What is a promotional Mix?
Every product or service should have a promotional mix - this is a range of promotional options based on the needs of the marketplace and the characteristics of the product. It includes advertising, personal selling, point of sale promotion, free publicity, trade fair participation and alike. These elements form the promotion mix.
Why develop a promotional mix?
The aim of promotion is to communicate and create awareness that your business has a product or service that will satisfy an individual's needs. Unless the market is made aware that your product exists, then all the costs and decisions made in creating the product will go to waste.
Similarly, you need to beware that hundreds of messages on product offerings bombard your target market a day, but only a selected few penetrate their consciousnesses. Of those, even a smaller percentage eventually leads to action. Therefore, in order to avoid wasting your limited resources, you need to establish a suitable promotional mix. Promotion must advance your overall marketing plan and reinforce the dialogue you want to establish with the segments of the market you desire most.
Tips
1. Understand Your Target Market
Define the segment of people that needs, or would benefit from, your product or service is your target market. Understanding these individuals' attitudes and behaviors will help you design the best message and select the right means to reach them.
2. Set The Objectives
Determine the response you want to elicit from your target market, such as: motivating them to sign up for a free trial of your product.
Failing to define your objectives clearly will make it difficult for you to decide the best way to build a relationship with your buyers. As such, to engage customers effectively in a manner that will yield sales you will need to articulate the outcome of your promotion activities.
Objectives will also enable you to evaluate whether your promotional initiative was a success.
3. Develop The Message
Before getting started, take note that you are engaging in a persuasive exercise. Your communication should be persuasive in order to draw buyers to yourself instead of your competitors. For that reason your promotional strategy should:
Arouse ATTENTION
Create INTEREST
Stimulate DESIRE
Provoke ACTION
Yield SATISFACTION
The above points can easily be remembered through the acronym AIDAS
4. Select Means of communication
Promotional media have a great impact on how effective your communication will be. However when selecting the medium you need to weigh the benefits against cost. Some of the media you can select from include:
Trade displays
Personal selling
Advertising: Newspapers, Radio, TV, Trade Press
Trade partners promotion
Fairs
Missions
Direct Mail
In store Promotion
Give-a-ways
Product Samples
Select communication media for the promotional campaign that are relevant and compatible with your product, the distribution channel, and the media and communications behavior of the target market. But in most situations a combination of promotional elements will be required to achieve the desired goals.
Avoid spending great sums of money on media that do not reach the target market. Therefore, the promotional mix must be designed backwards from the market. Expertise is readily available who can plan promotional expenditures to maximize the desired impact (check the expertise of the export coaches).
5. Prepare Your Budget
You can establish your promotional budget by estimating what your competitors spend and then match it. Although this method lacks precision, it provides a rough estimate.
A more exact way to determine your budget is to assemble a list of promotional methods you want to use to meet your objectives. Then, use actual rates and estimated costs to determine how much it will cost you to carry out the promotion cost. Establishing cost implications will enable you allocate adequate funds for an effective promotional activity.
6. Measure Results
You need to evaluate the impact of promotion activities so as to correct ineffective promotional vehicles as well as make necessary adjustments for growth. Increased sales could be a yardstick to measure each promotional vehicle you employ.
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Beatrice Mwasi is a CBI trained export coach, and Product Development Consultant and Trainer with Sanabora Design House Ltd. View profile
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