating a content calendar to help you plan out messages for each day of your campaign. And consider which types of content will draw in your audience, from written posts to visuals, videos, and other media.

Implement campaigns

Once you have selected your platforms and created your messaging strategy, it’s time to roll out your campaigns. Take some time to develop a schedule for your posts, making sure to consider the time of day, week, and month when posting. Also consider ad campaigns, influencer marketing, and other tactics to reach your target audience.

• Research demographics of each platform
• Examine features of each platform
• Determine how each platform fits into promotional goals
• Create message in engaging and creative way
• Develop content calendar
• Develop post schedule
• Consider ad campaigns, influencer marketing and other tactics

Traditional Advertising

Advertising can be used as an effective way to increase awareness of your brand and drive sales.

When using traditional forms of advertising, the first step is to select the best outlets for growing your target audience. This involves evaluating different media outlets and assessing their reach, frequency, and cost. Factors such as budget and the specific channels that your target audience uses should be taken into account.

Once the outlets are selected, the next step involves building creative for the ads. This includes designing the content, writing a captivating copy, and adding visual elements to drive engagement. It is important to format the ad for the chosen media type and to optimize it for the target audience.

Finally, the success of the traditional advertising campaigns can be measured in various ways. Before launching an ad, it is important to establish a set of metrics that can be tracked to gauge success. Such metrics can include impression rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate. By measuring these metrics, you can fine-tune your ad creative, messaging, and targeting to optimize the results.

Measurement and Analysis

Once you’ve successfully launched your promotional plan, it’s important to track how it’s performing. By carefully measuring and analysising every step of your plan, you’ll be able to identify areas for improvement and optimize for maximum impact.

Track Metrics

Tracking your promotional plan’s metrics can tell you how well your campaign is doing and give you valuable insights into how your audience is engaging with it. It’s important to track the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are relevant to your business and the goals of your promotional plan. This could mean tracking the number of page views, leads and sales, or even something as simple as the number of comments or shares you’re getting.

Utilize Analytics

To really get the most out of your promotional plan, it’s important to use analytics to gain even deeper insights into how your audience is engaging with it. Analyzing your data can show you which of your channels are most effective, which types of content are resonating, and who your high-value leads are. Additionally, analytics can help you pinpoint areas where you can adjust or optimize your plan to get even better results.

• See which channels are performing best.
• Dive into your content’s performance.
• Uncover insights about your leads.
• Identify areas for improvement.

Creating an effective promotional plan is a key element to driving successful sales and increasing brand awareness. By following the seven steps outlined here, you can generate a comprehensive promotional plan that you can use moving forward to obtain the desired results.

Review promotional results

Before wrapping up your promotional plan, it is important to review the results of all promotional activities. Measure the effectiveness of campaigns, calculate ROI and analyze the response rate for purchases. Evaluate if the set goals of the promotional plan were met and make changes to the promotions accordingly.

Measure effectiveness of campaigns

To truly measure the effectiveness of campaigns, track key metrics like website traffic, cost per lead and customer return rate. This data should be compared against rivals in the industry and monitored weekly, monthly and yearly. Create detailed reports on all promotional campaigns to track progress accurately.

Use findings for future promotions

Once all metrics have been assessed, use your findings to inform future promotional plans. Analyze the data to identify which strategies were successful, what needs to be improved and make changes as necessary. This will provide insight into the best approaches to adopt to market a business and reach the target audience.

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Promotion Strategy: How to Promote Your Business [2023]

[Lee este artículo en español: Estrategias de Promoción ]

No wonder that promotion strategy is one of the most important processes in marketing .

In fact, it supports your marketing voices to reach your target audience, creates interest, and helps you to engage with them. If you want more traffic and conversions, then developing promotion strategies is critical.

Here’s the deal:

You’re going to find out how to promote your business and how to build a promotion strategy with actionable promotional tactics. Then, you will get a better understanding of content promotion, digital advertising, mobile marketing, and public relations.

Everything here applies to a GREAT promotion strategy in 2023.

So let’s begin!

Promotion Strategy Fundamentals

Promotion strategy overview, content promotion, digital advertising, mobile marketing, public relations, promotional marketing metrics​.

Business promotion is the first marketing communication with customers. There are too many companies talking about their products and services. So you must create a well-crafted road map for your promotion to reach out to the right audience and convert them into your customers.

In this chapter, you’re going to learn the basics of a promotion strategy and why it is so important for your marketing success.

What is a promotion strategy?

A promotion strategy is an actionable plan to influence people about your business, generate more leads, and boost customer engagement. It visualizes how to perform your marketing strategy and communication, who to target as your audience, and where and when to execute the promotion plan.

Many marketers spend more on business promotion each year, but they receive less. There are too many options and marketing voices, so you have to make sure that your messages are really reaching the people you want to approach when you promote your business.

What’s more, it is very difficult to convert people into customers without resonating marketing voices to create emotional connections and arouse interests and demands to your offers.

Role of promotions

Business promotion is one of the 4 P’s of the marketing mix. It is a part of marketing communication which reaches your target market to gain awareness and foster conversation with prospects and customers.

Promotion helps you draw your target’s attention, create interest in your products and services, generate demands, and encourage them to purchase from you.

The following are the four main roles of promotion:

• Build awareness – Making your target audience aware of your products and services. You must identify your target audience, your promotional marketing messages, and your outreach strategies.
• Foster interests – Gaining their interests in your business. It requires a well-designed content marketing strategy to provide enough information for lead nurturing, and show uniqueness for differentiation from competitors.
• Generate demand – Making your products and services desirable. You can share great features and benefits, and create an emotional connection with your prospect.
• Induce prospects to take action – Placing a call-to-action for your target to easily engage and find the next steps. Anywhere you can position to drive conversions, such as your website, digital advertising, and social media.

As you can see, these are following the A.I.D.A. marketing models. It means that promotion can contribute to all the consumers buying processes.

Besides, it will help you to establish a stronger relationship and cultivate the repeated customer to stay longer with you.

Types of promotion

There are many promotional marketing approaches where you can attract your prospects and customers and draw people into the A.I.D.A. process. From traditional promotions like face-to-face selling to digital advertising and the customer loyalty program.

The key promotion types are:

• Personal (face-to-face) selling – Salespeople from a company give you a sales presentation in person to present their offer. Unlike the other approaches, it is easier to build relationships with you. i.e.) Sales meeting, sampling, telemarketing, etc.
• Traditional advertising – You can use any paid advertisements to reach a bigger audience and prompt short-term engagement and sales. It is one-to-one marketing, and its costs are based on the bidding. i.e.) Print ads, billboards, TV, radio, etc.
• Direct marketing – It is direct communication with a highly targeted audience through marketing channels. It has more chances to get quick feedback and retain customer relationships. i.e.) Emails, direct mail, digital ads, etc.
• Sales promotion – Performing a short-term marketing campaign to gain attention and encourage conversion or purchase. You can get immediate responses and interactive, but it’s not good for developing a long-term relationship. i.e.) Contests, coupons, flash sales, sweepstakes, etc.
• Public relations – To build a good corporate image and cultivate a stronger customer relationship, you can provide appropriate information and handle both positive and negative voices from consumers. i.e.) Newspaper/magazine articles, seminars, speeches, etc.
• B2B promotions – a B2B company offers materials and services that other businesses need to work and get benefits. It focuses on how people will benefit from using your offers. i.e.) Trade shows, case studies, online courses, etc.
• Word-of-mouth marketing – It is the process of motivating people to share information about your products and services with others. Since people trust words from close people more than from a company, it will bring qualified leads. i.e.) Referral program, customer reviews, influencer marketing, etc.
• Customer loyalty program – a Customer loyalty program induces your current customers to make frequent purchases and retain them, which brings you great profits in the long run. i.e.) Reward programs, referral incentives, etc.

You’ve got what a promotion strategy is and what you can do. Before we go any further, let me explain why it is critical for your business.

Why is a promotion strategy so important?

Business promotion is one of the most critical processes in marketing. It focuses on how to attract the right audience to your business, introduce your product and service effectively, and convince people to buy it.

Back to what I was saying, with a great promotion strategy you can drive prospects from the awareness stage into the action stage if you do it right. It allows you to create strong brand awareness, generate leads and build a long-term relationship with your target audience.

Besides, developing a promotion strategy helps you to cut unnecessary promotion costs. This is due to the fact that you’ll target the right audience instead of marketing anyone out there. And they will start recognizing you more and choose you over the competition.

By creating a good corporate image in promotions, you can also build a better reputation that will bring more benefits for your business, like word-of-mouth.

Benefits of a promotion strategy

A promotion strategy will be the compass for your promotion. And it will have a great impact on the consumer decision-making process.

These are the key benefits of a promotion strategy:

• Target the right audience.
• Gain brand awareness.
• Attract prospects and customers.
• Publish your promotion at the best time.
• Increase qualified customer traffic.
• Show differentiation from competitors.
• Offer more value to your customers.
• Engage with your target audience.
• Drive customer decision-making.
• Find potential partnerships.
• Create customer relationships.
• Build your reputation.
• Improve word-of-mouth opportunities.
• Stay ahead of the competition on market share.
• Grow sales and profits.

Thus, the potential benefits you’ll get from a promotion strategy are huge and you don’t want to miss them! That’s why you need to craft a well-designed promotion strategy and ensure your success.

So, how do you create one for your promotion success?

Don’t worry! I’ll walk you through the whole process in the next chapter.

In this chapter, I’ll show you the value of each step and the best way to set a promotion strategy for your business. If you are ready to start learning how to promote your business, you are in the right place. Keep reading, and you will discover all the possible ways to promote your business.

Great success without a strategy is impossible on business unless you’re super lucky.

Having a solid strategy helps you to go through an effective path for your goals and see where you’re in the campaign and what you have to do. It is vital not only when you execute and improve your plan, but especially when you face difficulties and obstacles.

Therefore, I would like to share some promotional tactics on business promotion strategy to make it easier for you to put them into practice.

Promotion trends and terms

But before we go into that, I would like to share some terms of the promotion trends. Understanding these trends and adapting them to your approach might help you to beat the competition and stay one step ahead.

• Artificial intelligence (AI) – In digital marketing, Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables you to predict customer behavior, create content, personalize customer experience, manage promotion and optimize your performance. It makes it easier for you to take any marketing data, analyze it and learn from it, and provide better solutions and results. Read more about Artificial Intelligence .
• Chatbot – A chatbot is a type of conversational AI that interacts with people through a text or voice interface. Using chatbots in your marketing allows you to offer 24/7/365 customer service and enhances customer satisfaction. What’s more, it saves you time and money. Read more about Chatbot .
• Customer experience email marketing – Email marketing is still the top way to drive qualified traffic and generate leads. Especially, creating personalized emails is becoming a must-have tactic to gain better recognition and engagement. Make sure to focus on providing great customer experience and develop relationships.
• Micro-influencer – Continuing from last year, influencer marketing will dominate 2023 and grow even more. Among the movements, you need to give special attention to Micro-influencers. They use social media and have a bigger impact than top influencers. People trust that micro-influencers use a product or service in their posts without having a sponsorship with brands (they don’t post for advertisement). Read more about Micro-Influencers .
• Messenger Ads and In-App Ads – As more than half of online traffic comes from mobile devices, mobile advertising will stay on top of marketing communication. There are many types of mobile advertising, but in particular, messenger ads and in-app ads are on the rise. They show ads which have more visibility and engage better with users.
• Video content – Video content has the highest click-through rate of all digital formats. As you know, it dominated digital advertising like YouTube and short videos on other social media last year, and more and more companies are investing in it to promote their businesses. Read more about Video Contents .
• Mobile coupons – As the redemption of coupons has increased and most of them can be carried out on mobile devices, you cannot ignore them. They have a great impact on consumers buying decision process and boost sales. Also, you can acquire customer data easily and use it for further approach. Read more about Mobile Coupons .

I hope these trends and are helpful when you craft your strategies. Just keep in mind that they might affect your promotion.

How to promote your business: Build your promotion strategy

Now you’re good to start developing your promotion strategy.

Here is the step-by-step process to successfully promote your business using a great promotion strategy. I’ve also made a list of all the things to do for a successful promotion. In each step, you will find tips and some pieces of advice that will help you in the process. Following this guide on how to promote your business, you are closer to building a winning promotion strategy.

1. Set Your Promotional Goals.

Goal-setting is vital to your promotion success. It will give you a sense of direction and motivate you to be productive and achieve your goals efficiently. Think about what you want to achieve with it and establish your promotional goals. If you set goals that you cannot control or that are dependant on others, your goals may block off your progress and waste your time and money. So, check the following goal-setting tips to ensure your promotion will work effectively.

Define S.M.A.R.T. goals

There’s a reason why people follow S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting. Simply because it works. Specific goals make it easier for you to create detailed action plans and achieve them. A measurable plan visualizes your progress and helps you to stay on track. Achievable goals motivate you to focus on tasks and improve your progress. Realistic goals lead you to accomplish your progress and avoid a big failure. Time-bound goals give you a sense of urgency to achieve the goals and ensure your plan completes on time.

Align the goals with your overall marketing strategies

Review your overall marketing strategies. Since if your promotion goals don’t fit in with the other 3 P’s of marketing mix strategies, your promotion strategies won’t work. Consider how your price and product strategies are devised and influence your place strategies.

Determine what you want to achieve with promotion

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, there are a number of potential benefits on a promotion strategy. Such as, providing features and the functionality of your product to create interests, turning your one-time customers into loyal customers, or beating your competitors on customer acquisition. You can get ideas from those advantages to set your goals.

Keep it simple and small

Your goals can be big, but you must keep them simple and break them down into small goals. That helps you to stay focused and certainly attain your goals. Like you have yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals. It allows you to create action steps that assist you to reach your goals.

Set up your success metrics to measure

Once your goals are set, you should determine what metrics to measure for your promotion success. If your goal is to increase customer traffic, you need to get data on traffic growth, traffic sources, organic keywords, etc. The metrics you should track vary depending on your goals, so work on them right after goal-setting.

Brainstorm what call-to-actions to use

When you set your promotional goals, start thinking about how you can make your prospects take a specific action. Since you want them to do something, you’re going to promote your business. Crafting an effective call-to-action is the key to achieve your goals. Brainstorm what action you want them to take, and what content you can prepare for the promotion.

Important note:

Success without having a strategy is impossible on business. It’s how you keep trying to achieve your goals and put your efforts at the right place in the right direction.

Make sure that you take enough time to set goals and design your strategies for what you’re going to achieve.

2. Make Your Budget Plan.

When you think about budgeting, it’s important to balance your budget and your goals. Depending on them, determine how much you’re going to spend on each promotion. Even if you choose online promotion, which is low-cost, interactive, and effective for targeting and measurement, you’ll still want to cut down costs. These are some budgeting tips.

Prioritize your goals

When you have a small budget, prioritizing your goals and strategies can help you cut down on costs and achieve the desired goals at least. Once the target goals are taken care of, then you will be able to move forward to the rest.

Schedule your promotion

To control your budget, you can specify the time and limit your promotion schedule, especially with digital advertising. Since you can select your promotion’s timing, you can restrict the time to display your promotion.

Use geotargeting

Another effective way to reduce your cost is geotargeting. It allows you to target your audience by geographic locations and deliver them your content effectively. For example, local PPC is to attract local prospective customers.

Choose your conditions carefully

When you make digital advertising, there are a variety of settings by goals and plans to promote your business. For instance, you can select the conditions of “pay-per-conversions” as you pay when your prospects convert, rather than when they click.

3. Define Your Target Market.

Narrowing down your target market can cut your promotion costs down and help you to implement effective measures. If you aim for the wrong target market, you’ll not only spend time and money for nothing, but it will also move you away from success. To avoid this, you need to define what’s your target market and seek your marketing communication opportunities.

Understand your current target market

First, you have to evaluate your current promotion and analyze it for opportunities and gaps. It gives you ideas of what to aim for a successful promotion. If your current plan is not working well, then you need to come up with a way to break through the situation by targeting a specific segment or changing it.

Conduct a SWOT analysis

What are your competitive advantages and weaknesses? A SWOT analysis helps you to look at yourself from an outsider’s perspective and make smart decisions. You can build strategies around your strengths and opportunities to take advantage of them. Don’t forget to consider the threads your targeting has.

Sharpen your target market

Setting your target in as much detail as possible leads you to implement your promotion effectively. You can consider it by many factors, such as location, gender, interests, income level, etc. with marketing analytics tools. Check out your current customer base, it should give you an idea of who to market and the details of the persona.

Research your target market

To provide better marketing communication, you should find out their preferences and their pains at least. Without understanding your target market, grabbing their attention and interests is not going to be a piece of cake. You can ask directly to the target, check it on your analytics tools, or carry out a survey.

Learn your competitor’s strategies

Studying your competition allows you to build your strategies around their weaknesses and beat them by doing better. You’re targeting the same people as them. Thus, you should look at their strategies carefully, from their messages and channels to their top-performing content.

Make sure that you fully understand your target market to grab their attention to your business promotion. By putting yourself in their shoes, you will be able to choose compelling words and call-to-actions that reach their heart.

4. Determine Your Promotion Types.

Before creating your promotion message, you need to select what types of promotion you’re going to use based on your target audience.

If you’re looking for O2O marketing, consider implementing local SEO and creating a location-based service on mobile. 

Based on your goals and what you’re capable of, select your promotion types. If your budget allows, you can develop cross-channel promotions.

5. Develop Your Marketing Messages in Your Promotion.

Now that you have a better understanding of your target market and promotion channels, it’s time to build your marketing message in your promotion.

Your marketing message is one of the most important components in a promotion strategy. It impresses people, tells them how you can solve their pains, and gives them a call to action.

People won’t pay attention to your promotion unless you have powerful messages that attract your target audience and make them want to know more about you.

Here are some promotional tactics to craft powerful marketing messages:

Look at what pains your target market has

In the previous step, you’ve researched your target market and understood their pain points. To make your marketing messages persuasive, you need to face the problems your target market cares about the most. And then think about how you can present solutions from their perspective. Without understanding their pains, you won’t be able to deliver marketing messages that reach their hearts.

List out the value and benefits that you can offer

Make a list of the value that you can offer and the benefits that match your target market’s pain points. This will ensure you offer what your target market needs. That is to say, benefit-driven solutions. To appeal to your prospects effectively, it is key to focus on those benefits that can solve their problems over what you do.

Highlight your competitive advantages

In addition, your marketing message should contain a differentiation from your competitors. If there’s nothing you can convince people about why you are the best choice for a type of products/services, they won’t choose you over the competition. Thus, you must highlight what are your competitive advantages to show your uniqueness.

Prove that you’ve solved their suffering

Social proof makes your business more trustworthy and has an impact on influencing people. As social proof like reviews and testimonials work, you should prove that your products and services have gotten results. Collect proofs that your target market wants to hear about.

Make your message clear and sharp

The marketing messages in your business promotion strategy must convey the main idea to your target audience and communicate well. If the message is too long and deep, people will not get the point and take time to respond. Keep your message as clear as possible and make it sharp!

Research keywords that your target market searches for

Understanding what keywords your prospects search for in search engines is decisive to attract them and make your message persuasive. Besides, it helps you to increase your visibility and deliver your content to your target audience if your promotion is online. Don’t forget to work on SEO.

Change your message depending on channels

Based on where your target market is and how effective your message can be delivered, you choose your target channels and create your messaging. Check out the rules and regulations that each channel has, like the limits on the number of characters and video length.

Come up with ideas for content creation

While you’re making your marketing message, start thinking about content creation. To make your promotion stand out, seek the best way to achieve your promotional goals. If your goal is to build awareness, you should give enough information and show your values without sales pressure.

6. Build Your Promotional Tactics.

Developing your promotion strategy is to figure out how you are going to achieve your promotional goals and make a scenario of how you build awareness, get your target audience to be interested in your business, and turn them into customers. Don’t forget to develop strategies that focus on results for your business!

Visualize your progress

Visualizing your workflow allows you to see a bigger picture, prioritize your goals, and focus on your plan. It also helps you to improve teamwork since it is easy for anyone to grasp what’s going on in a project, share what you’ve done and contact others when needed.

Find the best time to execute

Needless to say, timing influences results. Even if you have perfect strategies and sources, bad timing can destroy your opportunity for success. Use analytics tools or spy on competitors to seek the best time to run your promotion.

Commit to a specific time frame and deadlines

It is wise to specify a time frame for your promotion. Since it gives you an idea of how much work you need to put into the marketing campaign and when each task needs to be completed. Remember to overestimate a little bit to ensure your campaign accomplishes on time.

Create a sense of urgency

A sense of urgency makes people feel anxiety for losing a great offer if they don’t act right away or within the time limits. It works especially with promotional offers. You can run a limited time or limited quantity promotion to make conversions and sales.

Make leads for content share

A great way of promoting your business is to let others share your content. Encourage the people who are interested in your promotion to share, interact or even give reviews. You can also consider influencers to promote your content to a wide range of audiences.

7. Execute and Measure Your Promotion Efforts

Now is finally the time to spread your promotion. After starting your promotion, you always need to track your performance so that you will develop your strong points and work on the prompt correction when something goes wrong. If you notice errors and mistakes at an early time, it would be easier to adjust your strategy and avoid a big failure.

Review your goals on a regular basis

Checking your goals frequently helps you to motivate yourself to tackle each task of the campaign, commit to the plan, and come up with a better idea to improve your promotion. What’s more, it avoids losing focus on the goals and end up just following directions.

Check if you’re tracking the right metrics

If you’re not tracking the right metrics, you’re missing the opportunity to grow and improve. To see if your chosen metrics are the right ones for your goals, you need to confirm how the metrics relate to your goals and how your promotion affects the metrics.

Don’t judge without enough data

Sometimes it’s hard to get enough data in a short period of time, and people reach a conclusion at an early stage. Go for a growth rate instead of counting the numbers in that case. You will be able to see how your performance is, what’s working, and what isn’t working properly.

Stay flexible and adjustable

To improve your performance, you must be flexible and make changes in real-time. Because most of the promotion is time and cost-consuming, it’s wise to make adjustments whenever needed and perform your best promotion.

I hope those step-by-step promotional tactics are helpful when you create a promotion strategy. All you need to do is to apply them to your promotional campaign!

In the next chapter, I would like to share more details about digital advertising to help you win the promotion battle!

Keep reading and you’ll find actionable business promotion tactics…

To maximize content marketing which allows you to grab and keep the attention of your audience, it is critical to promote your content to the right target who is interested in your business and really consumes it. So, you will need a strong content promotion strategy.

In this chapter, you’re going to learn how to promote your content with eight proven tactics.

What is Content Promotion?

Content promotion is one of the key marketing processes to expose your business and earn an actual audience for your content. It helps you to grow your traffic and gain results quicker.

However, many people fail to get their content in front of a target audience who cares about it. This is because most businesses fail to build the correct content promotion strategy. If your content doesn’t lead to further engagement, you might be delivering it to the wrong people and wasting your effort in creating it.

To avoid this, you must outreach to a qualified audience and engage with them efficiently.

The bottom line

For successful content promotion, it is critical to reach out to the people who can have an impact into your business and share your content.

Email Subscription

Email subscription is one of the most effective ways to receive news and updates. It is cost-effective and helps you to do direct marketing. It’s a great tool and an essential part in every content promotion strategy.

Since most people who subscribe to your newsletters are already interested in your business (maybe some of them are not reading your emails though), they can be your potential customers and the actual readers of your emails.

In short, sharing your content to your subscribers is a must. If you don’t, you’re missing out on the best prospects and customers who care about what you have to say.

It means that it is essential to set up an email subscription form on your website. If you don’t have one, you can create yours easily with email marketing tools like OptinMonster .

Now that you understand the importance of email subscription in content promotion, it’s time to grow your email list.

However, acquiring new email addresses isn’t easy. To make that happen, you also need to offer something they would like to receive in return.

For example, you can create gated content in which you ask readers for their submission to your form and they get premium or bonus content in exchange.

But don’t forget that gaining email addresses is the first step, it shouldn’t be your goal. From then, you will need to foster a strong relationship.

If you would like to build your email list, read these proven tactics to develop an email list .

Blogger outreach (Link building)

This is one of the most strategic and efficient approaches to spread your business to other audiences and get quality backlinks . Backlinks are essential in content promotion.

It sounds quite difficult but it is actually simple:

You will reach out to bloggers who might want to include your content in their articles. So, your content gets promoted by others to their followers and you will receive quality traffic without extra advertising.

To make this happen, you need to research who shares content like the one you want to promote. Thus, you will grow your outreach list, if you send an email to them.

You can use Buzzsumo to find out who shares content like yours. Since it has great filters to find key influencers and your target audience, you can save tons of time looking for influential bloggers.

Also, from an SEO point of view, I recommend you check out Ahrefs ’ Domain Rating (DR). The domain rating shows backlink profile strength and searches traffic size.

A backlink from a higher authority domain will help you to rank your content up on Google. So you’d better outreach the highest DR bloggers.

Then, it’s time to move onto the most important part in blogger outreach; reaching out via emails.

It is vital to explain why you’re sending them out to people and make it easy for them to check your content out. Make sure to keep your message simple but seize the point.

Here are some great tips when you outreach your influencers via email .

And don’t forget to avoid being a hard sell!

Blogger outreach is one of the surefire ways to boost your online visibility and backlinks and gain credibility and promote your content.

Remember: After spotting relevant bloggers, check what they can bring to your business and outreach them strategically. And make sure to add value to them and offer a win-win situation.

Content syndication networks

Another great way of promoting your content is to leverage forums where people share great resources and exchange thoughts.

Content syndication is a content marketing tactic of republishing content on third-party websites, including guest-posting. It brings you fantastic opportunities to expose your content to a broader audience.

Normally content syndication networks require just sign-up or becoming a member for content promotion. Then, you will republish your content on the communities and that will help you to increase your visibility and credibility.

There are several content share communities you should try in, such as:

• StumbleUpon
• GrowthHackers
• SocialMediaToday
• Inbound.org
• BlogCatalog

With content syndication, your content may not only get a backlink from third-party sites, but you will also benefit from SEO performance.

To get those results, seek the best community and the best ways to promote your content. If you’re new to this, try some and see if it’s worthy for your content promotion strategy or not.

SEO content

Needless to say, SEO will help you to spread your online business in an effective and steady manner.

When your content ranks in a higher position on search engine result pages, you will not only get lots of traffic without promotions, but you will also create brand awareness.

So, it is critical to optimize your online content for SEO. From keyword research to page loading time, you have a bunch of things to complete to gain a better position on SERPs.

For example:

These two posts from Faverie, a fashion eCommerce, “ Types of Shoes ” and “ 70s Fashion ” have experienced tremendous growth in a short period of time.

The former started getting some traffic in just six months after publication (August 19, 2021). This was one of the first blog posts in a new domain with zero authority. This is generally a great result for a new site. Yet, what surprises me the most is how much it grew in the first year.

As to the “70s Fashion” blog post, has started to grow traffic just in the first month after publication (April 10, 2022). It is already showing amazing results by the time been.

When you create high-quality content and have a great SEO strategy, you can significantly improve your website’s traffic in a short period of time. These two strategies together are critical to success. What’s more, they’ll help you to reach your target audience organically.

To complete your content to be SEO friendly, use SEO tools that tell you how to improve.

There are plenty of tools that can help you with your marketing efforts, and you do not have to spend a dollar.

In particular, the following elements are the ones you need to pay attention to for on-page SEO:

• Meta description.
• Website optimization.

SEO is essential for online business. To learn SEO and get more organic traffic, you can watch this powerful SEO checklist video:

Content update

Content update gives you another chance to promote and drive traffic to your existing content again and gain new audiences.

As time goes by, it is true that some of the information on your content becomes old-fashioned or no longer useful. That’s when you must focus more on updating your blog rather than creating new posts.

For example, you can add up-to-date information such as the latest statistics and trends. Many people search for fresh information like “keywords 2023, ” so I recommend you to include this data to get easily found.

You can create checklists and cheat sheets to upgrade your content. Those additions mostly improve user experience and their loyalty.

Take some time to give a fresh air to your content and be a great resource for your audience!

Content transformation

Content transformation is an advanced technique in content marketing that turns your content into a different format. It captures more opportunities for your business and increases your SEO performance.

Repurposing existing content helps you to reach a new audience and find the best formats to engage with your audience. This is worth almost any content promotion strategy.

Although the most popular way of content transformation is to convert a blog post into a video, here there are a few examples of content transformation:

• Infographic.
• Slideshare.
• Online course.

Like content update, it is very important to look back at your old content and keep adding valuable sources for your audience.

Social media

In content promotion, you cannot forget about the power of social media. It’s one of the easiest ways to increase traffic to your content and improve brand perception .

There are many tactics to boost traffic from social media:

• Impress your audience with visuals.
• Share your content at the optimal time.
• Engage with your audience consistently.
• Optimize your content for mobile.
• Make your content easy to share.
• Add compelling call-to-actions.
• Use social media advertising.

Social media is a fantastic approach to content promotion. Once you share valuable content on social media, it has a great possibility to get viral and maximize your efforts.

Don’t forget to mention your sources and the influencers that are related to your content when you share! They might reshare your post.

Paid advertisement

At last, getting help from a paid advertisement will promote your content faster and effectively. Especially, digital advertising is more cost-effective than traditional advertising.

There are many ways of digital advertising: display advertising, search advertising, social media advertising, video advertising, and more.

With digital advertising, you can greatly benefit and grow your business. That’s why I’m going to explain it more in detail in the next chapter.

Digital advertising allows you to deliver advertisements to target segments that you subdivide for your target prospects at a low cost. It makes it easier for you to measure what kind of effects it brings due to its interactivity. It’s a powerful promotion tactic.

In this chapter, I’ll cover the basics and seven types of digital advertising.

What is digital advertising?

Digital advertising refers to any promotional advertisements on digital mediums. It is the most cost-effective way for digital marketers to reach a target audience and improve their ROI.

You can creatively practice storytelling, enhance personalization to maximize customer experience, and leave a strong impression in the audience’s mind.

What differentiates it from traditional advertising the most is that digital advertising can creatively drive interaction and engagement. Since it encourages interaction, it makes it easier for you to keep your target audience engaged and drive them to take the actions that you have designed.

As you can see, using digital advertising helps you to provide enough information to manipulate people’s minds and emotions. Thus, you will improve customer experience.

Benefits of digital advertising

Digital advertising has so many advantages for promoting your business, besides its interactivity.

For example, digital advertising gives you a valuable insight that allows you to see how many people have seen your ad, how many of them engaged with it, what is the demographic information of those people, and more.

Besides, since you can access the data in real-time, you’ll be able to vary your promotion approaches with the situation and respond in real-time.

Let’s sum up what you can expect:

• Cost-effective.
• Effective targeting.
• Access to data and insights.
• Trackable and measurable results.
• Personalized approach.
• Interactive.
• Higher conversion rate.
• Obtain valuable user insights.
• Qualified customer traffic.
• Flexibility to change and make an adjustment.
• Great ROI and ROAS.
• In control of your budget.
• Improving Ad formats every year.
• Mobile engagement.

Thus, digital advertising can maximize the effectiveness of your promotional marketing efforts and boost your conversions and sales efficiently.

Want to know more about the types of digital advertising?

Let me explain the main options and help you find the best way to promote your business.

Display Ads

It is a paid advertisement on third-party platforms (websites, mobile apps, etc.) including banner ads, rich media ads, and video ads . An example of display ads is the Google Display Network, which allows you to place your ads in websites using Google AdSense.

With display ads, you are targeting people by demographics and interests. You can also use it to retarget prospects and customers.

This is different from search engine marketing which focuses on displaying ads on search engine result pages.

Be aware that there are ad blockers that remove ads and prevent users from seeing your ads.

It is a popular online advertising form and often shows up at the top side, or in the middle of a webpage. It shows your ads to a specific target market with levels of targeting so that you can improve conversion rates strategically.

To get clicks, there are several things to consider: size, place, value proposition, image, CTA buttons, and more.

For more details, check out this ultimate guide to display advertising .

Rich media ads

Rich media ads are a kind of display advertising. Besides, they are a highly creative and innovative way to impress your audience and generate leads. It gives you the flexibility to promote your business and offers interactivity with the ads.

With rich media ads, you can tell your brand’s story dynamically, drive engagement and achieve higher CTR and ROI. What’s more, it can improve brand experience and make your ads memorable!

There are many rich media advertising formats:

• Rich media interstitial ads.
• Rich media (floating) banner ads.
• Interactive rich media banner ads.
• Expandable banner media ads.
• Pushdown rich media ads.
• Pop-up ads.
• Slider-rich media ads.
• Rich media billboard.
• Rich media video.

Read this rich media ads guide to make the most out of them.

Search advertising

Search ads are one of the most popular methods in online advertising where you can target a certain audience who searches for specific keywords or phrases. As you know, these advertisements are displayed at the top of SERPs that get most clicks.

Thus, using search advertising you can target a highly relevant audience who already has search-intent and your ads can enhance better CTR and conversions.

However, search advertising gets expensive if you’re targeting highly competitive keywords. Don’t forget to check the value of your keywords and look for the best options considering your budget!

Pay-per-click (PPC)

PPC is a paid advertising in which advertisers pay each time a searcher clicks on their ads. So even if you’re a small business, you can buy traffic for your website to convert and make sales.

To make it work, you need to study the Quality score which is Google’s rating of the quality and relevancy on the combination of your keywords and PPC ads.

You can also test whether your keyword ideas will work using PPC advertising. It will help you to build better SEO pages and improve your ads.

But here’s the scary part:

As the name (per-click) goes, you have to pay when someone clicks. If you’re targeting a broad keyword, you may end up finishing your budget without enough results.

Put a lot of thoughts on your bid strategy, targeting, and keywords to make a wise decision. If you’re not familiar with PPC advertising, you can check this guide to get a better understanding of what it is and how it works .

Shopping Ads

If you sell products or run an e-commerce website, creating shopping ads for search engines is the perfect way to increase your visibility and drive qualified traffic.

Shopping ads showcase and promote your products at the top of the SERPs. You have a great opportunity to display your products besides the web page results and attract your prospects with a product image on SERPs.

Social media advertising

Social media advertising is one of the most powerful and cost-effective digital advertising methods. Due to a great number of active users on social media, you can reach a bigger audience.

With this kind of advertising, it’s easy to catch users’ attention since people on social media normally pay attention to all the content in their feed, unlike looking for something in mind on search engines.

What’s more, social media advertising allows you to target or retarget specific segments by more accurate user information like their interests, geographics, and connections. Thanks to the effective targeting setting, it increases brand recognition and drives higher conversion rates.

But here’s the problem. Social media advertising is a great way of drawing users’ attention, but it may be less likely to convert. Because social media cannot track users’ real-life; and information on social media might not be accurate. Also, even if you target the right audience for your business and they wish to use your products or services, they may not have time or budget.

YouTube video ads

Needless to say, YouTube is the best and easiest platform for video marketing to generate traffic, market, and promote your business. You can reach a large number of your audience, and a video is sharable like other social media content.

Moreover, search engines love video content and YouTube helps you to boost search engine rankings. Thus, it is a great opportunity to get your content viral and grow brand awareness.

The following are the three main types of YouTube video ads:

• TrueView Ads (In-Stream ads and Video Discovery ads).
• Pre-Roll Ads.
• Bumpers Ads.

For more information about YouTube video advertising ads, check this comprehensive guide .

Native advertising

Native advertising consists of a paid advertisement that doesn’t make people feel “I’m watching an advert,” even though the functions are almost the same.

Many people skip and ignore advertising, but with native advertising, people don’t see your ads as advertisements. So they will naturally consume your content.

An example of native advertising is the sponsored content on social media. It shows up as an in-feed unit and promotes ads in a similar form as the other organic content.

Here are the main six native advertising types:

• In-feed units.
• Paid search ads.
• Promoted listings.
• Content recommendation widgets.
• In-ad with native element.
• Custom content ads.

You can read this guide for more information about native ads .

Email advertising

Email advertising is one of the top performing and cost-effective marketing approaches. It allows you to place your ads into newsletters by leveraging your email list. Besides, you can send personalized messages with a flexible design.

Mostly, email advertising uses opt-in or permission-based marketing. It means that most recipients already show interest in your business so that they are more likely to engage with the advertising you offer and convert.

However, here’re huge challenges for marketers to improve open rates. Since it is easy for users to arrange a spam filter setting, your emails might not be delivered and your subscribers don’t even notice your emails. Remember to keep your email list up-to-date and build relationships to constantly get your messages consumed.

Video advertising

It is the fastest growing advertising format. Since it can carry so much information for a short period and impact on the audience’s mind, video advertising is a smart marketing approach to take.

With video advertising, you can introduce your products and services in a way that’s easy to understand for viewers, and it creates emotional triggers to engage with the ads.

Now that we are exposed to many video ads, if you make a poor quality video advertising, your audience will notice the level of your quality and that determines whether they will be interested in your business. So, be creative and come up with well-designed ads that convert.

Here are the following key options in video advertising:

• In-stream ads (Linear / Non-linear).
• Out stream in-read video ads (In-page / In-banner / In-text).
• Interactive video ads.
• In-game video ads.
• TV video ads.

To understand each video advertising option, read this great post about video ads .

Remarketing and Retargeting

At last, I would like to talk about remarketing and retargeting. Both are very effective marketing tactics to reach out to people who have shown interest in your business.

Leveraging these approaches will bring another opportunity to build brand awareness, drive qualified traffic, retain previous customers, and improve conversions.

Consider that the frequency of your advertising can make your audience find it as a violation of their privacy and they might feel annoyed. This may cause them to keep away from your ads.

• Remarketing – Remarketing in digital advertising is a powerful technique to place your advertisement in front of the people who have already visited your website. It helps you to set focused targeting, keep your brand top of mind, lead your target users to return to your website, and boost your ROI.
• Retargeting – On the other hand, retargeting focuses on users’ previous online actions instead of browsing history. It allows you to display your ads when your target audience is ready to buy. With retargeting, you can find a relevant audience for future sales emails, draw them to a specific page, and avoid shopping cart abandonment.

As you’ve seen in this chapter, digital advertising can boost your bottom line and that will take your business to the next level.

In the next chapter, I’m going to explain mobile promotion which is one of the best promotional marketing tactics to really connect with your target audience in an effective way.

Mobile has become the main screen for information consumption and purchasing online. Although there are common promotions on the web and mobile, it is key to take advantage of mobile’s unique characteristics such as their location and personal information.

In this chapter, I’ll cover the basics of mobile marketing and the main types of mobile marketing approaches that work great.

What is mobile marketing?

Mobile marketing is a mobile user-centered marketing approach that reaches out to your target audience and gets you as close to your prospects and customers as possible. It makes it easier not only for users to leverage your services, but also for you to offer business value.

What’s more, mobile marketing allows you to have direct marketing communication with target users, send out specific content to them, and gather customer data effectively.

Let’s see some of the mobile marketing statistics.

There are some interesting insights that you should not ignore .

• 80% of internet users own a smartphone.
• Mobile devices are used for over 40% of online transactions.
• 52% of companies use a simple template that works for all devices.
• Apps account for 89% of mobile media time.
• 80% of shoppers use smartphones during physical shopping.
• 39% of companies create a mobile responsive email template.
• Google owns 96% of mobile search traffic.

As you can see, mobile marketing is crucial for your business and you must improve your mobile user experience to promote your business successfully.

Benefits of mobile marketing

Mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular tools to communicate and make a purchase. So, mobile marketing plays a critical role in overall marketing strategies.

Here’s why mobile marketing is a must:

• Reach out to a large number of users.
• Give convenience to share content socially.
• Increase brand awareness.
• Enhance the effectiveness of cross-media ads.
• Keep users engaged.
• Build a personal relationship.
• Gain instant feedback (higher response rates).
• Easy to track results.
• Improve user experience.
• Drive O2O marketing.

In short, mobile marketing gives you the opportunity to provide your target prospects and customers with unique user experience and engage with them.

Let me show you what you can do with mobile marketing to promote your business.

Mobile-friendly websites

This is crucial and the first thing you should do to perform mobile marketing effectively. A mobile-friendly website is a tiny version of your website and has a great impact on the consumer buying process. It attracts new customers and retains your current customer base.

When it comes to a mobile-friendly website, it is critical to display your content and text correctly to any different size of screens and devices. For example, if your website requires users to zoom in every time they read texts, you’re giving a poor and uncomfortable user experience.

What’s more, it is good for your overall SEO performance. A mobile website provides improved rankings on search engines and drives customer traffic. Also, it enhances mobile user experience and user satisfaction.

Responsive web design

Responsive web design (RWD) adapts and changes web content depending on screen sizes and browsers. It gives you better SEO results and helps you to improve user experience.

Designing your website and content focusing on how a user makes use of it is of vital importance. From homepage design and layout to web forms, make sure to offer great usability and work on increasing mobile user engagement.

You can read this guide to better understand what it is and how to use it.

Loading time

Another way of enhancing mobile user experience is to reduce loading time. Now that more than half of visitors leave a page if they’re forced to wait longer than 3 seconds, you must improve your page speed as fast as possible.

There are many techniques to improve your page speed:

• Avoid landing page redirects.
• Enable compression.
• Improve server response time.
• Leverage browser caching.
• Minify resources.
• Optimize images.
• Optimize CSS delivery.
• Prioritize visible content.
• Remove render-blocking JavaScript.
• Use asynchronous scripts.
• Avoid plugins.
• Configure the viewport.
• Size content to viewport.

Size tap targets appropriately

Use legible font sizes

You can use PageSpeed Insights from Google to make your web page faster.

Text-based marketing

Text-based marketing is a fundamental and promotional way to reach out to a target audience. As texting is the most used mobile device feature, you are able to communicate with the right message directly and stay in touch with them in a comfortable way.

Besides, the global SMS open rate is over 90% and its click-through rate is better than email. You can send promotions, updates, confirmations, and reminders using text messaging. Text messaging allows you to promote your business and generate leads effectively.

What makes text-based messaging so powerful is that it is cheap and you can automate all the activities for great user engagement. However, you have limits of space to send your messages and function to attract your audience and integrate with other apps.

SMS Marketing

Short Message Service (SMS) is the most used mobile marketing approach. It allows you to have instant communication with customers through short text messages up to 160 characters. Since it only requires the phone numbers to send, it is easy to get started with SMS marketing.

SMS marketing can bring the best engagement and conversion rates of any of the marketing methods. You can increase brand awareness. Thus, making your audience feel comfortable to open your short message and click on the link in it. That will help you not to go into a spam folder.

Opt-in SMS marketing is a more comfortable way for both sides to communicate. You can ask your prospects and customers for permission to keep sending your marketing messages. Remember to give instructions to opt-out, with a short message like “Text STOP to opt out.”

MMS Marketing

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is when you send a message but with an image, video, or some other type of multimedia on it.

What’s different from SMS is that you deliver information through email addresses instead of phone numbers. So with MMS you can send long-form texts and include images, videos, voice data, etc.

Push notification

A push notification is a message or alert that pops up on desktop and mobile devices. You can send personalized information, reminders, and advertisements to users after you ask for permission (opt-in) to receive your message.

As the opt-in rates are much higher on Android devices (91.1%) than iOS (43.9%), it can be one of the easiest ways to send messages to your targeted audience and increase user engagement.

With push notification, it is easy to segment your target audience based on real-time website behavior, device type, geographic information, etc. It helps you to acquire new customers, encourage users to complete certain tasks on your website, and convert abandoned carts into sales.

Also, you can conduct an A/B test to check which title/message/CTA/image works better with your audience. So you can perform your best to drive engagement and conversion.

Find out more information about push notifications in this post .

Location-based service

Location Based Service (LBS) is a service to deliver custom information or promotions based on the geographic information of mobile devices through GPS. It gives you a better understanding of user behavior by tracking analysis.

This works especially well when they are physically close to your business. Using location-based mobile marketing you are not only able to attract new customers, but also accelerate your local business and drive O2O marketing effectively.

Thus, LBS sends your marketing messages to potential and current customers effectively. Besides, it gathers their information in real-time and customizes your marketing campaigns to fit your customer’s location.

If you’re looking for more information about location-based marketing, you’ll love this publisher’s guide.

A famous example of LBS is a “check-in.” Mostly it is visible on social media to the friends of the person who “check-in”. So it can be social proof of your business, drive personal referrals, and increase your local business exposure.

What’s more, check-in is a geo-targeted service that allows you to provide additional information about your business, engage users, and offer promotional offers like discounts or coupons.

Make sure to activate your check-ins and monitor activities frequently. It gives you the chance to interact with users and draw them into customers. Also, you can get a better idea of who’s checking, what they’re saying about you, and how you can approach them effectively.

Mobile advertising is a fast-growing and influential promotion method that displays advertisements on mobile web pages and in mobile apps.

As the global mobile device usage is continuously growing, you cannot miss this amazing opportunity to reach out to a wide range of active users and convert them into your customers.

By placing relevant information on what users are doing with their mobile devices, it is not only possible to attract users, but also to significantly improve lead generation and sales.

Mobile coupon

A mobile coupon is an electronic coupon delivered to mobile devices. It allows users to access a certain web page and receive valuable information or special deals/discounts/rebates when purchasing a product or service.

According to a mobile coupon survey , 25% of the responders redeem texted coupons within three days, and 60% redeem them within a week. Many shoppers are influenced by coupons and discounts. So, a mobile coupon plays a key role in consumers’ purchasing decisions.

Thus, you have a great opportunity to promote your product or service, increase customer traffic, build a customer database, and deepen customer loyalty with mobile coupons.

A QR code is a readable barcode by camera-equipped mobile devices. It stores specific texts or web URLs to let people take specific actions, such as visiting a mobile website, offering coupons and deals, or giving downloadable information.

With a QR code, you can provide users with convenience and great user experience at the same time. It will guide users to a particular page and induce people to take the desired action.

However, you need to work on its disadvantages. Since QR codes need to be scanned with a mobile device, obviously you are asking users to take additional action before receiving your offers. You must give clear benefits and persuasive messages for users to scan your QR code.

Mobile Apps

As 90% of mobile time is spent on apps , mobile apps have sunk into our lives. They are distinct from a mobile website and they bring a huge opportunity for businesses to boost brand awareness, highly engage with users, improve customer service and increase customer loyalty.

Most importantly, you can offer better personalization with mobile apps. Since they track user engagement and collect data, you can offer customized content and a personalized experience. Also, mobile apps allow you to send push notifications at a point of sales so that they have higher conversion rates.

Besides, mobile apps can utilize mobile device features such as phone, camera, GPS, contact lists, Face ID, etc. This will give you additional value that can differentiate you from your competition. It enhances user experience and generates customer satisfaction.

Social media marketing

Social media is a cost-effective and interactive marketing channel for businesses to reach prospects and customers, increase brand awareness and traffic, promote your content, and engage with them.

As there are about 3.5 billion active social media users, marketing your business on social media has so much potential. It allows you to promote your brand and content and helps you to find your audience in an easy and fast manner.

Besides, you can easily join any conversation and offer real-time customer services. So, it is effective to perform one-to-one marketing and develop relationships with users.

Mobile payment

Mobile payment is an electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) transaction which makes it easier for users to make payments. This improves cash flow, conversions, and user experience.

Since app stores keep track of the purchase information each time the user buys something, it allows you to access customer data and integrate loyalty programs. For example, you can use this data to offer reward points, coupons and more.

If you’re not familiar with mobile payment, check out this great Q&A post .

Don’t forget

Mobile marketing only works if you offer mobile users content that is optimized for mobile platforms and display it correctly. Keep in mind that mobile devices have diverse platforms with different screen sizes. And the performance varies for each browser.

Mobile marketing is very effective by collecting user data like preferences and searching history through mobile devices.

But you need to deal with users’ data privacy and security carefully and you must be transparent about your use of personal data.

When it comes to promotion, marketers tend to focus on the online marketing strategies I mentioned earlier.

However, you cannot neglect the power of public relations (PR) to promote your business.

In this chapter, you’re going to learn what PR are about and how you can leverage them.

What are public relations?

Public relations focus on strategic communication management in marketing that develops better relationships between organizations and their public. They help you to maintain a good brand image and a stronger relationship with your audience.

One of the main PR functions is storytelling through the media. It spreads your story to the public and builds your credibility among your audience. Another one is marketing communication that handles good and bad perceptions of your corporate images.

As you can see, public relations aren’t all about getting brand mentions and promoting your business. Without striving to keep your brand image clean and safe, you won’t achieve marketing communication success.

The roles of public relations

Public relations support your brand building, expand your messaging reach, minimize your damage by negative publicities, and shape your organization image. Thus, PR have so many functions.

If you’re new to public relations, check out the following roles below:

• Media representation.
• Content development.
• Media relations.
• Community relations.
• Financial relations.
• Government relations.
• Employee relations.
• Customer/Client relations.
• Investor relations.
• Influencer relations.
• Marketing communication.
• Public affairs.
• Reputation management.
• Crisis management.
• Social media management.

Building a good brand image is not an easy task and it will take time till you feel the power of public relations. But if you have a brand and a business to run, you won’t want to miss what public relations can bring to your business!

Do you want to know why it’s worth implementing?

Then, let’s see what advantages you can expect from operating public relations!

Benefits of public relations

Public relations can secure beneficial relationships with the public and protect your established brand from negative publicities. This will drive so many advantages to your business and support your business producing the best results.

Here are some benefits of public relations that you can gain:

• Shape a better brand image both online and offline.
• Highly target your market and audience.
• Attract public, investors, partners, stakeholders, and employees.
• Generate leads.
• Cost-effective (more than advertising).
• Build trust and educate your target audience.
• Influence the perception, knowledge, behavior of your audience.
• Obtain credibility, reliability, and authority.
• Generate positive media coverage.
• Develop long-term relationships.
• Expose your brand to a large audience.
• Raise brand awareness.
• Gain endorsements from a third-party media outlet.
• Avoid false information spreading.
• Minimize the damage and crisis of your brand reputation.
• Establish your brand.
• Improve customer experience.
• Boost your brand mentions.
• Increase qualified traffic.
• Enhance social media engagement.
• Gain backlinks.
• Acquire new customers and retain current customers.
• Drive revenue and profits.

Public relations are quite different from marketing which focuses more on sales by direct and promotional marketing. Yet, they share common goals such as promoting news, raising awareness, and improving attitudes.

Public relations focus not only on impacting the perception and behavior of the target audience, but also on preventing reputation attacks. Those activities will eventually build positive relationships with the public.

Now you know what PR is all about, let’s get to the point – how you can implement them as a part of your promotion. I’m going to share some key PR activities that you can apply to your strategies.

Content Development

To nurture your audience and build a good image of your brand, content development is one of the key activities for public relations. It is necessary that you get some endorsements from the media to promote what you’re and what you can bring to the market. But it’s not enough to make the public get a better understanding of you.

With content development, you can share your pitches from your angle and promote your message to your target audience. This way, you will capture more qualified leads who are already interested in your keywords, topics, or business.

Press release

A press release is one of the most valuable assets in public relations. It can reach a wide range of audiences, and generate media coverage, and it creates public awareness like journalists and media outlets. 

You can include anything you need to tell your story within a few pages. However, there are some content aspects a press release should contain:

• A compelling headline that attracts the public.
• Subheadings.
• Body in detail.
• Release date.
• Contact information.

A press release is a great opportunity to promote your brand professionally. You can send out as many as you like from different angles. This will lead your audience to find you as they need. Be sure to triple check if your press release is proofreading and error-free before media distribution!

Website content

As you already know, your website is a critical component of digital marketing performance . PR’s content development is not only about a press release. You can promote your business on your website by adding features that make your website visitors get to know you better.

Here are some examples you can consider:

1. Develop an attractive About Us page.

An ‘About Us’ page is a very important page on your website. This is the place where you can introduce any appealing information for your website visitors to understand who you are, how you can help them, what you’ve done to solve the problems your customers and clients have, etc. 

Many people think that an ‘About Us’ page should be all about yourself. But it’s the place where you need to focus on how your target audience reads your content and how you can persuade them to do business with you. If you have more things to talk about, you can write a blog post or a case study.

2. Winning industry awards.

Winning awards boosts your credibility and reputation. It showcases your achievements and how reliable your service is. It is time-consuming and requires extra work to get awards, but you cannot miss out this big chance to win the trust of your audience. Even for the people who don’t know your business, award marks are effective.

Either on the ‘About Us’ page or at the footer, it is a great chance to show your credentials, awards, and certifications. Be sure to apply for quality and credible awards. This will make your audience feel confident to trust and try your business.

3. Update blog posts.

Blogging is an effective public relations tool to promote your work. It enhances not only your reputation, but also your authority. Let’s see if you write how-to posts about your industry topics that your audience may want to hear about. It is helpful for them to figure out what’s going on, especially from someone (you) who they consider as an expert. Also, it can show that you care about them.

There are so many reasons why you need to blog, but one of them is that a blog post is shareable. So you can spread your messages to a large audience and your readers can also share it. This way, your content gets more exposure and generates extra leads.

4. Create case studies.

A case study is one of the best ways to showcase your business value and the effectiveness of your marketing performance. It tells a successful story about how effective your business is dealing with your customers. You should choose the most valuable stories that brought satisfying solutions.

Most potential customers want to know how you did your job with others before they contact you. To grab your audience’s attention and convince them that you’re the best choice, you must make your case study as specific as possible. Don’t exaggerate your story, and use the real numbers!

5. Ask for testimonials and reviews.

Social proof is a powerful marketing technique that you should include in your website content to boost your value. People believe and trust what others say more than your words. So, it is vital to add testimonials and reviews on your website. They strengthen your credibility and convert your visitors into your customers.

For collecting testimonials and reviews, you should ask your customers and clients to give you feedback right after your delivery. Otherwise, you may lose the opportunity to ask for a testimonial and get detailed information from them. Remember what others say matters most to your potential customers and clients!

6. Video content.

Considering the fact that video is one of the favorite types of content that people like to consume, you should think about creating one for your business. It takes lots of time and effort to make one, but you cannot overlook that video content drives qualified leads and better SEO to your business.

Video is easy to consume and people are 95% more likely to remember the message in video content rather than text-only content. Besides, it also increases user engagement.

Though, it is key to make your video interesting and work on how to prevent bounces by hooking viewers at the very beginning!

Consider adding a good promotional video to your website.

7. Infographics.

Infographics are eye-catching content that support your message. It helps you to tell your story visually and deliver complex information in the easiest way. As infographics get higher engagement on social media , they can generate more traffic and improve your SEO.

My advice here is that you should create infographics as an assistant of your content like blog posts. Although they are generally used as a supportive channel, infographics are a great link building tool and a helpful source for your audience. Especially for busy people who write articles.

It is always a good idea to go to PR events in order to interact with professionals in your industry and its audience. PR events can be your great shots to build relationships with real-people, develop your professional profile and polish your brand image.

There are three ways to participate in PR events:

1. Be a speaker in PR events.

Public speaking is one of the most powerful ways of sharing your message and building your credibility with the audience. With strong communication skills, you can influence and create relationships with them. What’s more, public speaking helps you to grow your business and career.

So, you must improve your communication, critical thinking, and leadership skills to inspire people. You should test which tools and equipment work best for your messaging. And when you give a speech, be confident and enjoy!

2. Organize PR events.

Sponsoring PR events can put your business front and center. It will generate brand awareness and improve consumer perception of your business. Normally event attendees provide personal data like contact information. So you can organize your event more related to them and strive to strengthen relationships with them by sending emails after the event.

Speaking in front of a large audience can be terrifying, but choosing your guest speakers is hard. Since your PR event must reflect your brand image, you cannot risk the event’s success to guest speakers.

Though, if you decide to do so, you should select them carefully by checking their previous speeches and talking in person before making a decision.

Last but not least, you must prepare your backup plans in case something goes wrong. Otherwise, it can destroy your reputation, brand image, and relationships.

3. Attend industry events.

You should search for events in your industry and attend them for your network. Industry events are a gathering of professionals and their audience so that it is a great PR opportunity for you to meet people and start business relationships with them.

Who knows you might meet your future clients and partners in the events. Your business chances are laid in anywhere. All you have to do is look around and grab them!

Public relations play a significant role in your business development and marketing communication. And it spreads a positive image to everyone. Thus, you should incorporate public relations into your promotion strategies if you haven’t done it already.

Promotional marketing metrics are very important factors to spread your brand. Tracking and analyzing your performance helps you to do your best and develop better strategies.

Before completing your promotion strategy, let’s check out some promotional marketing metrics.

Measuring your performance is extremely important because it will tell you whether your approach is worth continuing and you need to modify your strategies.

Without knowing promotional effectiveness, you may waste your time and effort focusing on results that don’t bring any benefits for you.

The bottom line:

I’m going to share key metrics for content promotion, website performance, and advertising so that you can strive for your best promotion.

So let’s get to it!

Content promotion metrics

Content marketing works when you track and measure the right metrics for your goals. Although which metrics to track depends on your business and your content marketing goals and strategies, the following metrics are essential.

Consumption

Seo performance, lead-generation.

These metrics are not all you should track. They can be useful to understand your performance better. But as I mentioned earlier, you need to match your goals and what metrics to measure.

Website performance metrics

Simply, website performance metrics are indicators of whether your website is successfully working or not.

And here’s the point:

No matter how awesome your content is, you won’t be able to make the most out of it if your website performance is bad.

It means that you must check out the efficiency of your website before your promotion. You can use a website speed test tool like WebPageTest to improve the usability and user experience on your website.

Here are some key indicators for speeding up your website performance:

Digital advertising metrics

Digital advertising is one of the most common advertising techniques. Still, every lead you get with it has a direct acquisition cost.

Therefore, it is very important to track digital advertising metrics not only to improve efficiency but also to reduce costs. Otherwise, you may get a negative ROI.

The following are critical for digital advertising success:

With successful promotion strategies, you will be able to increase the engagement and conversion of your products and services. They will also help you to make more sales and grow your business as a result.

There you have the step-by-step promotion tactics and useful techniques that you can implement right away.

What is important is, don’t wait for things to happen, take the initiative.

Now I would like to hear from you!

Which of the promotion strategy formulas in this post are you going to apply?

Or perhaps did I miss your favorite strategies…?

Leave a comment to let me know what you think!

7 thoughts on “Promotion Strategy: How to Promote Your Business [2023]”

that’s an amazing article

Thank you Akhil, I’m glad you like it!

Very interesting and informative post. keep sharing.

Thanks for your great information, want to hear more from you.

Great post! I find it very interesting going through the write-up. The main point is clear to understand, and I find them very resourceful. Hoping to see more similar content.

thanks for sharing very interesting post .

Thanks for sharing this information. The way you broke down the whole thing into simpler terms made it easier to grasp.

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What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write One [+ Examples]

Published: August 07, 2024

One of my favorite ways to break through writer’s block, whether the assignment is a marketing plan or a short story, is simply reading more examples. (I also recommend taking a long walk; you’d be surprised.)

I can’t take you on a walk, but I can give you some examples, some inspiration, and some guidelines to get your creativity humming.

If you don’t know where to start, we’ve curated lists of marketing plans and marketing strategies to help you write a concrete plan that will produce results.

Let’s start by understanding the differences between the two.

Table of Contents

Marketing Strategy Examples

What is a marketing plan, marketing plan vs. business plan, how to write a marketing plan, types of marketing plans, marketing plan examples, marketing plan faqs, sample marketing plan.

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A marketing plan is a strategic road map that businesses use to organize, execute, and track their marketing strategy over a given period. Marketing plans can include different marketing strategies for various marketing teams across the company, all working toward the same business goals.

The purpose of a marketing plan is to write down strategies in an organized manner. This will help keep you on track and measure the success of your campaigns.

Your marketing plan lays out each campaign‘s mission, buyer personas, budget, tactics, and deliverables. With all this information in one place, you’ll have an easier time staying on track with a campaign, and you can figure out what works and what doesn’t.

To learn more about creating your marketing plan, keep reading or jump to the relevant section:

A marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics.

A business plan is also a strategic document. But this plan covers all aspects of a company's operations, including finance, operations, and more. It can also help your business decide how to distribute resources and make decisions as your business grows.

A marketing plan is a subset of a business plan; it shows how marketing strategies and objectives can support overall business goals. And if you need an assist executing a marketing plan, might I recommend HubSpot’s marketing hub ?

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy is the part of your marketing plan that describes how a business will accomplish a particular goal or mission.

This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software you’ll use to execute that mission and track its success.

A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It's the framework from which all your marketing strategies are created, and it helps you connect each strategy to a larger marketing operation and business goal.

For example, suppose your company is launching a new software product, and it wants customers to sign up. The marketing department needs to develop a marketing plan that'll help introduce this product to the industry and drive the desired sign-ups.

The department decides to launch a topical blog, debut a YouTube series to establish expertise, and create new X and Instagram accounts to join the conversation around this subject. All this serves to attract an audience and convert this audience into software users.

To summarize, a business' marketing plan is dedicated to introducing a new software product to the marketplace and driving sign-ups for that product. The business will execute that plan with three marketing strategies : a new industry blog, a YouTube video series, and an X account.

Of course, the business might consider these three things as one giant marketing strategy, each with its own specific content strategies. How granular you want your marketing plan to get is up to you. Nonetheless, every marketing plan goes through a particular set of steps in its creation.

• State your business' mission.
• Determine the KPIs for this mission.
• Identify your buyer personas.
• Describe your content initiatives and strategies.
• Clearly define your plan's omissions.
• Define your marketing budget.
• Identify your competition.
• Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

1. State your business' mission.

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to state your mission. Although this mission is specific to your marketing department, it should serve as your business' main mission statement.

In my experience, you want to be specific, but not too specific. You have plenty of space left in this marketing plan to elaborate on how you'll acquire new customers and accomplish this mission.

For those of you running startups or small businesses, HubSpot’s starter bundle is a great all-in-one solution — it can help you find and win customers, execute content marketing plans, and more.

If your business' mission is “to make booking travel a delightful experience,” your marketing mission might be “to attract an audience of travelers, educate them on the tourism industry, and convert them into users of our bookings platform.”

Need help building your mission statement? Download this guide for examples and templates and write the ideal mission statement.

2. Determine the KPIs for this mission.

Every good marketing plan describes how the department will track its mission‘s progress. To do so, you need to decide on your key performance indicators (KPIs) .

KPIs are individual metrics that measure the various elements of a marketing campaign. These units help you establish short-term goals within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.

Let's take our example of a marketing mission from the above step. If part of our mission is “to attract an audience of travelers,” we might track website visits using organic page views. In this case, “organic page views” is one KPI, and we can see our number of page views grow over time.

Also, make sure to check whether your current reporting software facilitates the KPIs you need. Some reporting tools can only measure a set of pre-defined metrics, which can cause massive headaches in particular marketing campaigns.

However, other tools, like HubSpot’s analytics software , can offer full flexibility over the KPIs you wish to track.

You can generate custom reports that reveal average website engagement rates, page visits, email, social media traffic, and more.

These KPIs will come into the conversation again in step 4.

3. Identify your buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a description of who you want to attract. This can include age, sex, location, family size, and job title.

Each buyer persona should directly reflect your business' current and potential customers. All business leaders must agree on your buyer personas.

4. Describe your content initiatives and strategies.

Here‘s where you’ll include the main points of your marketing and content strategy.

Because there‘s a laundry list of content types and channels available today, you must choose wisely and explain how you’ll use your content and channels in this section of your marketing plan.

When I write this section, I like to stipulate:

• What types of content I'll create. These might include blog posts, YouTube videos, infographics, and ebooks.
• How much I'll create. I typically describe content volume in daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly intervals. It all depends on my workflow and the short-term goals for my content.
• The goals (and KPIs) I'll use to track each type. KPIs can include organic traffic, social media traffic, email traffic, and referral traffic. Your goals should also include which pages you want to drive that traffic to, such as product pages, blog pages, or landing pages.
• The channels on which I'll distribute my content. Popular channels include Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
• Any paid advertising that will take place on these channels.

5. Clearly define your plan's omissions.

A marketing plan explains the marketing team's focus. It also explains what the marketing team will not focus on.

If there are other aspects of your business that you aren‘t serving in this particular plan, include them in this section. These omissions help to justify your mission, buyer personas, KPIs, and content.

You can’t please everyone in a single marketing campaign, and if your team isn’t on the hook for something, you need to make it known.

In my experience, this section is particularly important for stakeholders to help them understand why certain decisions were made.

6. Define your marketing budget.

Whether it's freelance fees, sponsorships, or a new full-time marketing hire, use these costs to develop a marketing budget and outline each expense in this section of your marketing plan.

You can establish your marketing budget with these 8 free marketing budget templates .

7. Identify your competition.

Part of marketing is knowing your competition. Research the key players in your industry and consider profiling each one.

Keep in mind that not every competitor will pose the same challenges to your business. For example, while one competitor might rank highly on search engines for keywords that you’re also chasing, another competitor might have a heavy footprint on a social network where you plan to launch an account.

Easily track and analyze your competitors with this collection of 10 free competitive analysis templates .

8. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

With your marketing plan fully fleshed out, it‘s time to explain who’s doing what.

I don’t like to delve too deeply into my employees’ day-to-day projects, but I know which teams and team leaders are in charge of specific content types, channels, KPIs, and more.

Now that you know why you need to build an effective marketing plan, it’s time to get to work.

Starting a plan from scratch can be overwhelming if you haven't done it before.

That’s why there are many helpful resources that can support your first steps. We’ll share some of the best guides and templates to help you build effective results-driven plans for your marketing strategies.

Ready to make your own marketing plan? Get started with this free template.

The kind of marketing plan you create will depend on your company, your industry, and your business goals. We compiled different samples to suit your needs:

1. Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plans

This marketing plan by Visit Oxnard, a convention and visitors bureau, is packed with information: target markets, key performance indicators, selling points, personas, marketing tactics by channel, and much more.

It also articulates the organization’s strategic plans for the upcoming fiscal year, especially as it grapples with the aftereffects of the pandemic.

Lastly, it has impeccable visual appeal, with color-coded sections and strong branding elements.

• It states clear and actionable goals for the coming year.
• It includes data and other research that shows how the team made its decisions.
• It outlines how the team will measure the plan’s success.

4. Safe Haven Family Shelter

This marketing plan by a nonprofit organization is an excellent example to follow if your plan will be presented to internal stakeholders at all levels of your organization.

It includes SMART marketing goals , deadlines, action steps, long-term objectives, target audiences, core marketing messages , and metrics.

The plan is detailed yet scannable. By the end of it, one can walk away with a strong understanding of the organization’s strategic direction for its upcoming marketing efforts.

• It confirms ongoing marketing strategies and objectives while introducing new initiatives.
• It uses colors, fonts, and formatting to emphasize key parts.
• It closes with long-term goals, key themes, and other overarching topics to set the stage for the future.

5. Wright County Economic Development

• “Going viral” isn’t a goal; it’s an outcome.
• Be surprising. Subvert expectations.
• Be weird and niche if you want to be weird and niche, but establishing a shared cultural understanding might result in a bigger audience.

Pridemore Properties’ Instagram smash hit is unexpected, to say the least. You think you’re getting a home tour that takes your figurative breath away; you get a home tour that takes the agent’s literal breath away.

Verizon’s toe-tapping, hip-shaking Totalmente (aka Total by Verizon, a contractless phone plan) ad debuted during Univision’s Spanish-language broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII. The ad reinvents the 1998 Elvis Crespo song “Suavemente,” an earworm if I’ve ever heard one, replacing the lyrics with Total by Verizon features.

Verizon Value’s CMO and VP of Marketing, Cheryl Gresham, has admitted that she didn’t know much about marketing to a majority-Latinx audience.

In an interview with Campaign Live , she said she didn’t think the idea would have gotten off the ground “if it had just been me and a lot of other people that had a background like myself in that room.”

CampaignLive wrote, “Gresham says the team opted for a creative concept that spoke to all the Latinos in the room — despite Gresham herself not understanding the connection.”

Gresham’s marketing strategy hinged on knowing her audience and, just as importantly, trusting her fellow marketers who knew how to reach that audience.

Strategic Takeaways for Demographic Marketing

• Know what you don’t know.
• Foster diversity in marketing leadership and staff.
• Know your audience.

The catchy tune and the great storytelling certainly don’t hurt.

But more than that, Ogilvy and Verizon dug deep into Latinx culture — more than 25 years deep — to craft an ad that doesn’t feel like it’s just responding to the latest trend. They also tapped Venezuelan American comedian, musician, and producer Fred Armisen to direct the spot.

6. Chappell Roan

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Effective Promotion Strategies: Drive Sales and Boost Brand Awareness

Sudarshan Somanathan

Head of Content

March 14, 2024

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Effective promotion strategies can drive sales, increase brand awareness, and engage your target audience. 🌻

Whether you’re a small business owner or a marketing professional, understanding how to create and implement these strategies is essential. It’s all about clearly defining your goals and identifying the path to success.

This guide has everything you need to know about promotion strategies, including what they entail, how to use them, and what results to expect. We’ve also highlighted some examples to inspire your next great marketing campaign.

• What Is a Promotion Strategy?

Understanding Promotion Strategies

Research and understanding of your target audience, analysis of content consumption by the target audience, selection of optimal channels for promotion, cost determination and budgeting for marketing, evaluation of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (swot), development and implementation of the marketing plan.

• Influencer marketing
• Direct marketing
• Public relations
• Sales promotions

Advertising

How to have a successful promotion strategy, case study: how having the right tools helps with promotional strategies, the future of promotion strategies.

• 1. What are the 5 promotional strategies?

2. Why is a promotion strategy important?

• 3. How do you create a promotional strategy?

What Is a Promotion Strategy ?

A promotion strategy is a type of marketing designed to increase the visibility, desirability, and sales of a product, service, or brand. It involves marketing tactics designed to reach and connect with a target audience, including new and existing customers.

Information about the target audience lets you craft marketing goals and tactics likely to drive conversions. It also helps you choose the correct types of promotional campaigns, which might include:

• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Word-of-mouth marketing
• Customer loyalty programs
• Referral programs and incentives
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Marketing collaborations and partnerships
• Content marketing
• Giveaways and free samples
• Digital display ads
• Physical display ads (e.g., billboards)
• Personal selling

You don’t need to use all of these tactics. Most companies and marketing professionals select the ones that are most appealing to their target market.

The promotion strategies you choose to use are known as your marketing mix.

Each element of your marketing mix will require its own strategy. For example, content marketing efforts can benefit from a well-thought-out content calendar , an SEO plan, and high-quality call-to-actions (CTAs).

The purpose of a promotion strategy is to improve brand visibility, drive sales, and attract new customers by communicating your product or service’s value proposition to the target audience.

Before you implement one, you’ll want to define elements like:

• Marketing objectives: What you want to achieve
• Key results: Metrics that you’ll use to measure success

Seasoned professionals will likely know this as defining your marketing OKRs . You’ll use your OKRs (which is short for objectives and key results) to track and measure the success of products, services, and related strategies. 📈 🙌  

While specifics often vary between companies, almost all promotion strategies aim to create awareness, generate interest, and foster customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Your company’s primary goals might include growing your customer base, turning new customers into loyal customers, engaging existing customers by building trust, or all of the above.

Once your promotional effort is underway, marketing campaign management strategies help you track the key results and adjust as needed.

Key Elements of a Promotion Strategy

Understanding the general idea of a promotion strategy is a start. Now, it’s time to look at how to develop and execute your big plan!

Let’s take a step-by-step look at the most important elements below.

Researching and developing a better understanding of your target audience is essential when creating any new brand management strategy . Once you know who you’re targeting, it’s time to establish a deeper understanding of how to engage them.

The best way to get inside the minds of your target audience is market segmentation. In other words, you’ll break down your target audience based on things like:

• Demographics

This information can help you develop effective new product launch strategies, identify the best marketing channels, refine your landing pages, connect with current customers, and drive the overall success of your brand.

Pro tip: Some digital marketing apps can help you segment your target audience with templates and questionnaires. 

Studying how people within your target demographic interact with various types of content is an essential element of deciding how to spend your marketing budget.

Methods of content consumption might include:

• Newsletters
• Social media platforms
• Industry publications
• Video-sharing platforms

Tools like Google Analytics, social media analytics, email marketing platforms, and market research surveys can help you effectively gather data on your audience’s content consumption habits.

The best tool depends on your business. For example, a startup with a limited customer base might not benefit from sending a market research survey to existing subscribers as much as an established company would.

Pro tip: Customer profile templates can lay the groundwork for your marketing team to better understand how your customers prefer to consume content.

Learning more about how your target audience consumes content helps you refine marketing initiatives by selecting the best channels for your promotion strategies.

For instance, you don’t want to pour everything into email campaigns when your audience responds better to social media marketing. In this case, allocating part of your budget to TikTok marketing tools might be more effective at increasing sales and brand loyalty.

Pro tip: ClickUp’s Data Analysis Report Template can make finding patterns and trends in the data easier. It has everything you need to identify which types of content and marketing channels perform best at driving customer engagement. 👀 

Now that you’ve selected the optimal channels for promotion, it’s time to determine the costs of each and develop a budget for your promotion strategy.

You might not be able to budget for every marketing channel you selected in the above step. Sometimes, it’s about balancing cost-effective strategies and those that create the greatest sense of urgency for your audience.

Pro tip: ClickUp’s Marketing Budget Template can help you outline your campaign initiatives, the goals they’re aligned with, and whether you’re staying on budget each quarter. It’s also a fantastic way to compare how different marketing efforts perform over time.

Evaluating your promotion strategies’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) is essential to create effective campaigns. Here’s a breakdown:

• Strengths: What your strategy does well
• Weaknesses: What your strategy doesn’t do well
• Opportunities: Potential favorable circumstances
• Threats: Possible challenges or risks

By examining these factors, you can better understand how to leverage your strengths, address weaknesses, take advantage of opportunities, and mitigate threats to create more effective promotions.

Pro tip: Check out some free SWOT analysis templates to make it easier to understand core issues that impact your success.

Now for the fun part! Developing and implementing your marketing plan. ✨🎉

It’s time to send free products to influencers, launch email campaigns, run paid ads on Amazon, or otherwise execute the steps you’ve chosen to improve your brand image and customer retention.

This step entails creating a detailed roadmap of your marketing objectives, strategies, tactics, and milestones. Your roadmap is your guide for executing your plans and making necessary adjustments to keep things on track.

Pro tip: ClickUp has dozens of marketing plan templates to guide you through this process—helping you develop and optimize every facet of your brand promotion strategy.

Types of Promotion Strategies

We listed several types of promotion strategies earlier in the article. Let’s take a closer look at five of the most popular options.

Influencer marketing involves partnering with or offering sponsorships to individuals with a solid following and influence over your target audience. Influencers can promote your brand’s products or services via sponsored posts on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

Direct marketing is all about reaching out to potential customers using channels like email, direct mail, telemarketing, and SMS. Examples include email newsletters, catalogs, flyers, and targeted online advertisements.

For instance, an e-commerce company might text potential customers offering limited-time deals for relevant, high-quality products.

Public relations is all about managing relationships with the public, media, and other stakeholders to build a positive brand image, increase customer engagement, and improve retention. This might include press releases for new products, media interviews, sponsorships, and community outreach events. 

Sales promotions involve short-term incentives designed to encourage immediate purchase or action. This approach often includes discounts, coupons, BOGO (buy one, get one) offers, limited-time sales, contests, and giveaways.

It’s often combined with strategies like direct marketing or influencer sponsorships.

Advertising is the bread and butter of many brands’ marketing. The most popular types of advertising outlets include paid social media posts, search engine results, and online display ads.

Creating a successful promotion strategy doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s easiest when you’re leveraging effective tools that save you time and money. 🛠️  

ClickUp for marketing teams is the most effective tool for managing and optimizing every aspect of your marketing efforts.

It has everything you need to handle projects, tasks, and campaigns for your marketing and promotional projects.

For instance, use the free ClickUp Campaign and Promotion Management Template to get started in seconds. It was designed with advanced features to simplify complex needs and a ready-to-use, fully customizable Folder to make campaign management a snap.

You can also use different ClickUp views to monitor and analyze your strategy from all sides. Swap between views for every event, database, content calendar, and campaign so you can see what you need when you need it.

The best part? Most of ClickUp’s features are free to use.

We don’t mean that it has a free trial—we mean that you can sign up for the Free Forever plan without a credit card and start using the tools right away.

Examining promotion strategy examples from other businesses is one of the best ways to identify ways to improve yours. It’s even better if you can learn from a company that runs several successful campaigns to see what tools they’re using and how they do it.

Adhere Creative is an excellent example. Adhere is an award-winning B2B brand development and video content agency that relies on ClickUp for all things project management.

“I use ClickUp to manage every aspect of our agency’s production, from strategy, copy, and design to development, printing, and launch. Without ClickUp, we would be lost,” says Ericka Marett , the sole Project Manager at Adhere Creative.

Ericka uses ClickUp for everything from managing daily tasks to developing project estimates, timelines, and documents. With features like ClickUp’s Board view and individual to-do windows, she’s able to keep everyone on the same page for client marketing campaigns, promotions, and more. 

Adhere Creative doesn’t have just one example of how ClickUp has helped—Erika uses it to manage marketing campaigns successfully for dozens of clients. 🤩

Anyone running a business or handling promotion strategies in today’s marketing landscape knows things are changing. There’s a shift toward social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

These platforms have become essential for building brand awareness, fostering customer relationships, and driving sales.

This paradigm shift has revolutionized marketing, creating new ways to engage with diverse audiences through targeted video content.

You can use strategies like the following to improve your success rate in the increasingly digital marketing landscape: 

• A/B testing: Allows your brand to compare two versions of a landing page, marketing email, or paid ad to determine which performs better
• SEO: Involves strategies to improve website visibility and ranking in search engine results, increasing organic traffic and visibility 
• Targeted advertising: Relies on demographic and behavioral data to deliver tailored messages to specific audiences
• Customer relationship management: Makes organizing and tracking customer interactions easier
• Market research: Involves analyzing data to inform business decisions and strategies
• Data analysis: Comprises measuring and interpreting data from various sources to provide better insights and guide decision-making

Common FAQs

1. what are the 5 promotional strategies .

There are numerous promotional strategies to try, but five of the best include:

• Paid advertising

Promotion strategies are important because they allow you to communicate your business’s value proposition, attract customers, drive sales, and increase brand awareness in today’s competitive market.

3. How do you create a promotional strategy ?

Creating a promotional strategy involves steps including:

• Researching and developing an understanding of your target audience
• Analyzing content consumption by the target audience
• Selecting optimal channels for promotion
• Determining the costs of and budgeting for your marketing plan
• Evaluating your plan’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT)
• Developing and implementing your marketing plan

Ready, Set, Promote! 

A solid promotion strategy is essential to increase visibility, attract new customers, and drive sales. It enables targeted communication, fosters customer engagement, and helps secure a competitive edge. 🏆⭐

Unlock the power of organization and efficiency by leveraging ClickUp, the ultimate solution for optimizing all facets of your marketing projects.

From planning and execution to data analysis, our suite of customizable features will elevate your work from all directions.

See for yourself without spending a dime— sign up for ClickUp today .

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11 Marketing Promotion Strategies from Concept to Top Brands Practice

A promotion strategy is key for positioning your brand on the market, making people aware of the products or services you offer, and how they could benefit by choosing you. 

But with so many brands offering similar products or services as you do, your promotional techniques may be decisive for many potential clients.

In this article, we’ll dive into building a well-crafted, long-term inbound promotional marketing campaign strategy that will generate leads continuously for a long time.  By tailoring your marketing efforts to your target market, you can effectively reach and engage with potential customers, ultimately driving success for your brand.

What Is a Promotion Strategy?

A promotion strategy is defined by the plan and tactics you implement in your marketing plan to increase your product or service demand. Promotional strategies play a vital role in the marketing mix (product, price, placement, and promotion), and they revolve around:

• Target audience . Who you are selling for, and what are their interests;
• Budget . How much you are willing to invest in promotion;
• Plan of action . What strategy you are adopting to reach your objectives and make sales.

The promotion strategy is part of the bigger picture, which is the marketing strategy.

So What Is a Marketing Strategy?

The marketing strategy definition refers to the strategic planning and long-term actions of any organization with the purpose of achieving defined goals.

These strategies can be inbound (pull marketing) or outbound (push marketing).

What Are the Best Examples of Marketing Strategies?

1. Content marketing

2. Social media marketing

3. Search engine optimization (SEO)

4. Email marketing

5. Referral marketing

6. Event sponsoring

7. Influencer marketing

8. Promotions

9. Offering refunds

10. Customer loyalty programs

11. Guerrilla marketing

What Is The Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is the strategic process that uses pull marketing—content marketing, blogs, events, SEO, social media—to create brand awareness and attract new customers. 

This process often happens even before the potential customers decide to make a purchase. The first step is to know and connect with the brand to which they will eventually come back to take action.

Being a form of native marketing, inbound marketing relies a lot on organic leads, making your brand appear more human because the methods used in this type of marketing strategy don’t look overly promotional. They are somewhat educational and entertaining. Once your customers discover you through a good, informational piece of content, they will instantly trust you more.

Outbound or push marketing refers to any strategy where a company performs a more traditional form of marketing, such as TV commercials, radio ads, print advertisements, or sales calls (known as cold calls). You could say it’s a more aggressive form of marketing, which may bring sales on the spot, but it has a lower ROI than inbound marketing. 

Being driven by sales, outbound marketing doesn’t really allow a company to build long-term relationships with customers . 

What Roles Do Marketing Promotion Strategies Play?

Marketing promotion strategies play four different roles that look like a funnel that leads to purchasing:

• Build awareness 

Start making your target audience aware of your brand. To build it, you must first identify the profile of the people you want to reach.

• Make people interested  

Once you get your product/service out there, create interest around it, and make people intrigued and interested while differentiating your brand from the competition.

• Create product/service demand

In this step of the funnel, people will start relating emotionally to your product/service by seeing something that may benefit them.

• Make them take action

Create a way for your target audience to engage with your product/service. Place a call-to-action button on your website, emails, ads, social media profiles, or entice them with an irresistible offer. Get inspired by these sales promotion examples that work.

11 Types of Inbound Marketing Promotion Strategies

It’s time to see some of the best and most efficient inbound marketing strategies that will bring leads and turn your audience into loyal customers.

1. Drive More Traffic with Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the key marketing strategies that can help you bring your brand in front of your audience. 

It’s a form of educating your customers about the products and services you offer and related topics in your industry.

A content marketing strategy is the very definition of a win-win situation. Your audience learns how to solve specific problems while you generate leads and increase sales.

Let’s say you are a company that sells tires, and you start blogging about the importance of choosing the correct tires, when to change them, safety, and so on. This type of content will help you start building trust, making your brand a good candidate for their next tire purchase, which makes content marketing a precious indirect form of promotion strategy. 

You might be surprised how important this matter is, but digital content marketing doesn’t resume at blogging. It’s everywhere. Online paid advertising or sponsored ads, websites, digital flipbooks , social platforms, and so on.

Of course, is more than just content. The process begins with creation (based on a solid digital content strategy) and is followed by promotion, measurement, and constant optimization. However, there’s a learning curve to it in which the secret ingredient is patience.

Here are a few types of digital content marketing you can explore:

• Blog posts 

A prevalent yet powerful form of inbound marketing, blog posts help you promote internal and external content, include product or service information, or simply educate your audience regarding a topic from your niche.

Articles are the perfect way of increasing website ranking and boost your landing pages for free. You just have to do a bit of research before writing so you can incorporate SEO as well. 

• Infographics

Infographics are a great form of visualization between images and data. They are engaging and easy to understand, as they are constructed based on short text, numbers, data, and graphics.

You can share them as a single standalone piece of content or include them in the visual anatomy of blog posts and sustain an idea even better.

Some people are really good at multitasking, so they are able to workout while also stimulating the mind. The perfect way to serve them informational content in this scenario is to create a podcast for your business.

A 2020 survey shows that 37% of U.S. adults listened to a podcast in the last month . Moreover, this percent has tripled over the past decade.

It can be a sign your brand should invest in a podcast, which allows you to be extremely creative and open to choices. For example, you can invite influencers to talk about a subject from your niche or explore a more extensive topic that you can break down into more episodes.

Also, you can always repurpose your blog posts into podcasts or vice versa. 

Nowadays, online video marketing drives a lot of engagement. 

People often want to learn something fast and, if possible, in a more passive way. 96% of people watched an explainer video to find out more about a product or service. For these situations, it’s good to have informative videos prepared for your video content marketing.

Moreover, video marketing is a powerful way to boost conversions and improve ROI. The proof is 87% of video marketers who say video has increased traffic to their website.

Again, you can repurpose your written content into videos and save more time in the creative process. You can use video editing apps like Instasize to help you produce high-quality content straight from your smartphone — no professional experience needed. In your product marketing strategy, don’t forget to include video as well.

Like we said earlier, content marketing is everywhere, even in the form of paid ads. You will find them on a wide range of websites, on social media, landing pages, or banners.

Paid search advertising is still inbound marketing because your ads are a part of native marketing, and they only appear when people perform a search related to the products or services you offer. So, they’re not intrusive or aggressive. 

The paid ads will help you reach a broader audience and place your product/services anywhere you wish them to be visible.

Don’t forget that content marketing is more than just creating content. Based on your overall marketing strategy, the process begins with creation, followed by promotion, measurement, and constant optimization. Without good SEO content marketing, your content may never be discovered.

One of the best promotion examples of a great marketing strategy is H&M’s sales promotion strategy. Inside H&M is their way of offering customers valuable information about their collections and fashion trends from the industry focused on local culture.

Image Source

Related articles:

7 Online Marketing Strategies And Examples Every Entrepreneur Should Learn Today

13 Sales Promotion Techniques To Boost Your Sales + Case Studies

Local Business Advertising: 20 Strategies To Start Thriving Now

2. Explore the Power of Social Media Marketing

This again is content, but because it’s such an essential part of your marketing strategy, it deserves a section of its own.

With over 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide , social media marketing is a great way to share your promotional content.

Luckily, you can use a few social media platforms, depending on the audience you wish to target. Experiment with Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest , Linkedin, Snapchat, or YouTube ads , and see which one suits you best.

Before starting, see where you should invest your social media marketing budget and what type of ads these platforms can host. Snapchat, for example, is associated with youngsters, while LinkedIn is a platform for professionals. 

Also, don’t forget that YouTube is the second most popular search engine after Google, so it’s definitely worth taking a look at it.

Find the right social media platform for your brand and take advantage of everything it has to offer.

Communicate with your audience online. Social media marketing is a great mediator between your potential customers and your brand.

Keep in mind that your approaches should be different on most social media channels. You have to use targeted posts and display ad designs to maximize online conversions with a buyer persona . 

Take a look at Audi’s social media marketing strategy on social media. At first glance, you might call their Instagram page boring. But if you look closer, you’ll see that boring is not the right word. I’d instead call them persistent. 

Their attitude towards social media is “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” They simply stick to what they know works for their audience. Their Instagram social media marketing strategy is pretty simple and catchy. 

Luxurious images with expensive cars in impressive and flattering lighting—guaranteed success for an Instagram account with 15.7 million followers.

3. Elevate Your Visibility With The Power of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial part of an inbound marketing strategy. It involves optimizing a website’s content, structure, and overall online presence to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords and phrases. The ultimate goal of SEO is to attract organic (non-paid) traffic from search engines and drive targeted visitors to a website.

Here’s how SEO works as an inbound marketing strategy:

• Increased Visibility : Optimizing website content, meta tags, headings, and images according to best SEO practices can increase businesses’ visibility in search engine results. This improves the likelihood of attracting clicks from users seeking information or solutions related to their products or services.
• Targeted Traffic : SEO helps attract targeted traffic to a website by optimizing for specific keywords and phrases that align with the business’s offerings and the needs of its target audience. As a result, the traffic generated through SEO tends to be highly relevant and more likely to convert into leads or customers.
• Builds Credibility and Trust : Websites that rank higher in search results are often perceived as more credible and trustworthy by users. By consistently appearing at the top of SERPs for relevant queries, businesses can build authority and establish themselves as industry leaders, which enhances brand reputation and credibility over time.
• Cost-Effective : Compared to paid advertising methods such as pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, SEO is a cost-effective inbound marketing strategy in the long run. While it requires an initial investment in terms of time, resources, and expertise to optimize a website and produce high-quality content, the traffic generated through organic search is accessible and sustainable over time.
• Long-Term Results : Unlike some outbound marketing tactics that provide short-term results, SEO is a long-term strategy that can continue to drive traffic and results over time. Businesses can maintain and improve their search engine rankings by consistently publishing high-quality content, optimizing website elements, and earning backlinks from reputable sources.
• User-Centric Approach : SEO is not just about pleasing search engines but also about providing users value. By creating informative, relevant, and user-friendly content that addresses the needs and interests of their target audience, businesses can improve the overall user experience and encourage engagement, leading to higher search rankings.

Overall, SEO is a fundamental inbound marketing strategy that helps businesses achieve their marketing goals, empower their marketing team, and gain a competitive advantage by leveraging the power of search engines to connect with potential customers when they are actively seeking information or solutions.

4. Use Email Marketing to Drive Engagement and Sales

Email marketing can be part of an inbound promotion strategy, as well as an outbound promotion strategy. 

It’s up to you how you want to use it.

But when used correctly, an email marketing campaign proves to be extremely effective in a brand’s marketing strategy.

Here are some email marketing stats to convince you:

• There are 3.9 billion daily email users, a number predicted to climb to 4.3 billion by 2023. ( Statista )
• Marketers who implemented segmented (personalized) email campaigns have witnessed a 760% increase in revenue. ( Campaign Monitor )
• On average, marketers send 3-5 emails per week. ( Not Another State of Marketing )
• Over the last 12 months, 78% of marketers observed an increase in email engagement. ( Not Another State of Marketing )
• 31% of B2B marketers recognized email newsletters as the best way to generate leads. ( Content Marketing Institute )
• 81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters. ( Content Marketing Institute )
• 87% of B2B marketers say email campaigns are one of their top choices for organic distribution channels. ( Content Marketing Institute )
• 90% of content marketers measure content performance according to email engagement. ( Content Marketing Institute )
• 46% of all emails are opened on mobile devices. ( Litmus.com )

Inbound email marketing campaign focuses on building a relationship with the readers instead of spamming them with overly promotional emails. 

An inbound email marketing strategy should keep count of a few things, such as the message’s value and timing. 

Once you create your lists of email addresses, it means you have the right people who are actually interested in your product or service. Next, the only thing you have to do for your email campaign is to provide your subscribers with quality content, preferably targeted through segmentation. 

Send newsletters, feature launches, event invitations, or news from the industry. You can also use your email campaigns to remind people of your social media presence so that they could follow you.

Here’s an example from Course Hero.

5. Run Referral Marketing to Incentivize Existing Customers

When it comes to referrals, the numbers speak for themselves. 92% of people will rather trust a product or service recommendation from a friend than any other form of marketing.

Word of mouth advertising, also known as WOM, is one of the most valuable examples of pull promotional strategies. While experts consider it one of the strongest methods out there, it is also the most difficult to obtain.

There are two types of WOM advertising, also called word of mouth marketing (WOMM): 

• Organic, which refers to recommendations from one person to another without your interference, but simply because they are satisfied with the product/service; 
• Through referral programs and advertising campaigns designed to encourage or accelerate WOM in existing or new communities .

These two work hand in hand. Once you have a great marketing campaign, you will also bring leads organically.

77% of consumers trust reviews more than advertising, and because today, 4.66 billion people have access to the internet and are digitally connected, imagine what a single recommendation or positive review will do. News travels super fast on the internet.

Yes, it requires a lot of time and effort, especially if your brand is new on the market. However, there are a few techniques that encourage this type of brand promotion strategy. 

Consider creating a referral program in which customers who share their brand experience are rewarded in a certain way. Maybe a discount on their next purchase, a gift card, or anything that will make them feel appreciated. After all, inbound marketing strategy promotion plans have the customer experience as their top priority.

WOMM is an ongoing process, but it will get easier as your brand grows.

You can also create groups and start a community around your brand. 

Eventually, happy customers will start to advertise the brand without adding any extra effort to the process. Having impartial people praise your business and become your brand ambassadors on social networks is the most natural form of advertising. 

Keep in mind that before even starting to determine people to create buzz around your brand, you have to make sure you can offer everyone a great customer experience from the moment they enter your website to the checkout point.

If you are still questioning yourself about this marketing tactic, I’ll give you clear referral marketing examples in practice. 

Let’s say you are going on a trip to Barcelona. Before your arrival there, what would be one of the first things you usually do? Bingo! Check for recommendations. You look for blogs, Instagram pictures or profiles, Tripadvisor reviews, and so on. In one way or another, all of those are part of a referral marketing promotion strategy.

Adidas’ sales promotion strategy not only includes referrals but also uses dark social media (sharing content through a third party) to get those much-needed recommendations.

“70% of global brand referrals are from dark social, not Twitter or Facebook.” , says Adidas senior director of global brand communications Florian Alt. Thus, back in 2016, Adidas started their Tango Squads campaign. 

They started operating groups on messaging apps , such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, to share exclusive content, pre-launch announcements, etc. This move’s principle is simple: link brand supporters, feed them valuable information and have them spread it with the world.

These are the guys who will push out your stories and content. They give it longevity and authenticity because they are talking in a private messaging environment. If it comes as a referral from your mate, you’re much more likely to pick it up than if it comes from a brand, says Alt .

6. Sponsor Events to Provide Customer Experiences

Sponsorships and inbound marketing go together like peanut butter and jelly. 

But there is a fine line between event sponsorship being outbound or inbound. 

The main difference is that outbound sponsorships usually chase down attendees to make them buy. In contrast, inbound sponsorship focuses on providing attendees with quality information, valuable content, and customer experience, aiming to build a long-lasting relationship.

Of course, the main goal is the same–turning potential customers into loyal customers. What’s different is the approach. 

Think about how you would provide value to attendees through an event and then advertise it. For example, have someone represent your brand to perform an inspiring speech and share it on social media, create a flyer, or make a professional banner with helpful information for future participants.

Also, create an opportunity for your participants to test your products during the event. In this way, you’re offering a customer experience and a chance to see your product’s benefits.

Inbound sponsorship is about building the foundation of a loyal brand-customer relationship. It might not follow through right then and there, but if what you offer is valuable enough for the participant, it will eventually turn them into loyal customers.  

Other benefits of sponsored events:

• Build a reputation
• Increase brand visibility
• New business partnerships
• Building a community

This strategy works great also in local business advertising .

I am pretty sure you all know already about one of the most famous partnership campaigns of all time. So far, PepsiCo has been using this sponsorship marketing promotional strategy to support the NFL, and it’s getting on like smoke.  

7. Work with Influencers to Increase Brand Awareness

Working with influencers is like making the best of traditional word of mouth marketing but in the digital landscape. And this is even better because you can also measure its performance through likes, shares, social media engagement, referrals, clicks, and conversions.

89% of marketers claim the ROI is as good as or even better than other marketing strategies, and 71% say influencer marketing brings them quality leads and better traffic.

Think about this: an influencer has already built a community of loyal followers that trust him/her. 

Once you decide to work with influencers, you can reach thousands of potential customers.

Here are some tips for starting your partnership with an influencer:

       1. Choose them carefully

They have to be relevant for your industry and somewhat specialized in a specific topic and category that fits your niche. Try to narrow down the criteria before choosing them to make sure you’ll find the best matches for your campaigns. 

      2. Work with more than one influencer

A famous influencer in your industry may not be that popular among many followers, especially if they’re at the micro-influencer stage. Choose more than one to advertise for your brand and reach more people at once. For instance, if you were trying to start a Boba shop in your area, you may be better off finding two or three smaller foodie influencers in your local area to showcase your shop as opposed to finding one larger influencer who primarily focuses on beauty and fashion.

      3. Set campaign goals

Define your campaign goals to know what to ask and expect from the influencer you’re working with. Do you want to drive conversions, boost your brand’s reach, increase the number of followers on social media, or be more prevalent in new markets? Do a bit of research before choosing an influencer to see if that’s the right way to help you reach your target.

     4. Allow them to be creative and add their own touch

Once you’re decided on your advertising partner, let them do their magic. The influencer knows best how to engage with their followers and the best way to promote a brand without looking fake or pushy.

3 easy ideas to use when working with an influencer:

    1. Give them discount codes

One way to make your product/service more visible and increase sales is to collaborate with influencers, so they announce discount codes for specific products you’re offering.

    2. Run contests and giveaways

This one works like a charm. You choose the influencer that announces the contest’s rules on their social media account. They may include steps like:

• Tag a friend
• Like the post 
• Follow the brand’s page
• Share the post
• Create content related to the brand
• Leave a comment

    3. Send products for review

You can develop a partnership with an influencer and send them products to review. It’s a win-win situation. They get free products, and you get advertising.

Influencer marketing is cost-effective , especially if you choose to work with micro-influencers , which is also an extremely efficient and trustworthy option. 

This partnership benefits the brand in more than one way:

• You will quickly build a trustworthy brand;
• Your products/services will reach your target audience fast;
• Increases brand awareness and turns customers into brand ambassadors.

When it comes to choosing the social media platforms for promoting your brand through influencer marketing campaigns, focus on those where your target audience spends their time.

According to Mediakix , 89% of marketers say Instagram is vital to their influencer marketing strategy , followed by Instagram Stories, with 73% and YouTube with 56%.

Long story short, an influencer marketing promotion strategy can help you speed up your brand awareness. Thus, giving your brand more credibility and power of retention.

One example of a successful influencer marketing campaign is the one from Under Armour. Their campaign focused on 35 athletes taking pictures of them while working out in Under Armour clothes and using the hashtag #FindYourOnePercent.

Here’s one of the athletes in action:

8. Use Free Samples, Sales Coupons, and Promotions to Boost Sales

Alright, let’s face it. Discounts are everywhere, and people love that. Whether they take the form of a free sample, a coupon, or a promotion, sales can actually be a great example of an inbound marketing strategy for products. 

However, inbound sales aim for something more than just a simple purchase. When it comes to inbound/pull marketing, it shouldn’t be just a one time fling but a long-lasting, serious relationship.

So, which promotional strategies count as inbound marketing?

Think about the times in which you decide to buy a monthly subscription for a particular brand, and after you check out their price lists, you realize that the yearly subscription is way cheaper. 

Now that is inbound marketing. Aiming for long runs instead of short ones.

Another common practice is giving free samples. If you want, we can call this “the drug temptation.” Why? Because it works exactly like that. 

The brand is confident that the person who tries the product for free will be willing to pay the full amount to repeat the experience. On the other hand, the customers are more than willing to try something for free without any strings attached. So, it’s again a win-win situation.

The same principle applies to free trials and demos. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the famous “first month for free” line. As harmless as it sounds, it is part of the same marketing plan.

HBO GO knows this sales promotion technique very well and is embracing it with its arms open.

Another fairly typical example of successful sales promotions is coupons, again for the same reasons. What do coupons do? They imply a specific customer behavior: repetitiveness.

Repetitive purchases create a particular type of familiarity with the product that can quickly turn into loyalty.

9. Offer Refunds & Rebates to Keep Customers Happy

Refunds and rebates are some of the classics in product promotion strategies. The concept behind them is pretty similar. However, they are different in essence and practice.

Refunds represent a way of guaranteeing your customers about the quality of your product. Does the “money-back guarantee” sound familiar to you? This promotion marketing tactic works like reverse psychology. Knowing that you can get your money back if you are not satisfied with the product will make you want to try it.

Of course, businesses that adopt this type of brand promotion strategy mostly know customers won’t ask for their money back because they will fall in love with the brand.

So, before you embrace this kind of strategy, make sure you offer a good quality product.

On the other hand, rebates are counting on a different thing–the comeback of the customer. 

How does it work?  

In this particular marketing strategy, the partial discount, aka rebate, is offered only when the purchased quantity reaches a specific limit. 

The targeted public here is not potential customers, but rather existing customers, in the hopes of securing customer loyalty.

Think about an expensive bottle of champagne. Let’s say it costs around $200. Adopting a rebate promotion marketing tactic won’t make people who never tried it before buying two bottles of it. Chances are, customers who are already familiar with your brand will be interested in purchasing a second bottle for that price. 

And that’s how rebates work.

A great example of a rebate is Apple’s sales promotion strategy. Until today, Apple has been taking advantage of rebates to establish long-term customer relationships with certain target groups. Every year, Apple addresses students with approaches such as the one above during back to school promotions.

10. Create Customer Loyalty Programs and Patronage Rewards to Increase Customer Satisfaction

An oldie but goldie.

Brands have been rewarding their loyal customers before this concept even existed. Whether it takes points and client scores or just simple bonuses at their customer anniversaries, loyalty programs and patronage rewards follow the path of pull marketing strategies.

Moreover, it makes customers feel appreciated and important, creating a special personal bond with the brand itself. 

This marketing promotion strategy is usually encountered in brands that have a touch of corporate to it. 

From bank points for credit card purchases to free internet from telecommunication companies, customer rewards are very famous in pull marketing.

Take a look at Lufthansa and its Miles & More program. It’s the most extensive loyalty program in Europe and has over 20 million members worldwide .

The bottom line of this rewards program is the more you fly with them, the better the benefits: better comfort, better prices, faster layovers, and many other privileges.

11. Capture Attention with Guerrilla Marketing Tactics

Guerrilla marketing is a unique advertising strategy that utilizes surprise and unconventional methods to grab the attention of potential customers and promote a product or service. It borrows the “guerrilla warfare” concept, relying on creativity, innovation, and low-cost tactics to achieve maximum impact.

Here are some key aspects of guerrilla marketing:

• Unconventional tactics:  Instead of traditional advertising channels like TV commercials or billboards, guerrilla marketing uses unexpected and creative approaches to reach the target audience. This could involve anything from interactive installations in public spaces to flash mobs or customized experiences.
• Surprise element:  The element of surprise is crucial in grabbing attention and making a lasting impression.
• Low-cost focus:  Guerrilla marketing relies on resourcefulness and creativity rather than large budgets. This makes it an attractive option for startups and small businesses.
• Engagement and interaction:  Unlike passive traditional advertising, guerrilla marketing seeks to engage the audience and create a memorable experience actively.
• Word-of-mouth and social media:  The goal is to generate buzz and word-of-mouth marketing, often amplified by social media sharing.

Examples of guerrilla marketing tactics include:

• Using sidewalk chalk art to promote a product or event.
• Organizing flash mobs or surprise performances in public spaces.
• Creating interactive installations or experiences that encourage participation.
• Using ambient advertising techniques, such as projecting images or messages onto buildings or sidewalks.
• Employing guerrilla projections, where images or messages are projected onto buildings or landmarks without permission.
• Distributing attention-grabbing promotional materials or branded merchandise in unexpected places or ways.

Guerrilla marketing can be a powerful tool for businesses to stand out from the crowd and memorably connect with their target audience. However, it’s important to remember that it requires careful planning, creativity, and a good understanding of the target audience to be successful.

Finding The Right Marketing Promotion Strategy 

The truth is, a promotion strategy isn’t a one size fits all type of plan.

Think about a simple white T-shirt. How would you sell it to a teenager in comparison to a woman in her mid-50s? The same product, same fabric, same material. Two different audiences, two different approaches. When selling to a teenager, it will probably be about being trendy and cool, while in the second case, it may have something to do with staying classy and looking put together.

You can’t just blindly follow some steps and expect success because multiple factors influence this. 

It almost always has to do with positioning (I mentioned this in the promotion definition), quality of the product, the market’s power of purchase, economy, trends, needs, localization, access to the product or service, and product category. And let’s not forget about the most important influencer: the audience.

Here are a few tips before starting a promotion strategy:

• Set your promotional goals  so you have a realistic sense of where you’re headed.
• Set your budget to help you prioritize your actions.
• Define your target audience to know the approach you will use in your campaigns.
• Choose the promotion types that are the most effective and appropriate for your goals and budget.
• Start working on the key message of your campaign.
• Regularly measure your campaign’s results to see if it needs to be tweaked.

When choosing your marketing promotion campaign, think about your product or service’s most valuable feature and start creating a plan from there, focusing on bringing that feature in front of your target audience.

Your brand’s individuality will contour your campaign needs: what strategies to adopt, what social influencers to contact for a partnership, or which type of social media marketing you should try.

I hope this article was insightful and will help you choose the best promotional techniques and get you started with an inbound marketing strategy for your brand.

133 Comments

Wow, truly liked your blog. It’s so informative and helpful. Thankyou for sharing this amazing post.

Great article. In order to create a successful marketing campaign, it is important to have a clear understanding of the different marketing promotion strategies available and how to use them most effectively. Which strategy do you think is the most effective one to use for a small business?

Hi Claudia , very well written post, very useful. Keep posting

Thank you for sharing these strategies! I think it’s really important to understand the different strategies before you could utilize them. For you, which strategy is the best for small scale businesses?

A very informative article in order to marketing strategies. Keep sharing detailed articles like this. I just love how you cover each and every topic and explained it very well. Keep posting

I just Loved your Article. You have driven good information about perfect marketing strategies. You have covered all the important topics and are very well explained. Keep posting.

Digital promotion is an excellent way of promoting your business. Digital marketing is a cost-effective and efficient way to promote your business and get more traffic. Effective promotional strategy helps you to show your potential customers why your product or service is unique and better than your competitors.

The strategies that you have suggested can help easily to generate end number of conversions. Thanks for sharing this information with us. Subscribed your blog.

Such an useful and well detailed article. This is a good start for Beginners to understand the meaning of marketing promotion strategies and how to implement it. For sure, this post will help many people including me, in getting the results that they are looking for their online businesses and will push theirs brands on top. Thanks for the effort and keep updating.

Hi, Claudia, your content is really amazing Is so satisfying after reading it, Keep Posting thank for this useful information.

Amazing Content. The techniques you mentioned are really useful for aspiring marketers like me. Keep sharing more good content.

Excellent guide. Thank you Claudia for sharing your promotion secrets!

Well, put, Claudia! We definitely don’t want to seem desperate and aggressive to our target audience. Personally, I focus on “inbound marketing.” Content marketing is undoubtedly one of the best strategies. However, with the introduction of short videos in almost every social media, the influencer strategy seems to be working pretty great alongside. Influencing our target audience and generating leads is not that complex now. Social media has become a great tool for business.

Great content and techniques! Thanks for sharing it!

Awesome blog it is I liked the blog, its informative

thanks for sharing these amazing strategies. this is definitely for those who want to learn more good skills on digital marketing. people from varanasi can learn it practically

Very Effective digital marketing strategies. This will really be helpful for my career. thank you so much for sharing this article.

Hi, Marketing is an important tool in the development of business and service industry. The various strategies mentioned by you is very easy to understand as well as in detail covering the core concepts of the meaning, types of marketing strategies etc. Thank you for helping me in having a clearer understanding on the concepts of marketing.

I have been continually learning about digital marketing in order to raise my website’s ranking. And I have to admit that this is the best blog I have ever read. You have done a fantastic job of explaining the topic, and the advice you have provided is simple to implement and will help us get the best outcomes.

Thank you so much for sharing such informative content.

It’s important to focus on the right marketing promotion strategies to ensure the best return on investment. I’m looking forward to seeing how your strategies work out! thanks for sharing.

Thank you for the clearly given key pointers about marketing strategies. I especially like the importance of content creation and how content writing can be so important in promotion and establishing a business marketing strategy. I wish to learn more about content writing practices.

Thank you for sharing this article about choosing the best promotional techniques for your brand’s inbound marketing strategy. I completely agree with the idea of focusing on a product or service’s most valuable feature when planning a marketing campaign. It’s essential to highlight what sets your brand apart from others and how it can benefit your target audience. Overall, this article provides useful insights and tips for developing an effective inbound marketing strategy. I look forward to implementing some of these ideas for my own brand. Thanks again for sharing!

Great info for a new marketer like me. For a beginner, what is the most essential strategy i should implement

Wow, your suggested strategies are a game-changer! They can effortlessly skyrocket the number of conversions. I’m grateful for you sharing this valuable information with us. I just subscribed to your blog, can’t wait to read more!

Hi amazing blog very well written. Got to know a lot. So relevant and useful. Thanks a lot for sharing this information.

Detailed article, absolutely knowledgeable.

A Great chunk of info! excellent, detailed informative blog regarding digital marketing promotions strategies, looking forward for much more. keep posting!

Nice words about top brands practices. Regards from Turkey.

Thanks for providing a comprehensive overview of various promotion strategies, highlighting the importance of inbound marketing for building long-term customer relationships.

Hi Claudia, excellent work. I have learned something new. Thanks.

very good ideas for both offline and online product companies.

Comments are closed.

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In today’s digital age, successful promotion strategies are essential for businesses looking to stand out in a crowded marketplace. With the ever-evolving landscape of online marketing and consumer behavior, it’s crucial to adopt innovative and effective promotion strategies. In this article, we’ll delve into ten proven promotion strategies, complete with real-life examples, to help your business thrive.

Now, let’s explore each of these strategies in detail, along with practical examples to illustrate their effectiveness.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Successful promotion strategies are the lifeblood of any business aiming for growth and sustainability. By strategically promoting products or services, companies can attract new customers, engage existing ones, and ultimately drive revenue. In this article, we will uncover ten successful promotion strategies that have been tried and tested across various industries.

Content Marketing

Blogging for engagement.

Blogging remains a powerful tool for content marketing. By consistently publishing high-quality, informative blog posts, you can establish your business as an authority in your niche. For example, Neil Patel’s blog provides in-depth marketing insights, attracting millions of readers seeking expert advice.

Infographics for Visual Appeal

Infographics combine visuals and information to create engaging content. HubSpot uses infographics to simplify complex marketing concepts, making them more accessible to their audience.

Social Media Marketing

Harnessing the power of facebook.

Facebook’s advertising platform allows businesses to target specific demographics. Airbnb, for instance, uses Facebook ads to reach travelers with personalized recommendations.

Leveraging Instagram for Visual Branding

Instagram is a haven for visual content. National Geographic’s Instagram profile showcases stunning images, reinforcing their brand as a leader in nature and travel.

Email Marketing

Personalized email campaigns.

Sending tailored emails based on customer preferences can significantly boost engagement. Amazon’s personalized product recommendations in their emails are a prime example of this strategy.

Automated Drip Campaigns

Automated drip campaigns can nurture leads over time. Dropbox’s onboarding email series effectively guides users through their platform’s features.

Influencer Marketing

Collaborating with micro-influencers.

Micro-influencers can have a more engaged and niche following. Fashion brand Fashion Nova collaborates with micro-influencers who authentically align with their brand.

Leveraging Celebrity Endorsements

Larger brands like Nike leverage celebrity endorsements, such as their partnership with Michael Jordan, to create massive brand awareness.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

On-page optimization.

Optimizing on-page elements like meta titles and descriptions can improve your website’s visibility. Moz’s SEO guide demonstrates best practices in on-page optimization.

Quality Backlink Building

Quality backlinks from authoritative websites can boost your search engine rankings. Ahrefs offers a comprehensive guide on building backlinks effectively.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Google ads for targeted traffic.

Google Ads enable businesses to display their ads to users actively searching for relevant keywords. Grammarly uses Google Ads to target users looking for grammar-checking tools.

Facebook Ads for Audience Reach

Facebook’s extensive user data allows for precise ad targeting. Airbnb utilizes Facebook ads to reach users interested in vacation rentals.

Affiliate Marketing

Partnering with niche affiliates.

Identifying niche affiliates can help you tap into specific markets. Bluehost partners with bloggers and website owners in the web hosting niche.

Setting Lucrative Commissions

Offering competitive commissions can incentivize affiliates to promote your products. Amazon’s affiliate program is known for its attractive commission rates.

Guerrilla Marketing

Viral stunts for buzz.

Viral marketing stunts can generate immense buzz. Red Bull’s Stratos Jump, where a daredevil jumped from the stratosphere, garnered worldwide attention.

Ambush Marketing for Surprise

Ambush marketing involves piggybacking on major events. During the 2012 Olympics, Nike’s “Find Your Greatness” campaign cleverly competed with official sponsors.

Analytics and Performance Tracking

Google analytics for insights.

Google Analytics provides valuable data on website performance. Content marketing agency, Content Marketing Institute, uses Google Analytics to fine-tune their content strategy.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

CRO focuses on optimizing websites for better conversions. Shopify’s blog offers insights into improving e-commerce website conversions.

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, adopting successful promotion strategies is paramount. Whether you choose content marketing, social media advertising, influencer collaborations, or any other method, the key is to stay adaptable and data-driven. By continually analyzing your efforts and adjusting your strategies, you can achieve sustainable growth and success in today’s competitive market.

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Ian has marketed for some of the world's best-known brands like Hewlett-Packard, Ryder, Force Factor, and CIT Bank. His content has been downloaded 50,000+ times and viewed by over 90% of the Fortune 500. His marketing has been featured in Forbes, Inc. Magazine, Adweek, Business Insider, Seeking Alpha, Tech Crunch, Y Combinator, and Lifehacker. With over 10 startups under his belt, Ian's been described as a serial entrepreneur— a badge he wears with pride. Ian's a published author and musician and when he's not obsessively testing the next marketing idea, he can be found hanging out with family and friends north of Boston.

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Written by Jesse Sumrak | May 28, 2024

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Marketing is an often misunderstood profession. Peers often stereotype marketing with massive budgets, loosey-goosey timelines, haphazard tactics, high-profile influencers, and Snapchat filters. In reality, modern marketing plans are more complex and orchestrated than a Premier League-winning football team.

Businesses have big goals to hit and fine margins to walk—and they need realistic, yet imaginative, marketing plans to make it happen. Sure, bigger companies can spend all willy-nilly hiring Taylor Swift for a commercial op and dropping a quarter million on Facebook advertising, but small businesses and startups have to get downright strategic with every dollar they spend.

If your business is trying to stretch every penny, you’ve come to the right place. This article will show you how to create a marketing plan in 2024 that actually works with a down-to-earth budget. We’ve included step-by-step actions, outlines, examples, and more to give you everything you need to take an idea to the market with laser precision.

Table of Contents

What is a marketing plan?

How to create a marketing plan

Marketing plan template

Marketing plan example

Marketing Plan FAQs

What Is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a documented roadmap for how you plan to drive awareness, sales, signups, attendance, or other marketing initiatives. It outlines your KPIs, budget, and timeline, dictating everything from the critical milestones to the nitty-gritty to-do items.

Marketing plans come in all shapes and sizes. You could build an overarching marketing plan to document and guide your entire department’s annual goals and strategies for the upcoming year. Or you might create a marketing plan detailing the launch strategy for the brand-new product release coming out next quarter. Big plans can even include small plans, just like an adorable collection of Russian nesting dolls.

Plans can be short, long, fat, or thin—just remember what your plan is trying to accomplish. If you’re trying to pitch an idea to a team of venture capitalists or a local bank, you might need a chunky document with accompanying spreadsheets and financial figures. However, if you’re trying to communicate the plan to your marketing team leads, you’ll want to skip straight to the point with tactics, deadlines, and deliverables.

Regardless of your use case, the next section will give you the building blocks you need to create a marketing plan that works.

How to Create a Marketing Plan

This section will show you the 7-step process to creating a marketing plan. Plans are fluid and versatile, so we don’t recommend filling out one of these with pen and paper—get your eraser ready because a marketing plan is never perfect from the get-go.

Here’s an overview of the 7-step process:

• Establish Your Marketing Goal
• Identify Your Audience and Competitors
• Set Your Marketing Budget
• Determine Your Deadline(s)
• Pick Your Marketing Channels and Tactics
• Outline the To-Do List and Make Assignments
• Track Performance and Review Analytics

Don’t worry too much about making it all nice and pretty right now. Later, you can use our provided marketing outline to copy, paste, and format a more articulated version for widespread distribution. For now, just focus on hashing out each section and answering the thought-provoking questions.

1. Establish Your Marketing Goal

Define exactly what you’re trying to achieve. Do you want to drive more sales? How much? What about recurring customers? How many? Do you need to increase brand awareness? To whom and by how much?

Work out the details of what you want to accomplish, why, and how you’re going to measure it. Establish your KPIs early on to measure the success of your marketing campaign. You’ll refer to these numbers throughout the rest of your marketing plan, so get specific.

For example, how many website visitors you’re trying to drive will affect your marketing budget, deadlines, and tactics. And if you’re targeting a specific demographic, you may need to engage different marketing teams to use the appropriate channels and messaging.

Fine-tune your marketing goal so that you can communicate it simply in a single sentence. For example: “The goal is to drive 25,000 key decision-makers to the new product page by the end of October with a limited marketing budget of $75,000.”

2. Identify Your Audience and Competitors

Explain who this campaign is targeting. If you’ve already built out your buyer personas, you’ll just plug in the persona appropriate to this campaign. However, if this is your first time thinking long and hard about your target audience, really get to know the person you’re marketing to.

Depending on your product, industry, and market, you’ll want to know demographics like:

• Marital status

These details help you identify a broad audience, but you’ll want to narrow it down with psychographics.

Psychographics dig deeper . They cover your audience’s:

• Influencers
• Shopping behaviors

Demographics explain the “who,” while psychographics explain the “why.”

Think about if you were trying to sell a baseball glove. How you market that glove is going to be very different depending on the buyer. Are your messaging and channels targeting a college athlete, recreational youngster, mom, dad, or low-income family? It’s hard to know what to say and how to say it unless you know who you’re talking to.

Don’t just gloss over this section. Without a target audience, you’ll be blindly throwing darts at a board—sure, some plans might work out, but it’ll come down less to strategy and more to sheer luck. A target audience and replicable formula make your success a science and not a game of Russian roulette.

Once you’ve identified your audience, you need to figure out who’s also targeted the same people. Competition research is a way to understand who you are up against for eyeballs, SEO rankings, and influence, but it also can serve as an opportunity to fill gaps in our needs that your competitors are missing.

One easy way to do this is to look at comment sections or reviews of similar companies in your industry. Look for:

• Frequent complaints about product design.
• Consistent issues with customer service.
• Ads or branding language that falls flat.
• If the competitor hasn’t made a product their customers are asking for.

By identifying your competitor’s weaknesses or gaps their missing with their customers, you’ll have a treasure trove of marketing copy to use in order to differentiate your business from the pack.

3. Set Your Marketing Budget

Marketing plans need budget constraints. Without a cap, plans could hypothetically include:

• 60-second Super Bowl commercial
• Cristiano Ronaldo as a celebrity endorser
• Billboard advertisements along the entirety of Route 66

For most startups, that’s just not a possibility.

And it’s not where the magic happens. Powerful marketing plans turn tiny marketing budgets into impressive ROI. They prioritize the right channels, messaging, and tactics to stretch every dollar to the max.

Decide beforehand how much budget you’ll need to allocate to meet the goals you set in Step 1. When push comes to shove, you may need to throw additional money at the campaign later to get it across the finish line, but stay strong and do your best to create a marketing plan that works with the budget constraints.

Tight on budget but full on creativity? Check out our Small Business Marketing Guide: From Scratch to Success .

4. Determine Your Deadline(s)

Deadlines create the boundaries to your marketing campaign—you can’t have a plan without them. No deadlines mean there’s a never-ending period to achieve your objective, and it’s probably not a good idea to have a 20-year free pass to accomplish that sales goal you set.

Set your deadline. Be realistic, but also be ambitious. The faster you achieve this goal, the faster you can move on to the next one—and each progressive goal should be moving your business forward.

Establish the final deadline for achieving your primary KPI. Then, set the necessary milestones along the journey. For example, you might set milestones for launching different aspects of your campaign, such as hosting 4 webinars, publishing 10 supporting blog posts, or earning a callout in 2 prime news outlets.

Finally, set the start date for when you’ll need to get the ball rolling to meet your deadlines. Don’t assume it’s ASAP—you might have a few weeks to get your ducks in a row instead of immediately heading off into a chaotic marketing battle.

5. Pick Your Marketing Channels and Tactics

This is arguably the funnest part of creating a marketing plan. This is the step where you get to choose the channels, tactics, and deliverables. The right channels and tactics will vary depending on your audience and product or service, but here are the most popular ones to consider:

• Email Marketing: Email marketing is one of the tried-and-true tactics of the digital marketing world. It generates an average ROI of $40 for every $1 invested —you can’t get much more bang for your buck than that. (Check out our complete email masterclass to learn how to conquer this lucrative channel.)
• Social Media Marketing: Whether you’re running organic strategies or targeted paid campaigns , social media marketing is an excellent modern-day tactic for reaching consumers where they’re most comfortable: Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, or TikTok.
• PPC Marketing: Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing lets you run advertising campaigns on search engine pages and other websites across the internet. It’s a competitive way to get your content in front of the right eyeballs.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing paired with a solid search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is a long-term tactic that can drive organic traffic (read: free) to your website for years to come.

And do you know what all these channels have in common? They each give you the ability to monitor your results and track your progress to prove if a channel is worth your time and money. Unlike traditional outbound advertising and its estimated impressions and influence, you know exactly what you’re getting with these digital marketing strategies.

6. Outline the To-Do List and Make Assignments

Here’s where you get into the nitty-gritty of your marketing plan. Step 6 is where you’ll outline everything that needs to get done:

• Launch meeting
• Recurring meetings and syncs
• Creative assets
• Promotional channels
• Post-mortems

And that’s just the start. Outline everything that needs to happen to make your plan a reality. Once you know what needs to happen, it’s time to start making assignments. Someone needs to be responsible for every deliverable.

Here’s where you may run into roadblocks. You may discover that your creative team is overwhelmed and won’t be able to handle the creative requests until later, or you may find that other email campaigns or social media advertisements are the top priority.

If that’s the case, go back to Step 4 to revisit your timeline. Make adjustments to ensure there’s bandwidth available to make your marketing plan a reality.

7. Track Performance and Review Analytics

No marketing plan will go off without a hitch. That’s why you need your ear to the ground to understand what’s working. Through analytic tools, you can understand if your marketing plan’s target audience, messaging, or creative needs adjusting. Thankfully, most digital tactics allow you to do this on the fly.

Make sure you familiarize yourself with these basic marketing analytics tools:

• Facebook Ads Manager
• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Semrush or Ahrefs for SEO

For more on analytics, read our marketing metrics guide .

Marketing Plan Template (Copy/Paste)

Marketing Plan Template: [Name of Project]

Marketing Plan Example (Filled Out)

Here’s a fake content marketing plan example for a fictitious shoe company.

Marketing Plan Template: [Project Zeus Running Collection]

Marketing Goal Drive $200,000 in sales for the new Zeus running collection within the first 4 months of launch day.

Target Audience The primary audience is 35 to 50-year-old male recreational runners who tend to run 30-40 miles a week at an average page of 8:00-10:00 minutes per mile. They’re not overly competitive, but they like to race 5K and 10K races occasionally throughout the year and are always trying to beat their personal best. Many have experienced mild injuries over the last few years that the Zeus Running Collection can help alleviate.

Marketing Budget We have a budget of $40,000 for the initial launch period. If we can prove out the Zeus Running Collection, we’ll allocate additional budget after the first 4 months.

• Launch Day: June 1
• Marketing Assets Ready to Go: May 28
• Pre-Launch Teaser: May 24
• Creative Assets Finished: May 21
• Product Beta Tester Reviews Submitted: May 10
• Written Content Creation Period: April 12 – May 7
• Enlist Beta Testers: April 12
• Project Kickoff Meeting: April 5

Marketing Tactics

• Social Media Marketing: Target runners on Instagram and Facebook with paid ads featuring our endorsed runner racing in the shoe.
• Email Marketing: Email existing customers with a 15% off discount code on the new Zeus Running Collection. Email prospects with a link to the product breakdown page with a code for free shipping.

Responsibilities and Assignments

• Lizzy K: Creative assets
• Mark B: Blog post announcement + product page
• Spencer S: Beta tester outreach
• Larry G: Email and social media marketing campaigns
• Carly M: Project manager

Do I need to write a marketing plan for everything?

As stated earlier, marketing plans can come in all shapes and sizes. But that doesn't mean you need one for every single Facebook ad or whitepaper your team creates. The best marketing plans serve as a source of truth for your team to reach a goal. Within the marketing plan, you should have enough wiggle room to adjust your strategy and tactics. Marketing is an art and science, so there are bound to be surprises once you start executing your plan.

How do I know if my marketing plan is a success?

One of the most common mistakes marketers make is creating a seemingly perfect marketing plan and then going off script as soon as there's a sign of trouble or distraction. Using the SMART goal method (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound) is a simple way to ensure your marketing plan is applicable. Every marketing plan should be a success, whether you hit your goal or not, because you'll learn something new about your customer, tactics, and business throughout the process.

Who should make a marketing plan?

If you're reading this article, ideally you. A marketing manager or marketing team member typically writes marketing plans, but marketing strategy should start at an enterprise level. The more people understand the marketing plan for your business, the more you can work together (not in silos) to achieve a common goal. You'll see this happen in larger organizations where the marketing team works plan that the product or sales team have no idea about.

Plan It Out—Make It Happen

Every great campaign starts with an even better plan. Don’t leave your startup’s success up to chance—give it all the thought and attention you can.

With the right plan in place, you won’t be crossing your fingers on launch day or during the quarterly review. You’ll be sitting confidently, knowing that everything is running according to plan.

Need a high-level plan for your startup? We got you covered with our foundr+. Get access for $1. .

About Jesse Sumrak

Jesse Sumrak is a writing zealot focused on creating killer content. He’s spent almost a decade writing about startup, marketing, and entrepreneurship topics, having built and sold his own post-apocalyptic fitness bootstrapped business. A writer by day and a peak bagger by night (and early early morning), you can usually find Jesse preparing for the apocalypse on a precipitous peak somewhere in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

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3 Key Steps to Create a Promotional Plan

Ben Fellowes

8 min. read

Updated May 10, 2024

I’ll never forget my first client, shouting at me in frustration, “C’mon! It shouldn’t be this hard to make a decent advert! Anyone can do it!”

Twenty years down the line and hundreds of marketing promotions later, I’m no longer frustrating people so much because I’ve learned to take apart the meat and bones of promotions to better understand how to produce effective ads and literature.

But can anyone do it? I’m not sure I agree with my old client on that one, but there are certainly some message and design commonalities that can be taken apart and looked at in order to build successful marketing collateral.

Whether you’re a rookie designer or a client looking for some sound design and copy advice, this guide can help you understand the anatomy of your promotions and how each one should be built within tried-and-tested parameters.

• 1. The heart of a promotion: The headline

Giving life to your promotion

Your headline is a critical part of your promotion. It is the heartbeat that gives it life and meaning.

A headline can be as obvious as the word “sale” or simply your product name. It is all about context. Why make it complicated on the cover of a brochure or sell sheet? But then again, why make it super-generic on the headline of a magazine ad that you want to get noticed?

Be effective rather than clever

A headline can be funny, clever, inspirational, seductive, and so on. But what it can’t be is unrelated to your product and business message. There’s an awful habit that many businesses fall into of trying to lever in puns or well-known phrases—a belief born from reading too many tabloid papers.

If you’re able to use clever wordplay to get your point across then that’s great. But trying to “be clever” should never be your motivation for writing a headline.

Don’t use humor for the sake of it (and avoid the dreaded “pun”)

Here is a comparison of actual headlines for similar products with very different treatments:

“Regardless of the right to bear arms, we in no way condone the right to bear feet.”

In my opinion, this headline for Kenneth Cole shoes (above) leaves the viewer wondering: What’s being sold here? What point is being made? How can this information be acted upon?

In view of the fact that this ad was also trying to somewhat make a social statement, it just seems like the wrong place for a “pun” and the whole thing results in a confusing statement with forced humor.

“Metro Shoes back-to-school sale—happy feet make happy people!”

At first glance, this headline (above) could be viewed as fairly unremarkable. However, this headline for Metro Shoes is doing its job because it’s clearly defining a message and a purpose for this piece of promotional literature.

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A headline should tell the viewer:

• Who you are
• What you’re selling
• What problem you’re solving

Headline examples

Here are just a few examples of headline strategies that you can adopt for your own business.

• Scare the viewer: “ A little mistake that cost the farmer $3,000 a year!”
• Ease the viewer: “Good mornings follow a good Nytol.”
• Impel the viewer:  “Nothing hurts more than sitting on a couch.”
• Intrigue the viewer: “How does the man who drives the snowplow drive to the snowplow?”
• Inspire the viewer: “Don’t dream of winning. Train for it.”
• Humor the viewer: “An English ale so authentic it’ll make your teeth crooked.”
• 2. The brain of a promotion: The copy

Be smart about writing your body copy. Whether you’re writing a paragraph for an ad or an entire brochure, the body copy should reflect your business’s brain and voice. Don’t just cut and paste a copy style; know who you are and who you’re talking to.

If you’re advertising a tech business, you need to sound informed and intelligent; however, if you own an events business, sounding “techy” rather than fun and upbeat is clearly the wrong approach.

Have a plan for your copy

• Think before you write: consider what you have to offer and write down the features—and more importantly, the benefits of your products and services
• Know your audience:  be clear about who you’re talking to and adopt the voice of your copy accordingly
•  Use simple words when you can: be natural but intelligent, and avoid marketing lingo
• Never write passively: don’t say “we try to provide the best service” when you can say “we provide the best service”
• Introduce yourself
• Tell people what you’re offering—not just on the surface, but what you really offer as a result of your product or service
• Tell people why you’re offering it
• Give people a firm conclusion:  offer a takeaway from your story

Take action from the start

Describe the benefits customers get from your business as soon as possible. The benefit is really what customers are after; is it cheaper, is it faster, is it newer, will it make my hair grow back?

Split your copy into subheadings

Don’t write in long paragraphs. Make your paragraphs short and sweet and make sure each paragraph has a subheading to help organize your copy into an easy-to-follow story.

When people read your promotion, the subheadings should give a great summary of what you’re offering without the need to read each paragraph.

Bullets and other tricks are your friends

Don’t be afraid of bullets or itemized info. Summarized lists of features and highlights are a quick and effective way of drawing attention to major benefits while giving the viewer easily digestible information.

If you can put a complex piece of info in a simple data graph or graphic, then do so. A picture can say more in one second than an entire paragraph or even page of copy.

Include a call-to-action (CTA)

Don’t ever forget what you want people to do with the promotion you’re offering. Getting customers to do what you want is a bit like herding cats!

People have short attention spans and getting them to see your phone number, redeem your coupon, link to your web address, or visit your store is far more important than getting them to read any of your body copy.

Make your call-to-action easily seen and build in motivation as to why the reader should take that action. The following CTAs are just a few examples of commonly used CTA verbiage:

• Call now at
• Join the party at
• Discover the secret at
• See how we did it
• Make a difference at
• Go to our website
• Sign up for free at
• Indulge yourself now at
• Call now to speak to a success expert
• Like free prizes? Like us on Facebook!
• Find your own style at
• 3. The body of a promotion: The design

The design of your promotion is not only what makes it attractive, it’s also what helps the viewer make sense of the information you’re presenting. It’s the meat of your literature that fills out the bare bones of an idea.

Design harmony

It’s imperative that you understand the relationship between words and images. Before you even start your design, consider the following:

• Never use an image because it looks “nice” —every image you use in an ad, brochure, or other promotion needs to relate to a headline or a piece of information that you’re presenting
• It’s all in the composition —have a visual plan of where your copy will sit and where the related images will best complement these info points
• On brochures and other literature in which there are a lot of copy points, consider adding captions underneath each image
• Use color blocking, different font styles, and other tricks —treat copy as another aspect of your design that needs design attention
• Make every block of text readable —although it depends on the font and the reader, as a rule, each section of body copy should be at least 10 point in font weight with image captions no less that 7 point

Harmonize your promotion to include both images and copy. Think of your images and copy running down the beach, hand-in-hand together! They are supposed to be a team that works in unison.

Rule of threes

If you’ve never heard of this term, the rule of threes is a great composition guide to consider for every page of literature you produce. It’s a great rule to follow that allows you to design in a way that naturally conforms to the way a viewer sees and follows visual information.

By splitting your page into three vertical or horizontal sections, you can create a layout that has natural structure and eye-flow.

Every promotion is different, but whether it’s a brochure, sell sheet, flyer, or advertisement, it needs to have a powerful structure and a strong message to effectively support your business.

Ben Fellowes is Sr. Copywriter and marketing expert at Roland DGA. He has designed and produced content for some of the world’s top agencies and marketing companies. He's currently working (and getting his fair English skin burned) in Southern California! He loves art, punk rock, horror films, comic books, real beer, cooking, and eating too much!

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Promotion Strategy in Business Plan: Example, Best Practices

• Post author By support
• Post date August 17, 2023

In today’s competitive business landscape, a well-thought-out promotion strategy can make or break a company.

From eye-catching advertisements to enticing sales promotions, businesses are constantly trying to find innovative ways to capture the attention of their target audience.

But it’s not just about flashy tactics; successful promotion strategies require a deep understanding of customer behavior and media consumption habits.

This is where a carefully crafted business plan comes into play.

By incorporating customer surveys, positive reviews, and leveraging the power of social media, businesses can create a promotion strategy that not only generates demand but also cultivates long-lasting customer loyalty.

So, if you’re ready to dive into the exciting world of promotion strategy, grab a cup of coffee and let’s explore some compelling examples together.

promotion strategy in business plan example

A promotion strategy in a business plan example involves using various tactics to raise awareness, generate interest, and drive demand for a product or service.

It includes strategies like push promotion, sales promotion , retail promotion, and e-commerce promotion.

Famous brands like Apple, Nike, Starbucks, Tesla, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Adidas have used these strategies in their marketing efforts.

To create and optimize a promotion strategy, steps like understanding the marketing mix , researching target audience consumption habits, identifying relevant channels, considering product strategy, pricing, and distribution, conducting a SWOT analysis, and taking inventory of resources are recommended.

Social media is an efficient promotional strategy, and maintaining a presence on multiple platforms is important.

Sales promotion, retail promotion, and the use of branded promotional gifts, public relations activities, customer surveys, and customer reviews are also mentioned as effective promotion strategies.

Incorporating the product life cycle and conducting after-sale customer surveys are important aspects as well.

Overall, having a well-designed and effective promotion strategy is crucial for success in business.

Key Points:

• Promotion strategy in a business plan involves tactics to raise awareness, generate interest, and drive demand for a product or service.
• Strategies like push promotion, sales promotion, retail promotion, and e-commerce promotion are used.
• Famous brands like Apple, Nike, Starbucks, Tesla, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Adidas have used these strategies.
• Steps to create and optimize a promotion strategy include:
• Understanding the marketing mix
• Researching target audience consumption habits
• Identifying relevant channels
• Considering product strategy, pricing, and distribution
• Conducting a SWOT analysis
• Taking inventory of resources
• Social media is an efficient promotional strategy and maintaining a presence on multiple platforms is important.
• Other effective promotion strategies mentioned include:
• Sales promotion
• Retail promotion
• Use of branded promotional gifts
• Public relations activities
• Customer surveys
• Customer reviews
• Incorporating the product life cycle
• Conducting after-sale customer surveys.

Sources 1 2 3 4

💡 Did You Know?

1. The term “guerrilla marketing” was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book Guerrilla Advertising . It refers to unconventional promotion strategies that rely on creativity, imagination, and low-cost tactics to reach a wide audience.

2. In 1960, the Ford Motor Company introduced the concept of planned obsolescence in the automobile industry by regularly changing the design of their car models. This strategy was implemented to encourage customers to keep buying newer models, thereby boosting sales.

3. One of the most successful promotion strategies in the business world is the “Freemium” model, which offers a basic product or service for free while charging for additional features or premium offerings. Popular examples of this include Spotify (free music streaming with a paid premium option) and MailChimp (free email marketing services with paid upgrades).

4. The use of influential individuals to promote products or services is a longstanding technique called “celebrity endorsement.” However, lesser-known is the practice of “micro-influencer marketing,” where businesses partner with individuals who have smaller social media followings but possess a highly engaged niche audience.

5. The “anticipatory shipping” promotion strategy, patented by Amazon in 2014, involves shipping products to customers based on predictive analytics before they even place an order. This approach aims to decrease delivery time significantly, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Understanding Promotion Strategy: Importance And Types

Promotion strategy plays a crucial role in a business plan as it helps raise awareness , generate interest , and persuade potential customers to take action towards a product or service. In the marketing mix , promotion is one of the key components that optimizes time and resources while increasing the chances of success . By implementing a well-designed promotion strategy , businesses can effectively reach their target audience and encourage them to make a purchase .

There are various types of promotion strategies that businesses can employ, with two prominent ones being pull promotion and push promotion . Pull promotion involves creating demand by attracting customers towards a product or service. This strategy often relies on creating a brand image , developing strong marketing campaigns , and providing valuable content that resonates with the target audience.

On the other hand, push promotion focuses on tactics that directly put the product or service in front of the customers . This can include activities such as advertising through various channels, cold emailing potential customers, or utilizing influencers to promote the offerings. The aim is to push the product through to the consumers , creating awareness and generating immediate interest .

Promotion Strategies In A Business Plan: Push, Sales, And Retail

When incorporating promotion strategies into a business plan, it is essential to consider the specific approaches that align with your business goals and target audience . Three common types of promotion strategies that can be included in a business plan are push promotion , sales promotion , and retail promotion .

Push promotion involves promotional activities that directly push the product or service to the consumers. This can be achieved through various tactics such as advertising on television, radio, or online platforms . Cold emailing potential customers or engaging in direct outreach can also be part of push promotion. The aim is to attract the attention of potential customers and have them consider the product or service.

Sales promotion focuses on providing incentives to customers to encourage them to make a purchase. This can include discounts, limited-time offers, free shipping deals, or even offering coupons . By providing these incentives, businesses can create a sense of urgency and increase the likelihood of customers buying their products or services.

Retail promotion strategies are specific to businesses operating in the retail sector. These strategies focus on enhancing the customer experience within the physical retail location . Tactics can include in-person loyalty programs, attractive shopfront designs, or offering personalized recommendations based on customer preferences. The goal is to create an inviting and memorable shopping experience that encourages customers to return.

Examples Of Promotion Strategies By Famous Brands

Famous brands often employ innovative and creative promotion strategies to attract and engage their target audiences. These examples provide insights into the effectiveness of different promotional techniques and can serve as inspiration for businesses looking to enhance their own strategies.

Apple , known for its iPhone, utilizes a combination of commercials, print ads, and keynotes to promote its products. The emphasis is placed on highlighting the quality and craftsmanship of the iPhone, creating a sense of desirability among consumers.

Nike , a leading athletic footwear and apparel brand, focuses on promoting the benefits of its products. For example, campaigns showcasing the design components of their Pegasus running shoe aim to engage runners and highlight the performance features of the shoe.

Starbucks , a popular beverage company, utilized mobile ads in various apps to promote its packaged Refreshers beverages. By targeting potential customers on their mobile devices, Starbucks effectively reached a broad audience and generated interest in their products.

Tesla , a renowned electric vehicle manufacturer, relies heavily on word-of-mouth marketing to drive demand for its Model 3. By creating a unique and desirable product, Tesla has successfully incited enthusiasm among its customers, resulting in organic promotion and increased sales.

Amazon , an e-commerce giant, employs video commercials to promote its Alexa technology. These commercials effectively showcase the capabilities and benefits of their voice-controlled assistant, generating interest and driving adoption among potential customers.

Coca-Cola’s promotion strategy for Diet Coke involved a press conference announcement . By creating a buzz around the product launch, Coca-Cola generated excitement and anticipation among consumers, leading to increased interest and sales.

Netflix , a leading streaming platform, utilizes data on users’ watching trends to drive its promotion strategy. By recommending personalized content and curating tailored suggestions, Netflix effectively engages its subscribers and encourages continued usage of its platform.

Adidas , a prominent sportswear brand, collaborates with celebrities and influential figures like Pharrell Williams to develop new shoe models for promotion. This collaboration helps create a sense of exclusivity and desirable style , attracting consumers who resonate with the brand and the celebrity figure.

Steps To Create And Optimize A Promotion Strategy

To create an effective promotion strategy , businesses should follow a series of steps that optimize their efforts and ensure a targeted approach. By considering various factors such as the marketing mix , target audience , and available resources , businesses can develop a comprehensive and successful promotion plan.

Step 1: Understand your marketing mix : Before diving into promotion strategies, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of your overall marketing mix. This includes considering product strategy , pricing , distribution channels , and promotional goals . Establishing a solid foundation allows for a more effective and cohesive promotion plan.

Step 2: Research the content your target audience consumes: Investigate the different types of content your target audience regularly consumes. This can range from blog posts and social media posts to online ads , radio and newspaper ads , and even physical promotional materials such as flyers . Understanding their preferences helps tailor promotional efforts to resonate with the audience.

Step 3: Identify the platforms your audience uses: Determine the platforms and channels your target audience utilizes frequently. This can include social media platforms , email marketing , search engine optimization (SEO) , affiliate marketing programs , or other relevant channels. By focusing on the platforms your audience engages with, you can effectively reach them and maximize the impact of your promotion.

Step 4: Conduct survey and research: It is recommended to survey current customers or people in the target audience to understand their content consumption habits better. This research helps identify preferences, interests, and behaviors that can inform the promotion strategy. Additionally, conducting a deep dive into the specific media outlets that the target audience follows can provide valuable insights for promotional efforts.

Step 5: Create a marketing budget: Establishing a marketing budget is important to determine the resources available for content creation and promotion. The budget should be allocated based on marketing goals, regular costs, competition, and tactics. By having a defined budget, businesses can make strategic decisions on how to allocate their resources effectively.

Step 6: Conduct a SWOT analysis: To develop an effective promotion strategy, it is important to conduct a SWOT analysis. This analysis helps understand the strengths , weaknesses , opportunities , and threats related to promoting the product or service. By identifying these factors, businesses can leverage their strengths, mitigate weaknesses, explore opportunities, and address potential threats.

Step 7: Take inventory of resources: To implement a promotion strategy successfully, it is essential to take inventory of available resources. This can include marketing team members, marketing tools, assets like brand images and graphics, and the budget allocated. Having a clear understanding of available resources helps ensure a realistic and efficient execution of the promotion plan.

By following these steps, businesses can create and optimize their promotion strategy, enabling them to reach their target audience effectively and drive meaningful results for their products or services.

• Understand your marketing mix
• Research the content your target audience consumes
• Identify the platforms your audience uses
• Conduct survey and research
• Create a marketing budget
• Conduct a SWOT analysis
• Take inventory of resources

Surveying Target Audience’s Content Consumption Habits

To develop a successful promotion strategy, it is crucial to understand the content consumption habits of the target audience. This knowledge helps tailor promotional efforts to resonate with their interests and preferences. Here are some steps to consider when surveying the target audience’s content consumption habits.

Conduct surveys or interviews : Engage with your current customers or potential target audience through surveys or interviews. Ask them about the type of content they regularly consume, including blogs, social media posts, online ads, traditional advertisements, podcasts, or any other relevant content formats. This first-hand feedback provides valuable insights into their preferences.

Analyze website analytics : Utilize website analytics tools to gain insights into the content that attracts and engages your audience. Monitor metrics such as page views, time spent on different pages, and bounce rates. This analysis helps identify high-performing content and areas where improvements can be made to better align with the target audience’s interests.

Research competitors’ content : Analyze the content created and promoted by your competitors. Study their marketing efforts, including the channels they utilize, the type of content they produce, and the engagement levels they achieve. This analysis can help identify gaps or opportunities that your business can leverage in its own promotion strategy.

Monitor social media activity : Keep track of the social media activity of your target audience. Identify the platforms they use most frequently and the type of content they engage with. Social media listening tools can assist in capturing relevant conversations and sentiment analysis to understand the audience’s preferences and interests.

Leverage data analytics tools : Use data analytics tools like Google Analytics or social media insights to gain insights into the content that performs well for your business. Identify the key metrics for success, such as click-through rates, conversions, or engagement rates, to evaluate the effectiveness of your current promotional efforts.

By surveying the target audience’s content consumption habits, businesses can gain valuable insights that inform the creation and optimization of their promotion strategy. This research helps tailor content to resonate with the audience, resulting in more effective and engaging promotional efforts.

Deep Dive Into Target Audience’s Preferred Media Outlets

Understanding the preferred media outlets of the target audience is crucial when developing a promotion strategy. By diving deep into these outlets, businesses can effectively reach their audience and maximize the impact of their promotional efforts . Here are some steps to take when conducting a deep dive into the target audience’s preferred media outlets.

Identify target audience demographics : Begin by understanding the demographics of the target audience. Consider factors such as age, gender, location, interests, and education level. This information helps identify the media outlets that are most likely to be frequented by the target audience.

Research industry-specific publications : Investigate industry-specific publications, magazines, or websites that cater to the interests and preferences of the target audience. These outlets often provide valuable content and insights relevant to the industry, making them ideal platforms for reaching and engaging the target audience.

Explore online communities and forums : Online communities and forums focused on relevant topics or industries can provide significant opportunities for reaching the target audience. Research and identify these communities, and actively engage in discussions to establish credibility and promote your business subtly.

Monitor social media trends : Social media platforms are powerful tools for reaching and engaging the target audience. Stay updated on trending topics and hashtags related to the industry or target audience’s interests. This information helps identify the social media platforms and influencers that have a significant impact on the target audience.

Partner with industry influencers : Collaborating with industry influencers can be an effective way to reach a wider audience. Identify influencers who align with your brand and have a strong presence on the preferred media outlets of your target audience. Engage in partnerships or sponsorships that can amplify your promotion efforts.

Utilize guest blogging opportunities : Identify reputable blogs or publications in your industry that accept guest blogs. Submit well-crafted articles that provide value to the audience, promoting your brand subtly within the content. Guest blogging allows you to tap into the readership of established outlets and position your business as a thought leader.

By conducting a deep dive into the target audience’s preferred media outlets, businesses can identify and leverage platforms that have a high concentration of their desired audience. This approach ensures that promotional efforts are focused and reach the right people, maximizing the chances of success.

• Identify target audience demographics
• Research industry-specific publications
• Explore online communities and forums
• Monitor social media trends
• Partner with industry influencers
• Utilize guest blogging opportunities

Using Audience Research Tools For Identifying Trending Media Outlets

Audience research tools are invaluable when identifying trending media outlets among potential customers. These tools provide insights into the habits, preferences, and interests of the target audience, helping businesses refine their promotion strategies . Here are a few audience research tools that can assist in identifying trending media outlets :

BuzzSumo : BuzzSumo is a powerful tool that allows businesses to analyze the most popular content in their industry or niche. By entering keywords or topics relevant to the target audience, BuzzSumo provides a list of the most shared and engaged-with content across various platforms. This information helps identify trending media outlets and the type of content that resonates with the target audience .

SparkToro : SparkToro allows businesses to explore the websites, podcasts, and social media accounts that their target audience follows. By entering specific demographics or interests, SparkToro generates a list of popular outlets and influencers that the target audience engages with. This tool provides valuable insights into trending media outlets and influential figures that can inform promotion strategies.

Google Trends : Google Trends provides businesses with real-time data on the popularity and search volume of specific keywords or topics. By exploring the trending searches in a particular industry or niche, businesses can identify media outlets that cover these topics extensively . Google Trends helps businesses stay up to date with the latest trends and shifts in media consumption patterns.

Social media analytics : Many social media platforms offer in-depth analytics tools that provide insights into audience engagement and preferences. Platforms like Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, and Twitter Analytics allow businesses to understand which posts, hashtags, or topics resonate the most with their target audience. This information can guide businesses in identifying trending media outlets and tailoring their promotion strategies to maximize reach and impact.

By utilizing audience research tools like BuzzSumo, SparkToro, Google Trends, and social media analytics, businesses can gather valuable data about trending media outlets and audience preferences. This knowledge enables businesses to make informed decisions when selecting media outlets for their promotional efforts, ensuring optimal engagement with the target audience.

Importance Of Creating A Marketing

The Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture

Climate change is having a significant impact on agricultural practices around the world. This phenomenon has resulted in changes in temperature, precipitation patterns, and the occurrence of extreme weather events, all of which greatly affect crop production and overall agricultural productivity.

Increasing temperature: Rising global temperatures have widespread effects on agricultural systems. Higher temperatures can lead to decreased crop yields and reduced quality of harvested crops. Heat stress can negatively impact plant growth and development, affecting the overall productivity of crops.

Altered precipitation patterns: Changes in rainfall patterns due to climate change pose challenges for farmers. Increased frequency and intensity of rainfall events can result in soil erosion and waterlogging, impacting crop growth. Conversely, droughts can lead to water scarcity and hinder crop development.

Changes in pests and diseases: Climate change can alter the geographic distribution and behavior of pests and diseases that affect agricultural crops. Warmer temperatures and altered rainfall patterns can create favorable conditions for the proliferation of pests and the spread of diseases, leading to increased crop damage and reduced yields.

Extreme weather events: Climate change is associated with a higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts. These events can have devastating effects on crop production. Flooding can wash away crops, while droughts can dry out farmland, causing irreversible damage to agricultural systems.

The implications of climate change for agriculture are substantial. Farmers need to adapt to these changing conditions and employ sustainable agricultural practices to minimize the negative impacts. This includes implementing efficient irrigation systems, adopting drought-tolerant crop varieties, and implementing pest and disease management strategies.

In conclusion, climate change poses significant challenges to global agriculture. The effects of rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, changes in pests and diseases, and increased frequency of extreme weather events all contribute to decreased agricultural productivity. It is crucial for farmers and policymakers to prioritize climate change mitigation and adaptation measures to ensure the long-term sustainability of agricultural systems.

Key points:

Rising temperatures reduce crop yields and affect crop quality.

• Changes in precipitation patterns lead to soil erosion, waterlogging, and droughts.
• Climate change alters the distribution and behavior of pests and diseases.
• Extreme weather events have devastating effects on crop production.

“The effects of climate change on agriculture are becoming increasingly evident. It is crucial that we take immediate action to address this issue and implement sustainable practices to safeguard our food production.”

How do you write a promotional strategy for a business plan?

To develop an effective promotional strategy for a business plan, several key steps need to be followed. First, it is crucial to understand the basic marketing mix , which includes the product, price, place, and promotion. By examining these elements, you can identify the unique selling points of your business and determine how to promote them effectively.

Next, conducting thorough research on the content your target audience consumes is essential. This includes understanding their preferences, interests, and needs. By knowing the type of content they engage with, you can tailor your promotional strategy to effectively reach and engage with them.

Furthermore, it is important to identify the channels and media outlets your target audience uses. This includes social media platforms, websites, publications, or events they frequently engage with. By selecting the appropriate channels and outlets, you can deliver your promotional messages to the right audience at the right time.

Lastly, determining your marketing budget is crucial to plan and execute your promotional strategy effectively. Allocating resources appropriately allows you to invest in various promotional activities such as advertising, content creation, partnerships, and events.

By following these steps, businesses can develop a comprehensive and tailored promotional strategy that effectively reaches and engages their target audience.

What are promotional strategies examples?

Promotional strategies encompass various methods to create brand awareness and drive customer engagement. Some examples of promotional strategies include television commercials, billboards, social media campaigns, and email marketing. By leveraging traditional and online advertising , businesses can effectively reach a wide audience and convey their message creatively. Additionally, personal selling allows companies to establish trustworthy relationships with customers by providing tailored product information and valuable recommendations. Direct marketing strategies, such as direct mail and telemarketing, enable businesses to directly communicate with their target audience, enhancing customer engagement. Moreover, public relations and sponsorships can build a positive brand image by associating the business with reputable events or organizations. Lastly, sales promotions, such as discounts, coupons, and loyalty programs, encourage immediate purchases and foster customer loyalty.

What is an example of a promotion in a business plan?

In the context of a business plan, an example of a promotion can be the implementation of a referral program. This program encourages existing customers to refer their friends and family to the business in exchange for a reward or incentive. By offering a discount, free product, or exclusive access to certain benefits, this promotion not only drives customer loyalty but also expands the customer base through word-of-mouth marketing. The referral program creates a win-win situation, benefiting both the loyal customers and the business by fostering growth and increasing brand awareness.

What are the 4 types of promotional strategies?

The four types of promotional strategies are direct marketing, sales promotion, digital marketing, and personal selling. Direct marketing involves reaching out to specific companies or individuals to inform them about services, upcoming sales, or new products. Sales promotion includes various promotional techniques such as discounts, coupons, contests, or free samples to encourage and incentivize customers to make a purchase. Digital marketing utilizes online platforms and channels to promote products or services, including social media advertising, email marketing, search engine optimization, and content marketing. Personal selling involves direct interaction with potential customers, either face-to-face or over the phone, to persuade and convince them to buy a product or service.

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How to create a winning marketing plan, with 3 examples from world-class teams

A marketing plan helps leaders clearly visualize marketing strategies across channels, so they can ensure every campaign drives pipeline and revenue. In this article you’ll learn eight steps to create a winning marketing plan that brings business-critical goals to life, with examples from word-class teams.

To be successful as a marketer, you have to deliver the pipeline and the revenue.”

In other words—they need a well-crafted marketing plan.

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Learn how to create the right marketing plan to hit your revenue targets in 2024. Hear best practices from marketing experts, including how to confidently set and hit business goals, socialize marketing plans, and move faster with clearer resourcing.

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How do you build the right marketing plan to hit your revenue goals? Follow these eight steps for success:

1. Define your plan

First you need to define each specific component of your plan to ensure stakeholders are aligned on goals, deliverables, resources, and more. Ironing out these details early on ensures your plan supports the right business objectives, and that you have sufficient resources and time to get the job done. 

Get started by asking yourself the following questions: 

What resources do I need? 

What is the vision?

What is the value?

What is the goal?

Who is my audience?

What are my channels?

What is the timeline?

For example, imagine you’re creating an annual marketing plan to improve customer adoption and retention in the next fiscal year. Here’s how you could go through the questions above to ensure you’re ready to move forward with your plan: 

I will need support from the content team, web team, and email team to create targeted content for existing customers. One person on each team will need to be dedicated full-time to this initiative. To achieve this, the marketing team will need an additional $100K in budget and one new headcount. 

What is the vision?  

To create a positive experience for existing customers, address new customer needs, and encourage them to upgrade. We’ll do this by serving them how-to content, new feature updates, information about deals and pricing, and troubleshooting guides. 

According to the Sales Benchmark Index (SBI) , CEOs and go-to-market leaders report that more than 60% of their net-new revenue will come from existing customers in 2023. By retaining and building on the customers we have, we can maintain revenue growth over time. 

To decrease the customer churn rate from 30% to 10%, and increase upgrades from 20% to 30% in the next fiscal year. 

All existing customers. 

The main channel will be email. Supporting marketing channels include the website, blog, YouTube, and social media. 

The first half of the next fiscal year. 

One of the most important things to do as you create your marketing strategy is to identify your target audience . As with all marketing, you need to know who you’re marketing to. If you’re having a hard time determining who exactly your target audience is, try the bullseye targeting framework . The bullseye makes it easy for you to determine who your target audience is by industry, geography, company size, psychographics, demographics, and more.

2. Identify key metrics for success 

Now it’s time to define what key marketing metrics you’ll use to measure success. Your key metrics will help you measure and track the performance of your marketing activities. They’ll also help you understand how your efforts tie back to larger business goals. 

Once you establish key metrics, use a goal-setting framework—like objectives and key results (OKRs) or SMART goals —to fully flush out your marketing objectives. This ensures your targets are as specific as possible, with no ambiguity about what should be accomplished by when. 

Example: If a goal of your marketing plan is to increase email subscriptions and you follow the SMART goal framework (ensuring your objective is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) your goal might look like this: Increase email subscription rate from 10% to 20% in H1 . 

3. Research your competition 

It’s easy to get caught up in your company’s world, but there’s a lot of value in understanding your competitors . Knowing how they market themselves will help you find opportunities to make your company stand out and capture more market share.

Make sure you’re not duplicating your competitors’ efforts. If you discover a competitor has already executed your idea, then it might be time to go back to the drawing board and brainstorm new ways to differentiate yourself.  By looking at your competitors, you might be surprised at the type of inspiration and opportunities you’ll find.

To stay ahead of market trends, conduct a SWOT analysis for your marketing plan. A SWOT analysis helps you improve your plan by identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 

Example: If your competitor launches a social media campaign identical to what you had planned, go back to the drawing board and see how you can build off their campaign. Ask yourself: How can we differentiate our campaign while still getting our message across? What are the weaknesses of their campaign that we can capitalize on? What angles did they not approach?

4. Integrate your marketing efforts

Here’s where the fun comes in. Let’s dive into the different components that go into building a successful marketing plan. You’ll want to make sure your marketing plan includes multiple supporting activities that all add up into a powerful marketing machine. Some marketing plan components include: 

Lead generation

Social media

Product marketing

Public relations

Analyst relations

Customer marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Conversational marketing

Knowing where your consumer base spends the most time is significant for nailing this step. You need to have a solid understanding of your target audience before integrating your marketing efforts. 

Example: If your target audience is executives that spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, focus your social media strategy around placing branded content on LinkedIn. 

5. Differentiate with creative content

Forty-nine percent of marketers say visual images are hugely important to their content strategy. In other words, a clear brand and creative strategy is an essential component to every marketing plan. As you craft your own creative strategy, here are some tips to keep in mind: 

Speak to your audience: When defining your creative strategy, think about your audience—what you want them to feel, think, and do when they see your marketing. Will your audience find your creative work relevant? If your audience can’t relate to your creative work, they won’t feel connected to the story you’re trying to tell. 

Think outside the box: Find innovative ways to engage your audience, whether through video, animations, or interactive graphics. Know what screens your creative work will live on, whether desktop, mobile, or tablet, and make sure they display beautifully and load quickly across every type of device. 

Tie everything back to CTAs: It’s easy to get caught up in the creative process, so it’s important to never lose sight of your ultimate goal: Get your audience to take action. Always find the best way to display strong Calls to Action (CTAs) in your creative work. We live in a visual world—make sure your creative content counts.

Streamline creative production:   Once you’ve established a strong creative strategy, the next step is to bring your strategy to life in the production stage. It’s vital to set up a strong framework for your creative production process to eliminate any unnecessary back and forth and potential bottlenecks. Consider establishing creative request forms , streamlining feedback and approval processes, and taking advantage of integrations that might make your designers’ lives easier.

Example: If your brand is fun and approachable, make sure that shows in your creative efforts. Create designs and CTAs that spark joy, offer entertainment, and alleviate the pressure in choosing a partner.

6. Operationalize your marketing plan

Turn your plan into action by making goals, deliverables, and timelines clear for every stakeholder—so teams stay accountable for getting work done. The best way to do this is by centralizing all the details of your marketing plan in one platform , so teams can access the information they need and connect campaign work back to company goals.  

With the right work management tool , you can: 

Set goals for every marketing activity, and connect campaign work to overarching marketing and business objectives so teams focus on revenue-driving projects. 

Centralize deliverables for your entire marketing plan in one project or portfolio .

Mark major milestones and visualize your plan as a timeline, Gantt chart, calendar, list, or Kanban board—without doing any extra work. 

Quickly loop in stakeholders with status updates so they’re always up to date on progress. This is extremely important if you have a global team to ensure efforts aren’t being duplicated. 

Use automations to seamlessly hand off work between teams, streamlining processes like content creation and reviews. 

Create dashboards to report on work and make sure projects are properly staffed , so campaigns stay on track. 

With everything housed in one spot, you can easily visualize the status of your entire marketing plan and keep work on track. Building an effective marketing plan is one thing, but how you operationalize it can be your secret to standout marketing.

Example: If your strategy focuses on increasing page views, connect all campaign work to an overarching OKR—like “we will double page views as measured by the amount of organic traffic on our blog.” By making that goal visible to all stakeholders, you help teams prioritize the right work. 

See marketing planning in action

With Asana, marketing teams can connect work, standardize processes, and automate workflows—all in one place.

7. Measure performance

Nearly three in four CMOs use revenue growth to measure success, so it’s no surprise that measuring performance is necessary. You established your key metrics in step two, and now it’s time to track and report on them in step eight.

Periodically measure your marketing efforts to find areas of improvement so you can optimize in real-time. There are always lessons to be learned when looking at data. You can discover trends, detect which marketing initiatives performed well, and course-correct what isn’t performing well. And when your plan is complete, you can apply these learnings to your next initiative for improved results. 

Example: Say you discover that long-form content is consistently bringing in 400% more page views than short-form content. As a result, you’ll want to focus on producing more long-form content in your next marketing plan.

Marketing plan examples from world-class teams

The best brands in the world bring their marketing plans to life every day. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out these examples from successful marketing teams.

Autodesk grows site traffic 30% three years in a row

When the Autodesk team launched Redshift, it was initially a small business blog. The editorial team executed a successful marketing plan to expand it into a premier owned-media site, making it a destination for stories and videos about the future of making. 

The team scaled content production to support seven additional languages. By standardizing their content production workflow and centralizing all content conversations in one place, the editorial team now publishes 2X more content monthly. Read the case study to learn more about how Autodesk runs a well-oiled content machine. Trinny London perfects new customer acquisition 

In consumer industries, social media is crucial for building a community of people who feel an affinity with the brand—and Trinny London is no exception. As such, it was imperative that Trinny London’s ad spend was targeted to the correct audience. Using a work management tool, Trinny London was able to nail the process of creating, testing, and implementing ads on multiple social channels.

With the help of a centralized tool, Trinny London improved its ad spend and drove more likes and subscriptions on its YouTube page. Read the case study to learn more about how Trinny London capitalized on paid advertising and social media. 

Turn your marketing plan into marketing success 

A great marketing plan promotes clarity and accountability across teams—so every stakeholder knows what they’re responsible for, by when. Reading this article is the first step to achieving better team alignment, so you can ensure every marketing campaign contributes to your company’s bottom line. 

Use a free marketing plan template to get started

Once you’ve created your marketing strategy and are ready to operationalize your marketing plan, get started with one of our marketing templates . 

Our marketing templates can help you manage and track every aspect of your marketing plan, from creative requests to approval workflows. Centralize your entire marketing plan in one place, customize the roadmap, assign tasks, and build a timeline or calendar. 

Once you’ve operationalized your entire marketing plan with one of our templates, share it with your stakeholders so everyone can work together in the same tool. Your entire team will feel connected to the marketing plan, know what to prioritize, and see how their work contributes to your project objectives . Choose the best marketing template for your team:

Marketing project plan template

Marketing campaign plan template

Product marketing launch template

Editorial calendar template

Agency collaboration template

Creative requests template

Event planning template

GTM strategy template

Still have questions? We have answers. 

What is a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is a detailed roadmap that outlines the different strategies your team will use to achieve organizational objectives. Rather than focusing solely on the end goal, a marketing plan maps every step you need to reach your destination—whether that’s driving pipeline for sales, nurturing your existing customer base, or something in-between. 

As a marketing leader, you know there’s never a shortage of great campaign and project ideas. A marketing plan gives you a framework to effectively prioritize work that aligns to overarching business goals—and then get that work done. Some elements of marketing plans include:

Current business plan

Mission statement  

Business goals

Target customers  

Competitive analysis 

Current marketing mix

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Marketing budget  

What is the purpose of a marketing plan?

The purpose of a marketing plan is to grow your company’s consumer base and strengthen your brand, while aligning with your organization’s mission and vision . The plan should analyze the competitive landscape and industry trends, offer actionable insights to help you gain a competitive advantage, and document each step of your strategy—so you can see how your campaigns work together to drive overarching business goals. 

What is the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy? 

A marketing plan contains many marketing strategies across different channels. In that way, marketing strategies contribute to your overall marketing plan, working together to reach your company’s overarching business goals.

For example, imagine you’re about to launch a new software product and the goal of your marketing plan is to drive downloads. Your marketing plan could include marketing strategies like creating top-of-funnel blog content and launching a social media campaign. 

What are different types of marketing plans? 

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, what your timeline is, or which facet of marketing you’re driving, you’ll need to create a different type of marketing plan. Some different types of marketing plans include, but aren’t limited to:

General marketing plan: A general marketing plan is typically an annual or quarterly marketing plan that details the overarching marketing strategies for the period. This type of marketing plan outlines marketing goals, the company’s mission, buyer personas, unique selling propositions, and more. A general marketing plan lays the foundation for other, more specific marketing plans that an organization may employ. 

Product launch marketing plan: A product launch marketing plan is a step-by-step plan for marketing a new product or expanding into a new market. It helps you build awareness and interest by targeting the right audience, with the right messaging, in the right timeframe—so potential customers are ready to buy your new offering right away. Nailing your product launch marketing plan can reinforce your overall brand and fast-track sales. For a step-by-step framework to organize all the moving pieces of a launch, check out our product marketing launch template .

Paid marketing plan: This plan includes all the paid strategies in your marketing plan, like pay-per-click, paid social media advertising, native advertising, and display advertising. It’s especially important to do audience research prior to launching your paid marketing plan to ensure you’re maximizing ROI. Consult with content strategists to ensure your ads align with your buyer personas so you know you’re showing ads to the right people. 

Content marketing plan: A content marketing plan outlines the different content strategies and campaigns you’ll use to promote your product or service. When putting together a content marketing plan, start by identifying your audience. Then use market research tools to get the best insights into what topics your target audience is most interested in.

SEO marketing plan: Your SEO marketing plan should work directly alongside your content marketing plan as you chart content that’s designed to rank in search results. While your content marketing plan should include all types of content, your SEO marketing plan will cover the top-of-funnel content that drives new users to your site. Planning search engine-friendly content is only one step in your SEO marketing plan. You’ll also need to include link-building and technical aspects in order to ensure your site and content are as optimized as possible.

Social media marketing plan: This plan will highlight the marketing strategies you plan to accomplish on social media. Like in any general or digital marketing plan , your social media strategy should identify your ideal customer base and determine how they engage on different social media platforms. From there, you can cater your social media content to your target audience.  

Related resources

How Asana streamlines strategic planning with work management

Write better AI prompts: A 4-sentence framework

What is content marketing? A complete guide

Smooth product launches are simpler than you think

How to Create a Successful Promotional Strategy that Maximizes Sales Potential

Looking to boost sales and get more traffic to your website? Try a promotion. When marketed well, promotions are ideal strategies for reaching out to existing and new customers.

A promotion gives your audience an explicit incentive to buy. It creates urgency for casual browsers to convert. It attracts value-seekers and nudges fence-sitters to finally click “buy now.”

A promotion also helps you achieve long-term growth. With the right marketing plan, your promotion can capture a new cohort of shoppers and nurture them into long-term customers. But first, you need a strategy for creating and publicizing your promotion.

8 Tips for creating a strong promotional strategy

Most promotions have 2 primary goals: to increase revenue and maximize market exposure. As you create a strategy geared toward those goals, remember the following tips.

1. Keep promotions simple

You’re likely to get a high response rate if your promotions are easy to understand and redeem. The simplest strategy is to discount the item for everyone. If you strike out the original price on your website and display the new price, perhaps in a bolded font, people can easily see the benefit of the promotion.

Another option is to use promo codes. When you go this route, you need to make sure that the promo code is straightforward to use. Don’t make it so that people have to hunt down the code once they’re on your website.

If you’re sending an email, display the promo code prominently so people can go back and find it if they forget to copy it. Consider publishing the code on your website for easy access, too.

2. Bundle products together

One way companies sell more products is through bundling—offering 2 or more products for a combined cost that’s less than the total cost of the individual items when purchased separately. Merchants often use this strategy to move a product that isn’t selling well by pairing it with a popular product.

Say that you’re a jewelry retailer with earrings priced at $20 a pair and bracelets at $10 a pair. Your earrings are flying off the shelves, but no one’s biting at the bracelets. By offering a bundle of one pair of earrings with one bracelet for $25, you could move your bracelet stock and potentially get more loyal followers in the process.

One famous example comes from Nintendo, which sold 100,000 more consoles and more than a million game cartridges when bundling the 2.

3. Reward customers to boost orders

You can increase the average value of your orders (AOV) by offering a freebie when a customer reaches a certain purchase threshold.

One popular version of this strategy is conditional free shipping—the “Free Shipping over $X” offer. One article explains that free shipping would increase the likelihood of an online purchase for about 80% of US customers . If you have a lot of orders totaling $60, consider offering free shipping at $75.

If you can’t afford to offer free shipping, that’s okay. Choose a small complimentary item to offer when an order reaches a certain threshold.

4. Reward top customers with special offers

Some data analytics indicate that existing customers spend 31% more than new buyers, and they’re 50% more likely to try a new product. You can boost that loyalty by rewarding your highest spenders with customized offers.

To get even more out of this strategy, encourage your rewarded customers to share their good fortune on social media. This is a great opportunity for a referral bonus.

5. Re-merchandise your product and homepage

Many retailers think of merchandising as a brick-and-mortar strategy, but it’s just as important for e-commerce. Your customers get used to seeing your page as it is. When you mix it up and add new visual elements, you draw attention to your promotion.

Consider remarketing your homepage and product pages when you start your promotion. A good way to start is by revamping your homepage, placing promoted products front and center. You can also revitalize any category and individual product pages, highlighting not only the promotion but also any accessories, add-ons, or popular related products.

6. Seed product reviews

Reviews matter to many customers. One study shows that close to 95% of consumers read reviews before making a purchase. On the retailer’s end, showing 5 reviews compared to no reviews for a product can increase conversions by up to 270% .

Before you run your promotion, make sure your products have good reviews. Meanwhile, start collecting original reviews. One particularly effective technique, especially for new product launches, is to send products to customers and ask for reviews. Then, with their permission, you can post them to your product pages.

Buyers can give you reviews as well. Mailchimp makes it easy to collect reviews from current customers through automated product follow-up emails . All you need to do is add language requesting a review of a recently purchased product, perhaps with a link to a review submission page on your website.

You can link to third-party review sites, too. Don’t worry if not all of the reviews there are glowing—research shows that negative reviews help to build trust and can lead to as many as 85% more conversions .

7. Test out different promotions

Different audiences respond to different promotions. Consider conducting A/B testing, an easy and effective way to understand how your audience engages.

A/B testing sends out 2 versions of a campaign—a percent-off promotion versus a dollars-off promotion, for example. Mailchimp offers A/B testing as a feature available in all paid plans, so you can easily refine your strategy and optimize your results.

8. Stay memorable

Consumers have promotions coming into their inboxes and social media feeds every day. It’s important for you to stand out as a brand, preferably with a personal touch. Consider adding a thank-you card or free sample item in the package to delight your customers.

Promote your promotion

Now that you have the insider knowledge to create a strong marketing promotional strategy, you can focus on publicizing the promotion. Build awareness to maximize your revenue potential.

Don’t worry—Mailchimp is here to help you every step of the way.

First, make sure your online store is connected to Mailchimp . With a connected store, you can unlock the e-commerce tools , insights , and data you need to sell more stuff—even with our free plan. Use Mailchimp's powerful tools to promote your promotions , and let their robust analytics show you which tools contribute most to your sales.

Email marketing may have a decades-long history, but it hasn’t lost any of its clout.

Promotions make your emails even more attractive to consumers.

Mailchimp makes it easy to send professional-quality promotional emails with their easy-to-use email builder. No need to spend time creating emails from scratch when Mailchimp's tool functionality and beautiful templates make the process a breeze.

Expert tip: As an added perk, give your most loyal customers early access to the promotion.

Social media

Social media ads and organic posts can publicize your promotion to new and existing customers. Target existing customers and find new customers with similar interests. And best of all Mailchimp makes it easy to build engaging ads . Your customers are on social media, so make sure that you don’t miss a sales opportunity to highlight your offers.

Retargeting

In the age of automation , it’s easy to set up messages to retarget customers who have gone astray. Maybe someone filled up a shopping cart and then decided against the purchase, or maybe they just browsed and then changed their mind. A promotion can get many of these people back on board with your company.

Mailchimp makes it easy to send customized abandoned cart and retargeting emails . Then, those people get special emails inviting them back to complete their purchase.

In today’s digital world, postcards can make a big impression. Mailchimp makes it easy to create and send promotional postcards to your most loyal customers. A postcard won’t get lost in their email inbox, and the sensory engagement factor will make shoppers feel special. Postcards are also a great way to target a select audience with personalized offers.

Turn first-time customers into loyal customers

Promotions are time-tested strategies for acquiring new customers, but you don’t want to stop there. Now that you know how to get people buying, it’s time to turn them into regular customers.

Loyalty is a key driver of repeat purchases. Here are some important tips that can help you turn new buyers into loyal customers.

Tag new customers

The more you know about your new customers, the better you can personalize messaging for them in the future. Make sure you’re tagging all of the new customers who visit your site during your promotion. Tag them based on what they shop for, and consider adding an Engages with Promotions tag.

Expert tip: For better conversions, use your audience tags to personalize future communications. Segmented, targeted, and personalized emails could generate a meaningful amount of revenue , and conversions can go up even more with more personalized pageviews .

Send welcome emails

Welcome emails are a great way to build relationships. If you’re not already doing it, add an option on your checkout page where customers can give you their email address and opt in to future messages. Get a welcome message out to everyone who signs up. Think of what a great first impression you’ll be leaving with your new customers.

Expert tip: If you set up an automation that sends out welcome emails to new customers, you can be sure those messages will go out consistently. Even better, it’ll happen without any ongoing effort on your part.

Keep communication going

Your new customers should keep hearing from you after the promotion is over. Use the tags you set up for those customers to send out personalized product recommendations.

Through your connected store, Mailchimp can help to predict what your customers will like, so you can send emails with product recommendations to encourage them to keep shopping.

Put your newest products and best-sellers front and center to drive interest. This refreshes customer engagement and keeps your brand at the top of buyers’ minds, helping you drive conversions.

Expert tip: Make sure your ecommerce store is connected to Mailchimp so that you can unlock even more tools to better target your customers.

Getting started with your promotion

With these tips in your knowledge toolbox, you’re ready to start designing your promotion and getting the word out about it.

If you’re already a Mailchimp user, you have plenty of tools at your disposal. Start with your audience dashboard . Look at who your customers are and what segments you might want to reach with your promotion.

Next, go to your website and start adding promotional content. If you have a site with Mailchimp , you can create unlimited landing pages for the promotion.

If you want to run a promotion and don’t currently have a website, don't worry—Mailchimp has you covered. Leverage their beautiful templates to quickly create a shoppable landing page so customers can purchase your products.

Mailchimp makes it easy for you to create effective multichannel marketing campaigns. With our reporting functionality, you can take these campaigns to the next level. You learn where you get the most engagement, who’s responding to you, and what your customers have in common. By reviewing this information after your campaign, you can continue to optimize promotional strategies.

Promotions are an impactful way of driving sales. The key is to create an attractive offer, market it smartly, and follow up in a way that earns the loyalty of both old and new buyers.

Your customers are waiting. It's time to start creating the kind of promotion that they can't resist.

Related Topics

• Retail Marketing
• E-Commerce Automations
• Abandoned Cart Emails
• Product Recommendations
• Start an E-Commerce Business

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Blog Marketing What is a Marketing Plan & How to Create One [with Examples]

What is a Marketing Plan & How to Create One [with Examples]

Written by: Sara McGuire Oct 26, 2023

A marketing plan is a blueprint that outlines your strategies to attract and convert your ideal customers as a part of your customer acquisition strategy . It’s a comprehensive document that details your:

• Target audience:  Who you’re trying to reach
• Marketing goals:  What you want to achieve
• Strategies and tactics:  How you’ll reach your goals
• Budget:  Resources you’ll allocate
• Metrics:  How you’ll measure success

In this article, I’ll explain everything you need to know about creating a marketing plan . If you need a little extra help, there are professionally designed marketing plan templates that’ll make the process much easier. So, let’s ditch the confusion and get started!

Click to jump ahead:

What is a marketing plan?

How to write a marketing plan .

• Marketing plan v.s. business plan
• Types of marketing plans

9 marketing plan examples to inspire your growth strategy

Marketing plan faqs.

A marketing plan is a report that outlines your marketing strategy for your products or services, which could be applicable for the coming year, quarter or month.  

Watch this quick, 13-minute video for more details on what a marketing plan is and how to make one yourself:

Typically, a marketing plan includes:

• An overview of your business’s marketing and advertising goals
• A description of your business’s current marketing position
• A timeline of when tasks within your strategy will be completed
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) you will be tracking
• A description of your business’s target market and customer needs
• A description of how you will measure the performance of the strategy

For example, this marketing plan template provides a high-level overview of the business and competitors before diving deep into specific goals, KPIs and tactics:

Learning how to write a marketing plan forces you to think through the important steps that lead to an effective marketing strategy . And a well-defined plan will help you stay focused on your high-level marketing goals.

With Venngage’s extensive catalog of marketing plan templates , creating your marketing plan isn’t going to be hard or tedious. In fact, Venngage has plenty of helpful communications and design resources for marketers. If you’re ready to get started, sign up for  Venngage for Marketers   now. It’s free to register and start designing.

Whether you’re a team trying to set smarter marketing goals, a consultant trying to set your client in the right direction, or a one-person team hustling it out, Venngage for Marketers helps you get things done.

As mentioned above, the scope of your marketing plan varies depending on its purpose or the type of organization it’s for.

For example, you could look for performance marketing agency to create a marketing plan that provides an overview of a company’s entire marketing strategy or simply focus on a specific channel like SEO, social media marketing, content marketing and more, like in this example:

A typical outline of a marketing plan includes:

• Executive summary
• Goals and objectives
• User personas
• Competitor analysis/SWOT analysis
• Baseline metrics
• Marketing strategy
• Tracking guidelines

Below you will see in details how to write each section as well as some examples of how you can design each section in a marketing plan.

Let’s look at how to create a successful marketing plan (click to jump ahead):

• Write a simple executive summary
• Set metric-driven marketing goals
• Outline your user personas
• Research all of your competitors
• Set accurate key baselines & metrics
• Create an actionable marketing strategy
• Set tracking or reporting guidelines

1. Write a simple executive summary

Starting your marketing plan off on the right foot is important. You want to pull people into your amazing plan for marketing domination. Not bore them to tears.

One of the best ways to get people excited to read your marketing plan is with a well-written executive summary. An executive summary introduces readers to your company goals, marketing triumphs, future plans, and other important contextual facts.

Basically, you can use the Executive Summary as a primer for the rest of your marketing plan.

Include things like:

• Simple marketing goals
• High-level metrics
• Important company milestones
• Facts about your brand
• Employee anecdotes
• Future goals & plans

Try to keep your executive summary rather brief and to the point. You aren’t writing a novel, so try to keep it under three to four paragraphs.

Take a look at the executive summary in the marketing plan example below:

The executive summary is only two paragraphs long — short but effective.

The executive summary tells readers about the company’s growth, and how they are about to overtake one of their competitors. But there’s no mention of specific metrics or figures. That will be highlighted in the next section of the marketing plan.

An effective executive summary should have enough information to pique the reader’s interest, but not bog them down with specifics yet. That’s what the rest of your marketing plan is for!

The executive summary also sets the tone for your marketing plan. Think about what tone will fit your brand ? Friendly and humorous? Professional and reliable? Inspiring and visionary?

2. Set metric-driven marketing goals

After you perfect your executive summary, it’s time to outline your marketing goals.

(If you’ve never set data-driven goals like this before, it would be worth reading this growth strategy guide ).

This is one of the most important parts of the entire marketing plan, so be sure to take your time and be as clear as possible. Moreover, optimizing your marketing funnel is key. Employing effective funnel software can simplify operations and provide valuable customer insights. It facilitates lead tracking, conversion rate analysis, and efficient marketing optimization .

As a rule of thumb, be as specific as possible. The folks over at  VoyMedia  advise that you should set goals that impact website traffic, conversions, and customer success — and to use real numbers. Complement your goals with website optimization tools (e.g., A/B testing speed with Nostra – check Nostra AI review to learn more) to further improve conversions.

Avoid outlining vague goals like:

• Get more Twitter followers
• Write more articles
• Create more YouTube videos (like educational or Explainer videos )
• Increase retention rate
• Decrease bounce rate

Instead, identify  key performance metrics  (KPI) you want to impact and the percentage you want to increase them by.

Take a look at the goals page in the marketing plan example below:

They not only identify a specific metric in each of their goals, but they also set a timeline for when they will be increased.

The same vague goals listed earlier become much clearer when specific numbers and timelines are applied to them:

• Get 100 new Twitter followers per month
• Write 5 more articles per week
• Create 10 YouTube videos each year
• Increase retention rate by 15% by 2020
• Decrease bounce rate by 5% by Q1
• Create an online course  and get 1,000 new leads
• Focus more on local SEO strategies
• Conduct a monthly social media report to track progress

You can dive even deeper into your marketing goals if you want (generally, the more specific, the better). Here’s a marketing plan example that shows how to outline your growth goals:

3. Outline your user personas

Now, this may not seem like the most important part of your marketing plan, but I think it holds a ton of value.

Outlining your user personas is an important part of a marketing plan that should not be overlooked.

You should be asking not just how you can get the most visitors to your business, but how you can get the right visitors.

Who are your ideal customers? What are their goals? What are their biggest problems? How does your business solve customer problems?

Answering these questions will take lots of research, but it’s essential information to get.

Some ways to conduct user research are:

• Interviewing your users (either in person or on the phone)
• Conducting focus groups
• Researching other businesses in the same industry
• Surveying your audience

Then, you will need to compile your user data into a user persona  guide.

Take a look at how detailed this user persona template is below:

Taking the time to identify specific demographic traits, habits and goals will make it easier for you to cater your marketing plan to them.

Here’s how you can create a user persona guide:

The first thing you should add is a profile picture or icon for each user persona. It can help to put a face to your personas, so they seem more real.

Next, list demographic information like:

• Identifiers
• Activities/Hobbies

The user persona example above uses sliding scales to identify personality traits like introversion vs. extroversion and thinking vs. feeling. Identifying what type of personality your target users tend to have an influence on the messaging you use in your marketing content.

Meanwhile, this user persona guide identifies specific challenges the user faces each day:

But if you don’t want to go into such precise detail, you can stick to basic information, like in this marketing plan example:

Most businesses will have a few different types of target users. That’s why it’s pertinent to identify and create several different user personas . That way, you can better segment your marketing campaigns and set separate goals, if necessary.

Here’s a marketing plan example with a segmented user persona guide:

The important thing is for your team or client to have a clear picture of who their target user is and how they can appeal to their specific problems.

Start creating robust user personas using Venngage’s user persona guide .

4. Conduct an extensive competitor analysis

Next, on the marketing plan checklist, we have the competitor research section. This section will help you identify who your competitors are, what they’re doing, and how you could carve yourself a place alongside them in your niche — and ideally, surpass them. It’s something you can learn to do with rank tracking software .

Competitor research is also incredibly important if you are starting a blog .

Typically, your competitor research should include:

• Who their marketing team is
• Who their leadership team is
• What their marketing strategy and strategic marketing plan are (this will probably revolve some reverse-engineering)
• What their sales strategy is (same deal)
• Social Media strategy (are they using discounting strategies such as coupon marketing to get conversions)
• Their market cap/financials
• Their yearly growth (you will probably need to use a marketing tool like Ahrefs to do this)
• The number of customers they have & their user personas

Also, take as deep a dive as you can into the strategies they use across their:

• Blog/Content marketing
• Social media marketing
• SEO Marketing
• Video marketing
• And any other marketing tactics they use

Research their strengths and weaknesses in all parts of their company, and you will find some great opportunities. Bookmark has a great guide to different marketing strategies for small businesses  if you need some more information there.

You can use this simple SWOT analysis worksheet to quickly work through all parts of their strategy as well:

Click the template above to create a SWOT chart . Customize the template to your liking — no design know-how needed.

Since you have already done all the research beforehand, adding this information to your marketing plan shouldn’t be that hard.

In this marketing plan example, some high-level research is outlined for 3 competing brands:

But you could take a deeper dive into different facets of your competitors’ strategies. This marketing plan example analyses a competitor’s content marketing strategy:

It can also be helpful to divide your competitors into Primary and Secondary groups. For example, Apple’s primary competitor may be Dell for computers, but its secondary competitor could be a company that makes tablets.

Your most dangerous competitors may not even be in the same industry as you. Like the CEO of Netflix said, “Sleep is our competition.”

5. Set accurate key baselines & metrics

It’s pretty hard to plan for the future if you don’t know where your business stands right now.

Before we do anything at Venngage, we find the baselines so we can compare future results to something. We do it so much it’s almost like second nature now!

Setting baselines will allow you to more accurately track your progress. You will also be able to better analyze what worked and what didn’t work, so you can build a stronger strategy. It will definitely help them clearly understand your goals and strategy as well.

Here’s a marketing plan example where the baselines are visualized:

Another way to include baselines in your plan is with a simple chart, like in the marketing plan example below:

Because data can be intimidating to a lot of people, visualizing your data using charts and infographics will help demystify the information.

6. Create an actionable marketing strategy

After pulling all the contextual information and relevant metrics into your marketing plan, it’s time to break down your marketing strategy.

Once again, it’s easier to communicate your information to your team or clients using visuals .

Mind maps are an effective way to show how a strategy with many moving parts ties together. For example, this mind map shows how the four main components of a marketing strategy interact together:

You can also use a flow chart to map out your strategy by objectives:

However you choose to visualize your strategy, your team should know exactly what they need to do. This is not the time to keep your cards close to your chest.

Your strategy section may need to take up a few pages to explain, like in the marketing plan example below:

With all of this information, even someone from the development team will understand what the marketing team is working on.

This minimalistic marketing plan example uses color blocks to make the different parts of the strategy easy to scan:

Breaking your strategy down into tasks will make it easier to tackle.

Another important way to visualize your marketing strategy is to create a project roadmap. A project roadmap visualizes the timeline of your product with individual tasks. Our roadmap maker can help you with this.

For example, this project roadmap shows how tasks on both the marketing and web design side run parallel to each other:

A simple timeline can also be used in your marketing plan:

Or a mind map, if you want to include a ton of information in a more organized way:

Even a simple “Next, Now, Later” chart can help visualize your strategy:

7. Set tracking or reporting guidelines

Close your marketing plan with a brief explanation of how you plan to track or measure your results. This will save you a lot of frustration down the line by standardizing how you track results across your team.

Like the other sections of your marketing plan, you can choose how in-depth you want to go. But there need to be some clear guidelines on how to measure the progress and results of your marketing plan.

At the bare minimum, your results tracking guidelines should specify:

• What you plan to track
• How you plan to track results
• How often you plan to measure

But you can more add tracking guidelines to your marketing plan if you see the need to. You may also want to include a template that your team or client can follow,  for  client reporting ,  ensure that the right metrics are being tracked.

The marketing plan example below dedicates a whole page to tracking criteria:

Use a task tracker to track tasks and marketing results, and a checklist maker to note down tasks, important life events, or tracking your daily life.

Similarly, the marketing plan example below talks about tracking content marketing instead:

Marketing plan vs. marketing strategy

Although often used interchangeably, the terms “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” do have some differences.

Simply speaking, a marketing strategy presents what the business will do in order to reach a certain goal. A marketing plan outlines the specific daily, weekly, monthly or yearly activities that the marketing strategy calls for. As a business, you can create a marketing proposal for the marketing strategies defined in your company’s marketing plan. There are various marketing proposal examples that you can look at to help with this.

A company’s extended marketing strategy can be like this:

Notice how it’s more general and doesn’t include the actual activities required to complete each strategy or the timeframe those marketing activities will take place. That kind of information is included in a marketing plan, like this marketing plan template which talks about the content strategy in detail:

Marketing plan v.s business plan

While both marketing plans and business plans are crucial documents for businesses, they serve distinct purposes and have different scopes. Here’s a breakdown of the key differences:

Business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines all aspects of your business, including:

• Mission and vision
• Products or services
• Target market
• Competition
• Management team
• Financial projections
• Marketing strategy (including a marketing plan)
• Operations plan

Marketing plan on the other hand, dives deep into the specific strategies and tactics related to your marketing efforts. It expands on the marketing section of a business plan by detailing:

• Specific marketing goals (e.g., brand awareness, lead generation, sales)
• Target audience analysis (detailed understanding of their needs and behaviors)
• Product:  Features, benefits, positioning
• Price:  Pricing strategy, discounts
• Place:  Distribution channels (online, offline)
• Promotion:  Advertising, social media, content marketing, public relations
• Budget allocation for different marketing activities
• Metrics and measurement to track progress and success

In short, business plans paint the entire business picture, while marketing plans zoom in on the specific strategies used to reach your target audience and achieve marketing goals.

Types of marketing plans that can transform your business strategy

Let’s take a look at several types of marketing plans you can create, along with specific examples for each.

1. General marketing strategic plan / Annual marketing plan

This is a good example of a marketing plan that covers the overarching annual marketing strategy for a company:

Another good example would be this Starbucks marketing plan:

This one-page marketing plan example from coffee chain Starbucks has everything at a glance. The bold headers and subheadings make it easier to segment the sections so readers can focus on the area most relevant to them.

What we like about this example is how much it covers. From the ideal buyer persona to actional activities, as well as positioning and metrics, this marketing plan has it all.

Another marketing plan example that caught our eye is this one from Cengage. Although a bit text-heavy and traditional, it explains the various sections well. The clean layout makes this plan easy to read and absorb.

The last marketing plan example we would like to feature in this section is this one from Lush cosmetics.

It is a long one but it’s also very detailed. The plan outlines numerous areas, including the company mission, SWOT analysis , brand positioning, packaging, geographical criteria, and much more.

2. Content marketing plan

A content marketing plan highlights different strategies , campaigns or tactics you can use for your content to help your business reach its goals.

This one-page marketing plan example from Contently outlines a content strategy and workflow using simple colors and blocks. The bullet points detail more information but this plan can easily be understood at a glance, which makes it so effective.

For a more detailed content marketing plan example, take a look at this template which features an editorial calendar you can share with the whole team:

3. SEO marketing plan

Your SEO marketing plan highlights what you plan to do for your SEO marketing strategy . This could include tactics for website on-page optimization , off-page optimization using AI SEO , and link building using an SEO PowerSuite backlink API for quick backlink profile checks.

This SEO marketing plan example discusses in detail the target audience of the business and the SEO plan laid out in different stages:

4. Social media marketing plan

Your social media marketing plan presents what you’ll do to reach your marketing goal through social media. This could include tactics specific to each social media channel that you own, recommendations on developing a new channel, specific campaigns you want to run, and so on, like how B2B channels use Linkedin to generate leads with automation tools and expand their customer base; or like making use of Twitter walls that could display live Twitter feeds from Twitter in real-time on digital screens.

For B2C brands, you can target Facebook and Instagram. Gain Instagram likes to build trust for your brand’s profile and post engaging content on both platforms. Leverage AI social media tools to automate and scale your content plan..

Edit this social media marketing plan example easily with Venngage’s drag-and-drop editor:

5. Demand generation marketing plan

This could cover your paid marketing strategy (which can include search ads, paid social media ads, traditional advertisements, etc.), email marketing strategy and more. Here’s an example:

1. Free marketing plan template

Here’s a free nonprofit marketing plan example that is ideal for organizations with a comprehensive vision to share. It’s a simple plan that is incredibly effective. Not only does the plan outline the core values of the company, it also shares the ideal buyer persona.

Note how the branding is consistent throughout this example so there is no doubt which company is presenting this plan. The content plan is an added incentive for anyone viewing the document to go ahead and give the team the green light.

2. Pastel social media marketing campaign template

Two-page marketing plan samples aren’t very common, but this free template proves how effective they are. There’s a dedicated section for business goals as well as for project planning .

The milestones for the marketing campaign are clearly laid out, which is a great way to show how organized this business strategy is.

3. Small business marketing strategy template

This marketing plan template is perfect for small businesses who set out to develop an overarching marketing strategy for the whole year:

Notice how this aligns pretty well with the marketing plan outline we discussed in previous sections.

In terms of specific tactics for the company’s marketing strategy, the template only discusses SEO strategy, but you can certainly expand on that section to discuss any other strategies — such as link building , that you would like to build out a complete marketing plan for.

4. Orange simple marketing proposal template

Marketing plans, like the sample below, are a great way to highlight what your business strategy and the proposal you wan to put forward to win potential customers.

5. One-page marketing fact sheet template

This one-page marketing plan example is great for showcasing marketing efforts in a persuasive presentation or to print out for an in-person meeting.

Note how the fact sheet breaks down the marketing budget as well as the key metrics for the organization. You can win over clients and partners with a plan like this.

6. Light company business fact sheet template

This one-page sample marketing plan clearly outlines the marketing objectives for the organization. It’s a simple but effective way to share a large amount of information in a short amount of time.

What really works with this example is that includes a mission statement, key contact information alongside all the key metrics.

7. Marketing media press kit template

This press kit marketing plan template is bright and unmistakable as belonging to the Cloud Nine marketing agency . The way the brand colors are used also helps diversify the layouts for each page, making the plan easier to read.

We like the way the marketing department has outlined the important facts about the organization. The bold and large numbers draw the eye and look impressive.

8. Professional marketing proposal template

Start your marketing campaign on a promising note with this marketing plan template. It’s short, sharp and to the point. The table of contents sets out the agenda, and there’s a page for the company overview and mission statement.

9. Social media marketing proposal template

A complete marketing plan example, like the one below, not only breaks down the business goals to be achieved but a whole lot more. Note how the terms and conditions and payment schedule are included, which makes this one of the most comprehensive marketing plans on our list.

What should marketing plans include?

Marketing plans should include:

• A detailed analysis of the target market and customer segments.
• Clear and achievable marketing objectives and goals.
• Strategies and tactics for product promotion and distribution.
• Budget allocation for various marketing activities.
• Timelines and milestones for the implementation of marketing strategies.
• Evaluation metrics and methods for tracking the success of the marketing plan.

What is an executive summary in a marketing plan and what is its main goal?

An executive summary in a marketing plan is a brief overview of the entire document, summarizing the key points, goals, and strategies. Its main goal is to provide readers with a quick understanding of the plan’s purpose and to entice them to read further.

What are the results when a marketing plan is effective?

When a marketing plan is effective, businesses can experience increased brand visibility, higher customer engagement , improved sales and revenue, and strengthened customer loyalty.

What is the first section of a marketing plan?

The first section of a marketing plan is typically the “Executive Summary,” which provides a concise overview of the entire plan, including the business’s goals and the strategies to achieve them.

Now that you have the basics for designing your own marketing plan, it’s time to get started:

More marketing design guides and templates:

• Marketing Infographics: The Definitive Guide [Includes Infographic Templates]
• 20+ Business Pitch Deck Templates to Win New Clients and Investors
• 20+ White Paper Examples [Design Guide + White Paper Templates]
• The Evolution of Marketing [Timeline Infographic]

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A Guide To Business Promotion

April 27, 2022 (Updated: October 25, 2023)

Industry professionals use business promotion to get more attention for their products, services, and brands. Promotional strategies may answer the question, “How do you get your offerings in front of people?” Steps like creating a cohesive message and identifying a target audience to receive it are just two parts of a more comprehensive promotion plan you can implement with your company. In this article, we discuss:

What Is Business Promotion?

Promotion vs. advertising, types of business promotion, how does business promotion work, should i be promoting my business, business promotion strategy fundamentals, business promotion strategy overview, promotional marketing metrics.

Business promotion is a broad marketing term that includes all methods companies use to promote visibility for products, services, events, and brands. It includes concepts like advertisements, efforts like campaigns, and items like branded giveaway products. There are multiple categories into which your promotions can fall, including:

• Personal selling: Consumer and company relationship building tactics, such as trust and loyalty, through marketing, sales, and customer service
• Sales promotions: Discounts, giveaways, free services, contests, and coupons
• Public relations: Planned efforts, such as sponsoring a charity fun run, to maintain a positive brand image with the public as a whole
• Above the line promotions: Traditional and online advertising

While some marketing and finance teams may use the terms promotion and advertising interchangeably, they aren’t the same thing. Advertising is one specific type of promotion. It’s a single action you take to promote a product or service. Generally, advertising refers to controlled or paid media messages. In contrast, promotion is the sum of all efforts your company undertakes to increase consumer awareness of its products and services.

There are many types of real-world and virtual promotions a business can use to bring awareness to a company and include them in a marketing plan. Some include:

Business Documents

Business documents like business cards can help with networking. The small contact cards provide information about individual employees and the company as a whole. Other types of business documents used in promotion include branded letterheads and customized email signatures.

Charity Events

Charity events, or any events, are great venues for promotion. You can host your own event, sponsor one, or attend as a vendor. Taking part in community or large-scale events gives you the space to interact with the public and promote yourself in a way that isn’t intrusive into their lives.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing promotions target specific audience members. The strategy uses tools like email newsletters and direct-to-home mailers. The point is to reach the audience where they are rather than getting them to come to you.

Whether it’s a promo code, coupon, or word-of-mouth promotion, offering free services or discounts can be a way to promote your business. Offering these incentives can help draw new customers to your company. They may feel like they can try your products or receive a deal before committing to being a loyal customer.

Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is a common tool for people interviewing for jobs, but it’s also helpful for business promotion. The short two- or three-sentence pitch tells the most important details of what your business does and how it helps or solves problems for customers. The owner, the marketing department, or a collaboration team may create the pitch. Use it at networking events, trade shows, or anywhere that can help you capture leads.

Face-to-Face Selling

Face-to-face selling is when you put your salespeople out into the world to promote your products. Consider the employees who distribute food samples at stores like Sam’s Club or Costco. They’re engaging in face-to-face selling. So are the employees at mall kiosks who give product demonstrations. Telemarketing is also a type of face-to-face selling because it requires real-time interaction between two or more people.

Image via Unsplash by @dylandgillis

Flyers can be helpful promotional tools for small and neighborhood businesses. Put them in mailboxes, hang them on community bulletin boards, or display them in shop windows. Other distribution options include putting them in customer bags at checkout or providing a table of community flyers at your shop for people to browse and take at their leisure.

Google My Business Account

You may think of Google as a search engine, but it’s also a business directory. Tools like Google My Business allow you to get your company listed on the platform’s maps and search features. It also lets you optimize your search engine content to get discovered more easily and receive reviews from users to get additional advertising at no cost.

Guest Posts

Engaging in guest posting on other websites and blogs can get your brand more exposure. This type of content marketing can increase audience reach in your niche or bring people interested in the industry to your company. They also provide the chance to create partnerships with other organizations, which may lead to more collaboration and promotional opportunities in the future. When creating copy for your guest posts , consider working with a content marketing company like CopyPress to deliver polished, SEO-friendly pieces for even better exposure.

Create a hashtag for your company on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram. You can use this tag in your social media posts and so can loyal customers and new clients to increase brand recognition. Crafting posts that use other popular hashtags is another way to insert your brand into a trending conversation and reach a larger audience.

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising exists online and offline. Online paid advertising may refer to pay-per-click (PPC) ads for search engines and other websites. Offline, it may refer to billboard ad space, television commercials, radio spots, or magazine and newspaper ads.

Public Relations

Public relations (PR) as a discipline refers to how the world as a whole, not just your customers or followers, views your brand or company. PR often promotes a positive brand image to gain favor for an organization. It’s also helpful when acknowledging and handling things like negative reviews or unsatisfied customers.

Social Media

Social media is a free or inexpensive online tool that can help you promote your brand right to the consumers. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are spaces to share photos, videos, and other advertisements. This method also provides the opportunity to capitalize on influencer marketing or work with well-known internet personalities to grow your exposure and audience.

Speaking Engagements and Webinars

Taking part in an online or offline panel discussion, seminar, webinar, or other speaking engagement can help you reach members of your target audience. These venues give chances to share your business values and expertise with the public. They also allow you to make meaningful connections with the people you hope to turn into clients or customers.

Sponsorships

There are all kinds of events, teams, and programs that look for sponsors and donations throughout the year. These opportunities usually come with the promise of recognition. For example, a little league baseball team may put your company name on the back of their jerseys as a sponsor.

Adults and children alike enjoy stickers. They’re fun and easy to create, and you can often print them yourself. People can attach them to all kinds of things, like laptops or notebooks. This is a free, or relatively free, promotion for you, wherever customers take the items affixed with branded stickers.

Vehicle Decorations

Employees, freelancers, and others may promote your business using their vehicles. One type of vehicle decoration is wraps for company cars. This brands them with the business logo and contact information. Other options include window stickers, bumper magnets, bus ads, and sunshades. These options expose potential customers to your company in traffic, in parking lots, or during any type of road travel.

A professional-looking website can be a promotional tool. It allows you to post your most up-to-date information, inventory, and other content. Even the smallest businesses can benefit from a single-page, simple website that contains information like the company hours and contact information.

Word of Mouth

According to Nielsen, 83% of people trust product and service recommendations from family and friends. Word-of-mouth advertising is when one person recommends a brand, product, or service to someone else. It’s free promotion, which helps your budget. To capitalize on it, provide great customer service that gets people discussing your brand positively. Online reviews can also serve as word-of-mouth marketing in a digital space.

Promotion is necessary for businesses to attract customers. It’s what keeps companies in business and gaining revenue. But all businesses don’t use the same kinds or levels of promotion. This is because each one has its own unique needs. You can look at factors such as company size, store location, or customer and audience preference to determine those needs. New businesses, start-ups, and small businesses may go through a trial-and-error period to understand exactly which promotional styles work for them. This can include experimentation, testing, and research to create the right balance.

Once promotions circulate out in the public, their purpose is to show customers or potential customers how your business differs from your competitors. They can also show how choosing your company may be a better value. For example, a candy bar company may offer buy-one-get-one-free coupons to get two of their products for the price of one. This may be a better value than a competitor’s company that doesn’t provide similar incentives, and the coupon-providing company may gain a bigger customer base they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Yes, you should promote your business. Aside from the fact that without promotion you won’t have a business, there are other significant benefits, including:

• Building customer loyalty
• Finding partnership opportunities
• Increasing brand awareness
• Increasing customer traffic
• Offering additional value to customers
• Increasing sales and profit
• Sharing important information with leads and consumers
• Showing how your brand differs from the competition
• Targeting the right audience

Business promotion is one of the 4 Ps of marketing, along with price, products, and placement. A promotional strategy is a plan you create to get influence in the market and reap the benefits discussed in the previous section. There are four fundamentals of promotion, including:

• Building awareness: This fundamental makes your target audience aware that your company, products, and services exist. It comes from identifying your ideal consumers and connecting with them through marketing messages and outreach.
• Developing interest: Once you identify the audience, get them interested in what you provide. This means capturing their curiosity, providing value, displaying the differences between you and the competition, and nurturing new leads.
• Creating demand: The availability of products and services isn’t enough to create conversions. Make people want—or better yet— need your products in their daily lives by using emotional language in your promotions and lead nurturing tactics.
• Promoting action: Use calls-to-action (CTAs) to make your audience recognize not only that they need your products or services, but they can take action to gain them. Any place where you can make a conversion, such as your website, email, social media, or other advertising, is a good place to add a CTA.

Having a promotional strategy helps you navigate the path to reaching your marketing goals. Use these steps to help you create one for your organization:

1. Set Promotional Goals

Setting achievements for your promotion guides the strategy. The process can help you stay productive and make smarter choices when deciding which tactics work best for your business. Align the goals with your overall marketing strategies. Segment your goals into smaller, more achievable milestones to stay on track and adjust your promotion methods as the strategy progresses.

2. Create a Budget

Creating a balanced budget for promotions can help you invest in strategies that help you reach your goals. The budget determines which paid promotional method fits into your overall business plan. It can also help you determine how much labor and resources you need to meet each marketing goal.

3. Define the Target Market

Knowing exactly who you plan to target with your promotions can help you make smarter decisions. It can also save you money and help ensure you’re prioritizing efforts that reach the right people. Conduct a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This analysis can help you understand the value you offer currently and what you can improve. The information from the analysis gives details that lead you to the right demographics for your customer base.

4. Choose Promotion Types

Once you’ve done the research, you can pick promotion types that resonate with your audience and work with your budget. The first time you create a promotional strategy, you may enter a trial-and-error process to determine which ones work best. Make sure you select promotions that lend themselves to achieving your goals.

5. Incorporate Marketing Messages

Your marketing message is one of the most important parts of the promotion strategy. It gives the audience the information they need to understand why your company, product, or service meets their needs. It also explains the value and presents the call to action to get them to take the next step. You can develop a good marketing message by looking at the problems your audience needs solved and understanding how what you offer can fix them.

It’s also helpful to highlight how your product or service is better than the competitors or what makes it unique. You may change your marketing message depending on the promotional channels you use.

6. Build Your Promotion Schedule

Determine how and when you’re going to push your promotions to the public. This includes both in-person and digital calendars for content, events, and advertisements. Using a traditional calendar and scheduling tools can be a good way to visualize your promotion schedule as a whole. Research the best times to post content online so you can maximize your promotion abilities. You can also create urgency with your promotions by using emotional or otherwise engaging language to show limited-time offers or low stock.

7. Measure Your Efforts

The only way you can tell if your promotions are working is if you track their progress. Set metrics to track your goals and review milestones regularly. Collect as much data as possible to make sure you’re seeing the full picture of your promotions rather than just a small piece. This can tell you what’s working and what isn’t. Stay flexible with your plan and change the strategy in real-time if something isn’t working. This can get you closer to achieving goals and save you time and money.

Tracking your performance and analyzing the results can help you develop better strategies. Here are some content promotion metrics you can track online to determine if your digital promotions are working to achieve your marketing goals:

• Average time on page : The time a user spends on a specific web page during each visit
• Backlinks: Hyperlinks that connect your website to another web page
• Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who log into and then leave your website without viewing other pages or browsing
• Click-through rate: The percentage of users who visited your website and clicked a specific link
• Comments: The number of responses, replies, or other instances where visitors provide feedback about your site, products, or content
• Conversion rate: The percentage of users who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase
• Cost per conversion: The price per ad space for each PPC ad that someone clicks on and takes them to your website within a certain period
• Downloads: The number of times people transfer files or data from your internet repositories to their own devices
• Email forwards: The number of times someone sends an email from you to another account
• Engagement rate: Explains how much your audience engaged with your content through means like comments, clicks, likes, or shares
• New subscribers: The number of new accounts that follow or subscribe to your content
• New visitors : The number of new IP addresses that reach your website
• Organic keywords: Keywords that help drive free traffic to a website through search engine optimization
• Page views: The total number of times a specific website receives a visit or page refresh
• Ranking position: The spot in which your website ranks on a search engine results page (SERP)
• Referring domains: The source from where you receive backlinks
• Returning visitors: The number of IP addresses reaching your site that have visited previously
• Shares: The number of times someone took your content and passed it along to other people by adding it to their own page, tagging another account, or reposting it with credit
• Traffic sources: Tell you from where your visits and traffic come, such as through search engines or paid or organic advertising
• Unique visits: The number of single browsing sessions from original IP addresses for a website within a week
• Unsubscribers: The number of accounts that opt-out from receiving further communication from your company that have received it in the past
• Visits: The number of single browsing sessions for one website

In business, promotion can increase the visibility of your company or services. Finding the right promotional tactics for your organization and budget may take some experimentation. Once you have a plan, it can help expand your audience and gather more leads.

CopyPress writer

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A Business Plan for Advertising and Promotion

• Small Business
• Advertising & Marketing
• Advertising & Promotions
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Aims and Objectives of Advertising

The smartest way to advertise a newly opened business, how to prepare a sales plan.

• Challenges in Marketing Products
• How to Create Effective Marketing Campaigns

Advertising and promotions are not the tail that wag the dog in sales campaigns and should only be developed after you’ve finished the rest of your marketing planning. Creating a business plan for your advertising and promotion strategies will help you make sure they support your overall brand-management efforts.

Review Your Marketing Plan

The first step in creating an advertising and promotion business plan is to review your marketing strategy. Before you purchase a single ad, write one word of brochure copy or develop any sales promotion, you must know your marketing goals inside and out. This will help deliver a consistent message to your target customers. List and review the following about your marketing strategy: target customer, your unique selling benefit, price compared to the competition, distribution channels, image in the marketplace.

Know Your Brand

Each ad you place and promotion you run should support your brand, or image, in the marketplace. For example, your brand might you as a low-cost alternative to higher-priced competitors. Your unique selling benefit might be higher quality or a stronger warranty, which is why you sell at a higher price. You might be a hip, trendy or luxury impulse purchase. Your business plan for advertising and promotions should address your brand to ensure you don’t create communications that send the wrong message to your customers. For example, an upscale restaurant that offers a free dessert coupon might be cheapening its image.

Advertising Plans

Create a media plan for your advertising that lets you schedule your budget in a way that maximizes your exposure. Review the media kits of different radio, TV, newspapers, website and magazine outlets to determine which reach your target audience at the lowest cost per reader. A media kit is a description of a media outlet’s audience and rates. Divide the cost of each ad by the number of readers, listeners or viewers to calculate your cost to reach 1,000 target customers; this will help you compare different media choices head-to-head. Use options that let you get your message to the same customers at least three times, rather than trying to hit many different people once. This helps reinforce your message among people who receive it. Choose media outlets that align with your image, or brand.

Create a promotion plan that drives sales in ways you can measure. This can include using coupons, holding a sale, offering a mail-in rebate, starting a buyers or birthday club, placing an online discount code on your ads or offering a buy-one-get-one-free promotion. Use social media and website promotions that let you track where your visitors are coming from. Include Facebook Like, Google Plus and Twitter buttons on your website pages to generate customer referrals. Set benchmarks that let you compare the cost of promotions you run to the profits you generate from these promotions to calculate your return on investment.

• Purdue University Extension: Marketing’s Four P’s: First Steps for New Entrepreneurs
• Inc.: How to Build a Really Strong Brand
• Entrepreneur: Selecting the Most Effective Advertising Media

Sam Ashe-Edmunds has been writing and lecturing for decades. He has worked in the corporate and nonprofit arenas as a C-Suite executive, serving on several nonprofit boards. He is an internationally traveled sport science writer and lecturer. He has been published in print publications such as Entrepreneur, Tennis, SI for Kids, Chicago Tribune, Sacramento Bee, and on websites such Smart-Healthy-Living.net, SmartyCents and Youthletic. Edmunds has a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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• 1 What Is Audience Coverage Evaluation?
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• 4 The Steps in Developing an Integrated Marketing Communication Plan

The Ultimate Guide On Getting Started With Promotional Marketing

Discover the ultimate guide to getting started with promotional marketing, helping you boost brand awareness and drive sales effectively.

Aug 17th 2024 • 14 min read

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What Is Promotional Marketing?

Promotional marketing is sharing information about a brand, product, or service through multiple marketing channels . It refers to any type of marketing communication used to inform the target audience of the relative merits of:

Promotional marketing channels include:

• Loyalty programs
• Email marketing
• Social media
• Paid advertising
• And any other tactics

To boost brand awareness and sales. Promotional marketing is the 3rd P of the famous 4Ps of the marketing mix and helps form the basis of your marketing strategy.

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Marketing vs Promotion

Marketing is the comprehensive process of bringing a product or service to the target audience. It involves various activities such as:

• Market research
• Consumer analysis
• Product development
• Pricing strategies
• Distribution

The goal of marketing is to understand consumer needs, create a product that meets those needs, and effectively deliver it to the market. Marketing encompasses the entire journey of a product from conception to consumer.

The Role of Promotion in Marketing

Promotion is a specific component within the broader marketing framework . As one of the 4Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion), promotion focuses on the strategies and techniques used to communicate and highlight a product to potential customers.

Its primary aim is to increase product visibility, generate interest, and boost sales. Promotion involves various tactics, such as

• Advertising
• Sales promotions
• Public relations
• Direct marketing

To achieve these goals. While marketing covers the overall strategy of bringing a product to market, promotion is a key element that focuses on communicating and generating demand for the product.

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6 Types Of Promotional Marketing

1. advertising.

Advertising is a pivotal component of promotional marketing . It serves to disseminate information or raise awareness about:

Businesses leverage advertising as a promotional tool that can swiftly reach a large audience. Advertisements can be communicated through traditional media platforms like:

• Outdoor advertising

In addition to these conventional channels, contemporary media such as:

• Text messages
• Websites support effective advertising campaigns

2. Direct Promotion

Direct promotion is a form of advertising in which companies engage directly with their customers. This direct communication can be facilitated through innovative approaches like:

• Text messaging
• Online advertisements
• Promotional letters
• Catalog distributions

Businesses can establish more personalized connections and foster greater engagement by interacting with customers directly.

3. Sales Promotion

Sales promotion involves strategically using various marketing tools to communicate with customers and boost sales. This promotional approach is typically implemented for a limited period and aims to:

• Stimulate customer demand
• Rejuvenate market demand
• Enhance product availability

Sales promotion can effectively drive short-term sales and generate immediate results.

4. Self-promotion

Self-promotion entails companies deploying representatives to engage directly with customers and promote their products or services. This interactive approach allows immediate responses to customer feedback, enabling businesses to quickly build trust and credibility with their target audience.

5. Public Relations

Public relations, commonly known as PR, focuses on managing information and messages between:

• Organization

An impactful PR campaign can be highly beneficial for a company, helping to shape its image, credibility, and reputation. Effective PR strategies can:

• Enhance brand visibility
• Cultivate positive stakeholder relationships
• Establish a stronger connection

With the target audience.

6. Online Promotion

Online promotion encompasses various elements of the promotion mix, including online advertising through pay-per-click campaigns and direct marketing via newsletters or email campaigns.

Businesses can leverage digital platforms to reach a broader audience, engage with customers in real time, and drive online traffic to boost sales and brand visibility. This dynamic approach to promotional marketing enables companies to connect with their target demographic effectively in the digital realm.

• Best Promo Items • Promotional Item Ideas • How To Make Your Booth Stand Out • Swag Items For Employees • Swag vs Merch • Most Useful Promotional Items • Swag Budget • Best Career Fair Swag • Swag Marketing • Swag Ideas For College Students • Do Promotional Products Work

What Are The Main Sales Promotion Types?

Sales promotions can be broadly categorized into two main types: price promotions and non-price promotions.

Price Promotions

Price promotions involve reducing the cost of products or services to drive sales. These promotions aim to attract customers by offering financial incentives. Examples include discount vouchers, buy-one-get-one (BOGO) offers, and limited-time sales. The primary goal is to boost sales volume by making the product more affordable and appealing to price-sensitive customers.

Non-Price Promotions

Non-price promotions focus on adding value beyond just lowering prices. These strategies enhance the perceived value of a product or service without altering its price.

Examples include:

• Product sampling

Non-price promotions can be more effective and engaging as they create additional value and are often more creative.

Choosing the Right Promotion Based on Business Goals and Audience

From a business perspective, they can also be more cost-efficient, providing high returns relative to the promotional expenses incurred. This cost-efficiency makes them a valuable tool in your marketing strategy, offering a high return on investment.

Both types of promotions have their place depending on your business goals and target audience. Understanding your audience's preferences and behavior is crucial to making an informed decision. Non-price promotions are often seen as more innovative and effective in creating long-term customer engagement.

What Are The Benefits Of Promotion Marketing

Promotion marketing can serve plenty of goals. Here are some of the most noteworthy benefits that businesses get from a well-thought-out promotional marketing strategy:

Establish a Unique Selling Proposition

Promotion marketing can highlight what sets your company apart from competitors, helping to establish a strong, unique selling proposition (USP) . A compelling USP differentiates your brand and provides customers with clear reasons to choose your products or services over others.

Leveraging promotional marketing can reinforce your USP, especially if your competitors lack engaging sales promotions. A distinctive promotional campaign can become key to your brand’s appeal.

Enhance Brand Perception

An effective promotional marketing strategy, combined with traditional advertising, helps shape and improve your brand’s narrative. If your audience values sustainability, running a promotion that supports eco-friendly initiatives or charitable causes can enhance your brand’s image.

Promotions offer a powerful tool for shaping customers' perceptions of your business, aligning it with their values and interests.

Convert Visitors into Long-Term Customers

The ultimate goal of promotional marketing is to boost revenue while effectively managing costs. By employing a variety of promotional tactics such as:

• Discount codes
• Social media contest

You can attract new customers and encourage repeat business by offering promotions that help transform one-time visitors into loyal customers, driving sustained growth and profitability.

How To Plan A Promotional Marketing Campaign?

To start a successful promotional marketing campaign, you must define the product or service you want to promote. This is a crucial first step to ensure your promotion aligns with your objectives.

Make sure the product you choose has the potential to cover costs and generate a profit. Be cautious of potential cannibalization, where your promotional efforts may take sales away from other products with better profit margins. You can skip this step if your promotion differs from a specific product.

Understand Your Audience

The next step in planning an effective promotional campaign is understanding your target audience. Research their characteristics and preferences to get to know them intimately.

This knowledge will allow you to tailor your promotion to speak directly to your most valuable customers. A targeted promotional approach is often more successful than a one-size-fits-all strategy . Ensure your campaign resonates with the people who matter most to your business.

Set Clear Goals

Establish clear goals to create a promotional marketing campaign that drives results. Define what you want to achieve through the campaign, whether it's increasing sales during a slow season, generating buzz for a new product, or fostering customer loyalty.

Setting specific goals helps you select the right strategies and tools to measure your success. Remember that promotional efforts can boost short-term sales but may only sometimes build lasting customer loyalty.

Choose the Right Marketing Channels

Consider where your target audience is most active and select the appropriate marketing channels for your promotional campaign. Evaluate whether your audience engages more with digital advertising, traditional media, or other marketing platforms.

Promoting women's shoes in a women's magazine or leveraging social media ads for tech gadgets might yield better results than traditional advertising. Select the marketing channels that align with your audience's preferences to maximize your campaign's impact.

Set the Promotion Budget

Determining your budget is the final step in planning a promotional marketing campaign. When deciding how much to allocate to this campaign, consider your marketing budget, expected returns, and potential unforeseen expenses.

Look for cost-effective promotional options that maintain your campaign's impact. Adjust your budget based on the following:

• Market conditions
• Competitors

To ensure you get the best possible return on investment.

6 Promotional Campaign Ideas

1. loyalty programs.

Loyalty programs are a great way to reward customers for their repeat business. They encourage customers to remain loyal to a specific brand or company by offering incentives or rewards for frequent purchases.

By implementing a loyalty program, companies can increase customer retention, boost sales, and improve brand recognition. Tools like Giftpack can help automate loyalty programs and predict the most ideal rewards for customers based on their preferences, enhancing the overall customer experience.

2. Email Marketing

Email marketing continues to be a powerful tool for businesses, delivering an impressive $44 in revenue for every dollar spent. It remains an effective way to invite subscribers to:

• Share updates
• Promote products

Personalized transactional emails can enhance customer retention and loyalty, boost sales with abandoned cart and post-purchase emails, and foster relationships with triggered communications. Platforms like SendPulse offer robust email marketing solutions, including a free tier that allows monthly sending of up to 15,000 emails.

3. Social Media Marketing

Leveraging social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram can significantly enhance online interactions and customer engagement. With many U.S. adults active on Facebook and YouTube, businesses must engage users through feedback, targeted ad campaigns, and chatbots to automate customer interactions. Utilizing tools like SendPulse to create Facebook Messenger chatbots can streamline customer engagement and support.

4. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a core strategy for digital marketing, with 81% of marketers viewing content as essential to their business success. Companies can attract and retain customers by creating high-quality content that addresses the following:

• User questions
• Provides expert insights
• Offers solutions

Starting a blog focusing on:

• Popular search terms and user pain points,
• Publishing how-to guides,
• Interviews with industry specialist
• Compelling case studies

It can help nurture leads and build brand authority.

5. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a powerful way to connect with target audiences, as people trust influencers more than traditional advertising . By identifying thought leaders in your industry who resonate with your target audience, businesses can leverage platforms like Instagram to find influencers who already use their products or services.

Providing products for review and endorsements from influencers can help amplify reach and credibility, turning influencers into influential brand ambassadors.

6. Referral Marketing

Referral marketing capitalizes on the trust between friends and family, leveraging existing relationships to boost sales and enhance customer loyalty. By implementing a referral program that rewards customers for bringing in new business, companies can offer discounts or bonuses for each new customer using a referral link. This strategy can significantly enhance sales and improve customer loyalty and brand recognition.

Examples Of Promotion Marketing

Hugo boss experience.

The Hugo Boss Experience loyalty program is a prime example of promotion marketing's ability to attract potential customers and retain existing ones.

Hugo Boss has created a compelling program that focuses on user satisfaction and comfort. The program offers personalized offers, exclusive rewards, and a range of unique and convenient features, like door-to-door Uber delivery and free alterations. By offering these benefits for free, the brand has enhanced the loyalty program's overall appeal.

IKEA Family

IKEA's loyalty program, IKEA Family, is an excellent example of a loyalty program that rewards customers when they sign up by offering:

• Discounts • Exclusive benefits • a unique Buy Back & Resell service

IKEA has created a rewarding program encouraging customers to engage with the brand across multiple channels. The company's omnichannel strategy, combined with the various benefits offered to members, ensures customers are incentivized to keep returning for more.

Nike Membership

Nike's loyalty program, Nike Membership, is another example of promotion marketing done right. By offering immediate access to a range of:

Nike has created a program that provides its members with a seamless and rewarding experience.

By encouraging social media engagement and offering personalized product options, Nike has created a community-driven loyalty program that ensures customers stay engaged with the brand across multiple channels.

Aldo's promotion marketing strategy focuses on offering free shipping and the chance to win up to $500 through a contest. By offering these incentives, Aldo has managed to attract customers and encourage them to purchase.

The contest's limited-time nature and the allure of winning a substantial prize ensure that customers are incentivized to take advantage of the offer and purchase.

Grammarly upsells its Premium Account through emails offering different discounts and plans. By offering these discounts and plans, Grammarly has created a promotional marketing strategy that encourages free users to upgrade to the premium version of the product.

By leveraging email marketing and personalized offers, Grammarly ensures that customers are aware of the premium account's benefits and are incentivized to make the switch.

• Zazzle Alternative • Swagup Competitors • Swagger Alternatives • Corporate Swag Vendors • Vistaprint Alternatives • Vistaprint Alternatives • Promotional Products Companies

Latest Trends In Promotion Marketing

Personalization and targeting.

In the competitive marketing landscape, personalization has become the kingpin. By tailoring promotions, you can truly resonate with your audience. Loyalty programs are a perfect fit for this approach, as they allow you to gather data and create bespoke offers.

Imagine sending personalized discounts based on a customer's purchase history or offering exclusive perks tied to their favorite products. This would not only boost engagement but also strengthen customer relationships.

Location Marketing

Incorporating geolocation into your promotions can make them contextually relevant and timely. You could send a notification with a special discount when a loyal customer is near your store.

Integrating location-based promotions into your loyalty program can drive foot traffic and increase in-store sales, making your offers feel more immediate and valuable.

Social Media as a Promotion Channel

Social media remains a powerful platform for reaching and engaging with your audience. Use it to promote your loyalty program and encourage social sharing. Create social media-exclusive promotions or contests that reward customers for sharing their experiences or tagging your brand.

This amplifies your reach and fosters a community around your brand, encouraging more people to join and engage with your loyalty program.

Mobile Experiences

Given the prevalence of mobile devices, ensuring that your promotions and loyalty programs are optimized for mobile users is crucial. Create a seamless experience where customers can easily access their rewards, receive real-time notifications about promotions, and make purchases effortlessly.

A well-designed mobile app for your loyalty program can enhance user experience and keep your brand top-of-mind.

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Global Delivery and User-Friendly Platform

One key feature that sets Giftpack apart is our ability to offer global delivery, ensuring they can receive a personalized gift from your company no matter where your recipients may be. Our platform is designed to be highly user-friendly, making the gifting process seamless and efficient for our clients. Giftpack has you covered if you're gifting an:

• Family member

Personalized Gifting at Scale

With a vast selection of gifts sourced locally and globally, Giftpack makes personalized gifting accessible and achievable on a large scale.

Our goal is to deliver meaningful connections across the globe, ensuring that each gift has a lasting impact on the recipient. By leveraging data-driven insights and a diverse product catalog, we make it easy for companies to show their appreciation meaningfully and personally.

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Make a great marketing plan

ILLUSTRATION —BY RACHEL REVILLA

A marketing plan is a written document that serves as a guide and outline of how a company intends to grow in the marketplace and win against the competition. The marketing plan is usually formulated annually but results are reviewed monthly, with major business reviews done quarterly on what worked versus what did not work.

While there is no standard format, the marketing plan must be focused, and the issues and activities must be clear. It has to gather data from external and internal sources and must look at problems, pain points and opportunities.

The table on the right shows a typical marketing plan format. If you are a neophyte or a student, follow the mini marketing plan format first in the next section so you will not be overwhelmed in preparing an entire marketing plan. Then work backward to complete the entire marketing plan as you gain more experience.

Mini marketing plan

For beginners, it is suggested to practice with a mini or shortened version of a marketing plan, instead of being overwhelmed with so many details. For a shortened version of a mini marketing plan, please consider the following format:

Marketing objectives

• Situations (Problems, opportunities, threats)

• Marketing strategies and tactics that solve situations above

• Estimated cost of strategy versus marketing objectives

As an example, consider this background: Bioderm is a germicidal soap brand manufactured by Cebu-based International Pharmaceutical Inc. (IPI), the same company that manufactures Efficascent Oil, Omega Pain Killers, Bronco Rub, Casino Alcohol, among many other popular products. Back in 2014, IPI discovered that Bioderm has over 80 percent total awareness level (an opportunity that could have been exploited). However, the high awareness did not translate to trial and usage in the bath soap category (problem to be solved) with Safeguard dominating and owning over half of the total market share. Safeguard also had high affinity and unmatched credibility among Filipinos (threat that needs to be negated).

As part of their marketing strategy and positioning, Bioderm did the following:

Marketing strategy phase 1

Product: They launched a reformulated variant with cooling sensation to create a different level of product use experience. Positioning: Level up the “ligo” (bath) experience.

Credibility: They tapped key opinion leaders to build trust and relevance and to create impact among consumers. In Luzon, they had TV personality Kim Atienza. In Mindanao, it was Sara Duterte, then Mayor of Davao City.

Story: They capitalized on existing user base—millions of users who are satisfied and trusted the brand. The distinct product experience of Bioderm extends even after bathing, setting a standard in germicidal soaps among its users, positioning Bioderm as a game changer.

Marketing strategy phase 2

As the trial level continued to grow, Bioderm benefited from high retention rates because of its value proposition: cooling benefit along with its germ protection attribute. See some feedback from consumers below:

Bioderm Coolness: “Nakaka-excite maligo ‘pag naaamoy ko sa banyo at sobrang lamig sa pakiramdam habang naliligo. Feeling refreshed ang body at mind ko.” (I feel excited to take a bath especially when I smell the soap in my bathroom. I also feel very cool after my bath; my body and mind feel refreshed.)

Bioderm Bloom: “Bukod sa mabango, hindi nakaka-dry sa skin, yung malambot ang feeling sa balat at hiyang din sa kids ko.” (Besides smelling good, it doesn’t dry the skin. It gives the skin a feeling of softness, which also suits my kids.)

Bioderm Freshen: “Natanggal nya yung dumi at pawis ng aking balat kaya presko na ang aking pakiramdam. Tumatagal ang bango.” (It removes dirt and sweat from my skin so I feel fresh. The fresh smell also lasts.)

The sales revenue of Bioderm went up by over 500 percent in six years with a cost to sales ratio of 5 percent, giving consumers more with every ligo (bath) and every hugas (wash).

4Ss to evaluate marketing plan formulation

The marketing plan can change over time. However, all marketing plans must be able to meet four basic criteria to be considered a diligently thought-out marketing plan. It is important for marketers to consider the 4Ss in formulating marketing plans, as follows:

• Sufficient: Will the planned marketing strategies and tactics attain our marketing objectives and goals?

• Synchronized: Were the relationships of each element of the marketing mix considered to produce the desired outcome?

• Selective: Have we considered as many potential combinations of the marketing mix as possible that can optimize results?

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• Sustainable: Is the plan going to survive competitive attacks or constraints like government and supply barriers? —CONTRIBUTED

Go, Escareal-Go and RG Gabunada co-authored “Marketing for Beginners: Start Strong, Succeed Fast,” currently the No.1 marketing book in the Philippines (available at National Book Store). They will be among the 12 award-winning marketing experts who will speak at the “How to Create a Strategic Marketing Plan” webinar on Sept 24 to Sept. 25. Email [email protected] .

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How to create and benefit from a savings plan

PayPal Editorial Staff

August 14, 2024

Trying to make smarter spending decisions? Savings plans give structure to finances, enabling short- and long-term planning with effective budgeting.

This article dives into what a savings plan is, how to build one, potential benefits, and answers to frequently asked questions.

What is a savings plan?

A savings plan is a blueprint for saving money that helps people make financial decisions and reach financial goals. Savings plans give structure to day-to-day spending, tracking incomings and outgoings while minimizing unimportant purchases.

A savings plan works together with a savings account — which is a place to put money away and build wealth over time. A high-yield savings account, like PayPal Savings 1 , can also offer compound interest with a beneficial annual percentage yield (APY) , helping boost financial growth.

Types of savings plans

Different savings plans can be tailored for specific goals and may include the following types of funds:

• Emergency fund . Additional savings kept for unexpected bills or expenses can be deposited into an emergency fund .
• Retirement savings . These funds are saved over longer periods of time to use at retirement age.
• Education fund . Money for educational expenses, such as college or university tuition, fall into this bucket.
• Vacation fund . A vacation fund could include savings for a dream holiday, family reunion, or big-ticket getaway.
• Slush fund . This miscellaneous savings fund can be used for any desired purpose.

When a savings account is designed for a specific goal or expense, it may also be known as a sinking fund . Use savings apps to help savings plans and sinking funds stay on track.

How to build an effective savings plan

Consider these tips when building a savings plan:

• S.M.A.R.T. goals . Setting "smart" goals for a savings plan can help reach milestones effectively. S.M.A.R.T. refers to outcomes that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.
• Realistic budgeting . Creating a strong budget  can helps to track and manage income and expenses efficiently. There are many ways to do this; a common strategy is the 50/30/20 rule: putting 50% of income toward needs, 30% toward wants, and 20% toward savings.
• Automated transfers . Setting up recurring transfers to a savings account can help automate savings  and ensure consistency over time.
• Cutting expenses . Identifying non-essential expenses helps cut additional costs that can be redirected to savings.
• Using financial apps . Apps and digital financial tools can help manage subscriptions , pay bills  on time, as well as assist with expense tracking .

Potential savings plan benefits

Some of the potential benefits of a savings plan are:

• Financial security . A savings plan can function as a security blanket, providing day-to-day financial backing.
• Achieving goals . Savings plans help to achieve long- and short-term financial goals .
• Peace of mind . Having extra funds on hand may help alleviate stress, knowing that unexpected financial challenges can be met.
• Financial freedom . Well-structured savings plans may benefit the ability to try new activities and ventures, with possible financial risk offset by a firm safety net.

Possible savings plan challenges

There are potential challenges that come with savings plans. These may include:

• Staying motivated to save . A savings plan can feel difficult to accomplish if motivation or incentive is low, or goals feel overwhelming.
• Surprise expenses . Costs that come out of the blue can dent the flow of a savings plan and further impact motivation.
• Slow progress . Building up savings can take time and it’s possible to become demotivated. It’s important to stay the course and remain focused on individual goals.
• Life changes . Changing life circumstances can impact financial situations and cause plans to change.

Savings plan strategies

Unexpected costs and household expenses are a part of life. But it’s possible to both plan for and handle them without a savings plan being derailed. Consider these financial discipline tips to help avoid unnecessary spending and stay on track:

• Check on progress regularly (weekly, monthly, etc.)
• Manage expectations
• Use patience and determination
• Have a clear vision on goals and end points
• Budget for fun and entertainment, too

Monitoring and adjusting a savings plan

It’s essential to review a savings plan at regular intervals. Monitoring progress further helps to make easy adjustments should any personal financial situations change.

Personal finance software and budgeting apps can also help individuals stay motivated and on track to meet savings goals.

Savings plans are an essential part of a broader approach to financial health, helping provide a personal safety net and a pathway to achieving important financial goals.

Learn about PayPal Savings .

Savings plan FAQ

What is in a savings plan.

A savings plan typically includes:

• Specific goals.
• Targeted amounts.
• A savings schedule.
• A savings account.
• Progress tracking.

Is a savings plan the same as a 401(k)?

A 401(k) and a savings plan are two different things, though a savings plan may include a 401(k) plan. A 401(k) plan is an investment account designed for long-term retirement savings and has restrictions on when money can be accessed. A 401(k) is generated by an employer, with funds growing over time through market investments. A savings plan is a broader strategy that involves setting specific goals and utilizing various accounts to achieve financial stability.

Why is a savings plan important?

The importance of generating savings can’t be overstated. Benefits may include:

• Reaching financial goals . From a down payment on a house to a dream vacation, savings plans can help achieve important personal goals.
• Peace of mind . Having a financial cushion may ease anxiety by helping individuals feel they can cover any unexpected expenses and emergencies if they arise.
• Teachable moments . Having children involved in a savings plan can help teach them responsible spending habits and valuable lessons around savings.

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ROI of Design: How to Maximize Your Business Strategy?

Many organizations overlook the discipline of design because it’s often not considered important for financial success. However, taking your design strategies seriously might be the missing piece you were looking for to stand out in the market. 

According to a McKinsey report , companies that integrate design as a core component of their strategy achieved 32% more revenue and 56% more total return to shareholders than their counterparts.

Thus, we can say that design actions are not merely about aesthetics; they are a crucial element of business strategies that can positively influence a company’s growth. In this context, it’s essential to measure the quality of these design initiatives and their respective return on investment (better known as ROI of Design).

Today, you’ll learn about:

What is ROI in Graphic Design?

How to calculate the roi of design, what is considered a good roi in business.

• The Impact of Outsourcing on Your ROI of Design (+ Success Story !)

Final Conclusions about the ROI of Design

Let’s dive into the essentials first!

The Return on Investment (ROI) of Design are all the benefits derived from the design strategies applied to your business . 

These benefits can be measured using various indicators, which vary depending on your business sector (they can even vary depending on the type of design project).

Here are a few examples of how Design ROI can be measured based on its impact on:

• Reducing your website’s bounce rate
• Increasing qualified leads
• Boosting your sales rate
• Enhancing User Experience (UX)
• Strengthening your brand identity
• Increasing the perceived value of your product or service
• Improving long-term customer satisfaction
• Improving employee motivation in their daily work routine (learn more in our latest study !)

By understanding and measuring the Design ROI in your operations, you can determine which design actions are most beneficial for your business. Additionally, by properly tracking the evolution of this ROI over time, you can optimize your creative strategies and maximize the return on investment.

Remember, in the corporate world, if something isn’t measured, it doesn’t exist! Don’t get left behind, and discover how to calculate the ROI of Design for your company in the next section.

Calculating Design ROI can be challenging due to the mix of qualitative and quantitative factors involved . The complexity also varies depending on each company’s methodology and the unique characteristics of each design project.

However, here are some insights that will help you calculate Design ROI as realistically as possible:

• Identify Your Design Goals : Start by defining the specific goals of your design initiatives. These may include improving website usability, increasing newsletter subscriptions, boosting product sales, reducing delivery times, and improving brand perception, among others. Setting clear objectives provides a solid foundation for you to measure the impact of design in financial terms.
• Determine the Costs : Calculate the total costs associated with your design efforts. This includes designer salaries, software and tool expenses, and any other related costs. If you outsource the service, this calculation will be easier. We recommend being thorough in this part in order to obtain a more accurate ROI of Design.
• Measure the Benefits : In the ROI formula, the "benefits" of design are also known as revenue or income. These can include direct financial gains, such as increased revenue or cost savings, as well as indirect benefits, like improved website usability or long-term increases in customer satisfaction.
• Calculate the ROI : Use the standard ROI formula (see image) to determine the return on your design investment. This formula provides a percentage that indicates the return you get for every dollar spent on your design actions.

How to Measure the Benefits of a Design Project?

Due to the subjective nature of design, measuring the benefits of your design actions can often be a complex task. You’ll need to collect data and potentially establish a baseline to compare the results of your investments .

That being said, we want to detail some of the most important metrics for measuring the benefits of your creative projects:

Quantitative Metrics and KPIs

When applying the ROI formula, quantitative metrics can be directly added as financial benefits . For example, if the new design generates a $20,000 increase in sales, that amount is incorporated as part of the benefits.

Let’s start with the most common quantitative metrics in marketing and business:

• Increase in Sales : Additional sales value generated after implementing your design action. It’s crucial to compare the results with the previous period to determine the growth margin.
• Increase in Conversion Rate : The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action after the new design is implemented. For example, a new subscription to the newsletter.
• Increase in Web Traffic : The rise in the number of website visits after redesigning the interface or promotional graphic material.
• Repeat Purchase Rate : The increase in the frequency with which customers make repeat purchases after the redesign.
• Increase in Customer Retention Rate : The percentage of customers who remain loyal to your brand after the design update, compared to previous periods.
• Increase in Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) : The total value generated by a customer over the course of their relationship with the company. This composite metric includes the average purchase amount, purchase frequency, and the duration of the business relationship.
• Reduction in Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) : The decrease in the average cost to acquire a new customer thanks to the positive impact of the new design on marketing campaigns.
• Reduction in Sales Cycle Time : The decrease in the average time it takes to close a sale due to improvements in the clarity and effectiveness of your design assets. This can include sales presentations or new visuals for your e-commerce.
• Reduction of Operational Costs: Includes savings from more efficient operations, such as reduced production costs, lower overhead, or fewer resources needed.

Qualitative Metrics and KPIs

Although they cannot be directly added in monetary terms, qualitative data can be converted into indirect financial estimates .

Let’s say you find an improvement in User Experience (UX) after a redesign, you can assess its impact by measuring its correlation with metrics like Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) or web conversion rates.

Here are some qualitative metrics you should consider when calculating your ROI of Design:

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) : The percentage of customer satisfaction regarding your products, services, or any specific action. It’s based on the direct question: “On a scale of 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with [product/service/interaction]?”
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) : Measures customer loyalty and their willingness to recommend your company, product, or service to others. It’s based on the question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [product/service/company] to a friend or colleague?”
• Improvements in User Experience (UX) : This includes qualitative feedback or scores that indicate enhancements in the ease of use and interaction with your product. Focus on how the design changes have positively impacted user satisfaction and influenced their purchasing decisions.
• Improvement in Brand Perception : Collect insights on how your customers perceive your brand, including their perceptions of product or service quality. Keep in mind that their perceptions affect their willingness to pay and their overall loyalty to your brand.

The most common tool for collecting this qualitative data is through surveys . If you want to make comparisons throughout the time, you need to take different surveys for each period.

Understanding how to measure the ROI of Design provides a more accurate basis for justifying your investments. If you haven’t already, it’s time for you to determine which KPIs should be your top priority!

Determining what constitutes a good ROI in business can vary depending on the industry, company size, and your specific goals .

Unsure if your ROI is on target? Evaluate these factors to see if your design investments are going in the right direction:

• Industry Standards : Research the Design ROI standards in your business sector in order to have a reference point for evaluating your performance.
• Positive ROI : At a minimum, a good ROI should be positive , meaning that the benefits outweigh the costs. A positive ROI indicates that your design investments are generating value for your business.
• Percentage Returns : A common benchmark for a good ROI is a return of 10% or more . However, some design initiatives can yield much higher returns, especially if they lead to significant improvements in user experience and customer satisfaction.
• Long-term Qualitative Impact : In addition to quantitative measures, consider the qualitative impact of design. A better user experience, improved brand perception, and long-term customer retention are valuable outcomes resulting from a good Design ROI.

The Impact of Outsourcing on Your ROI of Design

Outsourcing creative tasks can also significantly impact your final Design ROI. By trusting in external expertise, companies can achieve exceptional designs while managing costs effectively .

The biggest challenge lies in aligning the external team (agency, studio, or freelancer) with the internal team’s processes and standards. In this context, effective communication is key to ensuring a successful collaboration.

At 24Slides, we believe that when measuring the ROI of Design, you need to have an open mind and see the whole picture. According to our latest survey , 55% of the specialists say that creating slides is a really time-consuming task and generates demotivation at work . 

"We often witnessed how being asked to redo a presentation could cause stress and demotivation. And with little time and extraordinary expectations, the end result is usually not satisfying for any parties involved."

-Marketing Manager interviewed for our latest study

At this point, we can say that delivering design tasks is not for everybody . And with good reason! Every employee is proficient in their area of ​​expertise, and breaking that rule not only creates inefficiency but can also demotivate your team.

Time is a valuable resource, and at 24Slides, we understand that. Let’s see how we can improve this scenario for companies and specialists at all levels:

"Outsourcing design services can significantly impact your ROI in two key ways. First, it saves valuable time for your in-house team , allowing them to focus on strategic tasks rather than creating presentations. Second, with 24Slides, you have predictable costs. Unlike traditional agencies where prices fluctuate during peak seasons, 24Slides maintains steady rates, ensuring a solid ROI without the headache of constant price negotiations ."

- Dan Sørensen , Chief Marketing Officer at 24Slides

Success Story: Healthcare Company Optimizes 9,000 Work Hours by Collaborating with 24Slides

At 24Slides, we’re committed to delivering exceptional design , which is why we collaborate with leading companies worldwide. From investor pitch decks to high-impact presentations for various departments and marketing collateral after a brand refresh or rebranding, we handle it all!

With over 200 expert designers, we tailor our services to meet the unique needs of every client, whether you’re a local business or a multinational corporation with a global presence.

In 2023, a global leader in healthcare entrusted us with a large volume of their presentation design workload . We embraced the challenge with great enthusiasm!

A bit of a spoiler for what’s next: this collaboration delivered outstanding results, optimizing over 9,000 hours of our client’s work time and achieving an impressive Design ROI of 176%.

Calculating the ROI of Design

As a practical exercise, let’s calculate the Design ROI of this collaboration. First, it’s important to highlight some data collected in 2023:

• Total hours saved by the client with 24Slides’ partnership = 9,006 hours
• Salary per hour of the client’s employees = $63
• 24Slides’ Service = $205,705
• Total Benefits = Total hours saved by the client x Salary per hour
• Total Cost = 24Slides’ Service

Now, it’s time to refresh the ROI formula:

By applying the previous data to the formula, we achieved a Design ROI of 176% , which means that for every dollar invested, our client earned $1.76 in return . This is an excellent result, considering that a 10% ROI is the minimum acceptable for business.

While ROI is typically quantified with hard data, we’ve seen firsthand how design can create powerful effects beyond the numbers . Let’s see some of them for this case study: 

• +9,000 hours saved, time redirected to core business activities
• +1,400 presentations designed, enhancing the client’s brand image
• 24-hour turnaround, boosting the client’s workflow
• Increased stakeholder satisfaction with presentation performance
• Improved employee motivation and satisfaction in their daily work routine

As design continues to play a crucial role in business growth, mastering the art of measuring ROI becomes increasingly important for small, medium, and large enterprises.

Here are some final thoughts:

• Adopt a Holistic Approach : Understanding and achieving a good Design ROI requires a holistic approach. By considering both quantitative and qualitative benefits, you can better justify your design investments and make more strategic decisions.
• Know Your Business : You can’t measure what you don’t know. While the general ROI formula seems simple, accurate measurement depends on knowing which metrics and KPIs apply to your specific situation. Understand your audience and set profit-driven objectives to achieve better results.
• Design Beyond Aesthetics : The role of design goes beyond a pretty illustration for social media; it can positively impact your marketing actions and the development of your product or service. Taking an integrated approach will enhance the user experience you deliver, which is a powerful differentiator in the market!
• Specialization Matters : Outsourcing your design tasks not only saves valuable time for your employees but also ensures higher product quality, shorter delivery times, and, most importantly, greater motivation for your team, who can focus on their primary tasks.

For a more accurate calculation of the costs your team incurs designing in PowerPoint, check out our hidden cost calculator to find your Design ROI with no problems!

Ready to unlock the full potential of our outsourcing model? Let our team be your creative partner, transforming your ideas into reality and driving your business to success.

Start the journey by booking a call with us here .

If you enjoy this article, you will love this content:

• How to Refresh Your Brand? Discover Our Strategic Approach
• AI vs. Professional Presentation Designer: A Comprehensive Comparison
• 10 Best AI Tools for Creating Impactful Presentations  
• Mastering the Art of Presenting Data in PowerPoint

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More From Forbes

Aew is doing stadiums in 2025 and that’s a terrible idea.

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Tony Khan announcing AEW All In Texas.

Tony Khan is the most optimistic man in all of wrestling, and his latest announcements prove just that. Because with AEW struggling to sell tickets amid scary low advances , the embattled promotion has made an ill-advised decision to run multiple stadium shows in the near future.

Tony Khan announced All In for Arlington, Texas on July 12, 2025. The press conference included Arlington Mayor Jim Ross (no, not that Jim Ross ), AEW world champion Swerve Strickland sitting in the front row—and not on the panel for some reason—and Tony Khan gushing over the possibilities of what he’s calling AEW’s first American Stadium show inside Globe Life Field.

Even though AEW runs an annual show at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

“On behalf of everyone at AEW, we are ecstatic to bring AEW: All In Texas to Globe Life Field in Arlington on July 12, 2025,” said Tony Khan. “AEW: All in Texas will make history as both our first-ever pay-per-view in Texas as well as AEW’s American stadium debut, building on the rich legacy of stadium wrestling events held in the US, particularly in the Lone Star State.”

AEW currently runs Collision in Arlington, Texas, and often struggles to sell out the 2,500-seat ESports Stadium. Currently, AEW Collision on Saturday, August 17 has sold just 946 tickets in a building set up for just under 1,200.

Sportingnews.com reported AEW is also planning to run a stadium show in Australia. Not only is AEW at a low point popularity wise, but Australia would make for a questionable location even if AEW was at the peak of its powers.

“AEW’s television is on ESPN 2 in Australia and runs at random times and doesn’t do any kind of significant numbers,” said Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter . “Then again, WWE doesn’t do big numbers on cable in Australia (which doesn’t have major penetration compared to the U.S.), and WWE has done huge business for arenas shows and run successful stadium shows. AEW’s popularity in Australia is nothing like in the U.K.”

“Since beginning on ESPN in February 2023, Dynamite—which is frequently preempted for live sports—has only charted in the Top 20 on Foxtel once: June 8, 2023. It came in 20th with 20,000 viewers,” said Bryan Alvarez of “ Wrestling Observer Live .” Alvarez was reading a message from an anonymous individual claiming to work in management for a national TV and radio network.

AEW’s popularity has declined in both viewership and live attendance in 2024. There have also been reports of backstage concern among talent regarding low ticket sales. In the face of sub-1,000 advances in many markets, running one stadium show in 2025 sounds like a brave and possibly foolish idea.

AEW plans to run no less than three.

If AEW really plans to fill up a large building, it cannot rely on great wrestling matches that will only excite a subsection of its most hardcore fanbase. It can’t simply rely on buzzworthy free agent signings of random ex-WWE talent, especially after losing goodwill in that department by failing to follow up with many promising debuts. AEW needs to become an episodic live television soap opera. There needs to be emotion behind these bumps, otherwise it’s no different than any garden-variety circus.

Through The Bloodline, Cody Rhodes finishing his story and a host of other strong angles, WWE has demonstrated that storytelling sells tickets. Fans need a reason to emotionally invest and be rewarded for following long-term storylines. Random dream matches will only be appreciated in star ratings that do not translate to a single dime.

Hopefully AEW’s need to sell tickets during its biggest slump will inspire it to change its approach to pro wrestling entirely. Nobody cares about where the best wrestle. They care about why the best wrestle. All In has clearly been established as AEW’s biggest event, as it now plans to travel to a stadium outside of London—coincidentally during the same time WrestleMania is in talks to run in that market.

If AEW can’t get its act together quickly, the only comparisons between WrestleMania and All In will be that of WrestleMania 7 when WWE was forced to move from the LA Coliseum to the smaller LA Sports Arena due to low ticket sales.

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