promotion strategy in business plan example

• Product overview
• All features
• Latest feature release
• App integrations

CAPABILITIES

• project icon Project management
• Project views
• Custom fields
• Status updates
• goal icon Goals and reporting
• Reporting dashboards
• workflow icon Workflows and automation
• portfolio icon Resource management
• Capacity planning
• Time tracking
• my-task icon Admin and security
• Admin console
• asana-intelligence icon Asana AI
• list icon Personal
• premium icon Starter
• briefcase icon Advanced
• Goal management
• Organizational planning
• Project intake
• Resource planning
• Product launches
• View all uses arrow-right icon

Featured Reads

• Work management resources Discover best practices, watch webinars, get insights
• Customer stories See how the world's best organizations drive work innovation with Asana
• Help Center Get lots of tips, tricks, and advice to get the most from Asana
• Asana Academy Sign up for interactive courses and webinars to learn Asana
• Developers Learn more about building apps on the Asana platform
• Community programs Connect with and learn from Asana customers around the world
• Events Find out about upcoming events near you
• Partners Learn more about our partner programs
• Asana for nonprofits Get more information on our nonprofit discount program, and apply.
• Project plans
• Team goals & objectives
• Team continuity
• Meeting agenda
• View all templates arrow-right icon
• Business strategy |
• In a sales slump? Try these 12 promotio ...

In a sales slump? Try these 12 promotion strategies to create customer demand

If you want people to buy something, you need to tell them about it first. It sounds simple, but that’s the core principle behind all promotion strategies—raising awareness about a product, then convincing potential customers they should buy it. Learn about 12 different types of promotion strategies, plus best practices to create a successful strategy of your own.

People don’t just choose Red Bull for the taste and jolt of energy it provides. Thanks to the brand’s distinctive promotion strategy, customers prefer the Red Bull brand because it’s famous, edgy, and part of something bigger. 

What is a promotion strategy?

A promotion strategy is a plan to create or increase demand for a product. It outlines the tactics you’ll use to raise awareness about your product and get people interested in buying it.

The goal of a promotion strategy is to introduce potential customers to your product and convince them to make a purchase. You want to move them along the buyer’s journey—the path customers take from realizing a need, considering your product as a solution, and finally deciding to buy.

Promotion strategy vs. marketing strategy

Your promotion strategy is just one piece of a larger marketing strategy —a long-term plan outlining how you’ll market and sell your product. A successful marketing plan covers all the tactics you’ll use to promote your product, including the full “marketing mix”: product, price, place, and promotion. Your promotion strategy is a key component of the marketing mix. 

Here’s a breakdown of the marketing mix, also known as the 4 P’s of marketing :

Product: The item you’re selling. 

Price: How much you should charge for your product in order to make a profit.

Place: Where you should sell your product to reach your target audience . 

Promotion: How you create demand for your product and move customers through the marketing funnel.

The 4th “P” of marketing—promotion—is your promotion strategy. 

Promotion strategies and the marketing funnel

The buyer’s journey is often visualized as a funnel divided into three sections: top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. Customers enter their journey at the top of the funnel, then decide to purchase your product once they reach the bottom. A successful promotion strategy includes different tactics to appeal to customers in each section of the marketing funnel. 

Here’s a breakdown of the marketing funnel, with example promotion strategies for each section: 

Top of funnel

When a customer is at the top of the funnel, they know the problem they want to solve and are looking for a solution. They may not know your product exists yet, so at this stage your promotion strategy should grab the customer’s attention and build awareness about your brand and your product. 

Example promotion strategies: TV ads, event sponsorships, content marketing  

Middle of funnel

In the middle of the funnel, customers weigh your product against other available options. To keep them in the funnel, you need to show how your product is different from the competition and convince customers that your product is the best option. Here, your promotion strategy should create an emotional connection and show how your product can specifically resolve customer pain points. 

Example promotion strategies: Customer reviews, free samples, case studies

Bottom of funnel

Customers decide if they want to purchase your product when they’re in the bottom of the funnel. To target bottom-of-funnel customers, your promotion strategy should prompt people to take action.

Example promotion strategies: Special deals, email offers, flexible return policies

12 types of marketing promotion strategies, with examples

There are lots of ways to promote a product. If you’re looking for inspiration, we’ve laid out 12 different types of promotion strategies below. 

1. Paid advertising

Paid advertising is often the first type of promotion that comes to mind. This straightforward strategy involves paying to show an advertisement in a specific place at a specific time, so you can capture the attention of your target market. It’s a great way to build brand awareness and introduce your brand to people who may not have heard of it before. 

Here are some examples of paid advertising:  

Television ads

Newspaper and magazine ads

Online display ads (for example, through Google or social media)

2. Content marketing 

Content marketing is a common type of digital promotion strategy, focused on distributing valuable content in order to attract and retain an audience. The idea behind content marketing is this: It associates your brand with useful, relevant content that helps customers solve issues—building trust over time and ultimately encouraging customers to buy your products. Content marketing is a great promotional tool for any company, but it’s especially helpful for businesses with longer sales cycles, like B2B and SaaS companies. For these companies, content marketing helps provide enough customer education for buyers to make informed purchase decisions.

Content marketing comes in many forms, including: 

Social media posts

Email newsletters

Whitepapers or reports

Content created to improve SEO (search engine optimization)

3. Sponsorships

Sponsorships involve aligning your company with another brand—like an event, TV program, charity, or even a celebrity. For example, Pepsi routinely sponsors the Super Bowl, while Red Bull sponsors NASCAR and extreme athletes of all kinds. Nowadays, sponsorships often include social media influencer marketing—creating partnerships with individuals who became famous through social media platforms like Instagram or Youtube. 

The goal of a sponsorship is to boost your brand’s public image and credibility. Aligning yourself with another brand can drive media exposure, improve public relations, and expand your audience—plus make you stand out from the competition. 

4. Email marketing

Email marketing helps you connect with your target audience via—you guessed it—email. You can send emails to any subscribers on your mailing list—whether they’re potential customers, loyal customers, or something in between. For example, you can collect email addresses from potential customers by offering free products or services in exchange for their information. 

There are lots of things you can send via email, including: 

Newsletters and exclusive content

Information about product releases

Special deals and coupons

5. Retargeting

Retargeting focuses on customers (or potential customers) with high purchase intent. In other words, it involves targeting segments of your customer base who’ve already made it down to the bottom of the marketing funnel. Prioritizing retargeting can help you get a high return on your investment, since this audience is already primed and ready to buy. 

For example, retargeting could include: 

Sending reminder emails to customers who filled up an online shopping cart but didn’t check out.

Showing targeted advertisements to customers who purchased your products in the past. 

Sending nurture emails to people who purchased something a while ago but haven’t been back. 

6. Referral marketing

Referral marketing is when you get customers to tell their friends about your brand. Also known as word-of-mouth marketing, referral marketing happens organically when you have a great product—but you can also speed it along with special deals and incentives for customers who refer their connections. 

Referral marketing is a powerful strategy because it’s virtually free. And since people tend to trust their friends, referred customers are more likely to actually purchase your product than someone who just sees an ad. For example, Dropbox used referral marketing to permanently increase signups by 60 percent —eventually growing into a multi-billion dollar startup. 

7. Event marketing

Event marketing involves participating in, sponsoring, or hosting events in order to promote your brand or product. This strategy helps you connect and engage with customers first-hand, so they can get a real sense of your product and what your brand represents. Not only that, but events can help you build your brand presence, generate leads, and generate goodwill with customers. 

Event marketing comes in many forms, including: 

Conferences

Trade shows

Seminars and classes

Virtual events

Live streaming events

Community events

8. Special Causes 

Aligning your brand with a special cause makes customers feel like they’re part of something bigger. They’re not just helping themselves by purchasing your products—they’re also helping make the world a better place. This can help boost brand loyalty and give customers a reason to choose your brand over competitors. 

The clothing company Patagonia is a great example of this. By promoting their sustainable manufacturing processes, Patagonia attracts and retains customers who believe in environmental preservation. 

9. Customer reviews

Customer reviews are one of the most powerful marketing tools out there. Brands like Amazon, Yelp, and TripAdvisor built their businesses out of reviews—generating trust by promoting customer feedback. The beauty of this strategy is that it encourages customers to promote your brand for you. And as long as you have a high-quality product (and positive reviews), this type of user generated content can go a long way in convincing potential customers to purchase. 

Collecting customer reviews often happens organically, but you can speed it along by specifically requesting reviews from current customers via email or website banners. Some newer brands also seed reviews by sending products to customers in exchange for their honest feedback. 

10. Customer loyalty programs

Customer loyalty programs reward people who repeatedly interact with your brand. It’s a way to keep customers coming back by offering deals, discounts, and exclusive product launches. The more customers purchase from your company, the more perks they earn. For example, the beauty company Sephora promotes a loyalty program that offers discounts and gifts to customers who spend a certain amount.

Loyalty programs don’t just boost customer retention—they also help convince potential buyers to choose your brand over competitors. By promoting loyalty programs, you demonstrate ways customers can save money and get more bang from their buck over time. 

11. Free samples, giveaways, and trials

Everyone loves free stuff. Giving away samples of your product can help promote customer satisfaction and make customers feel like they’re getting a great deal. But most importantly, free samples and trials give potential customers first-hand experience with your product—and therefore the confidence to actually buy it later on. 

To employ this promotion strategy, companies can: 

Offer a trial period so customers can try out the product risk free. Gyms, apps, and online software companies often do this. 

Offer free samples for customers who visit stores in person. The warehouse club Costco is famous for using this method. 

Include free samples when customers purchase a product. This method can encourage existing customers to try new products. For example, online beauty suppliers like Glossier often include free skincare and makeup samples with every purchase. 

Organize contests with free prizes. This is a good way to collect contact information from potential customers. For example, a hotel company might encourage potential customers to enter their contact information for a chance to win a free vacation. 

12. Coupons and deals

Special deals can help you capture customers at the bottom of the marketing funnel—people who are deciding whether or not to purchase your product. Deals work in two ways: First, they create a sense of urgency and encourage customers to act quickly before the deal is over. Second, they help customers save money and feel like they’re getting a high return on their investment. 

The types of deals you can offer are endless. Here are some examples: 

Special intro offers for first-time customers

Bundling products together and offering them at a discount (for example, a 10-pack of socks)

Buy one, get one free deals

Seasonal sales and discounts (like Black Friday promotions)

Discounts on special item categories

Birthday coupons for customers

Free shipping for customers who spend over a certain amount

Best practices for a successful promotion strategy

Even the most innovative promotion strategies can fail if they’re not executed correctly. Here’s how to set yours up for success: 

Keep promotions simple: The best promotions strategies are simple and easy for customers to understand. You don’t want to make them spend a lot of effort figuring out what an advertisement means or how to redeem a deal. Instead, promotions should feel almost effortless—so customers don’t give up and decide to spend their money somewhere else. For example, keep sales promotion emails simple and to the point. Instead of cluttering the page with text, highlight the deal and include a call to action button so customers can click through and redeem directly. 

Measure results and be ready to change your strategy: Not all promotions work as expected. That means it’s important to routinely track metrics and measure how your strategy is performing—for example, with A/B tests or split tests. This helps you avoid wasting time on marketing efforts that aren’t working anymore, and quickly adapt when the market environment changes. 

Re-merchandise your product and homepage for promotions: People get used to seeing your homepage and product a certain way. Re-merchandising means mixing up your creative strategy and changing the look and feel of your homepage or product landing page to grab customers’ attention. For example, an e-commerce business could add new visual elements to their homepage to draw attention to promotions. 

Create a distinctive brand: There are a lot of products in the market, so chances are you need to compete for your audience’s attention. That means it’s important to focus on brand differentiation—demonstrating how your brand is better than the competition, and what you can offer that other companies can’t. For example, the grocery chain Whole Foods set their brand apart by promoting a healthier approach to eating and living—plus creating a visually appealing shopping experience. 

Provide a good customer experience: Your promotion strategy isn’t over once customers make a purchase. Instead of just focusing on attracting new customers, make sure existing customers have a good experience and want to come back to your brand later on. Create a customer journey map to plot how people think, act, and feel throughout the buying process—then see what improvements you can make. This might include better customer service, a more seamless checkout process, or even welcome emails and ongoing communications to maintain customer relationships over time. 

Strategize your way to success

A solid promotion strategy is key for any great marketing campaign , digital marketing strategy , or go to market (GTM) strategy . As you craft your approach, keep in mind that the 12 examples in this article don’t need to stand on their own. You can combine different tactics to catch customers’ attention at every stage of the buyer’s journey—whether they’re new to your brand, weighing your product against the competition, or returning for a repeat purchase. 

To run a successful promotion strategy, you need to coordinate work with many different stakeholders. Keep tasks organized with a marketing strategy template, which can help you plan goals, allocate resources, and clarify strategy owners—all in one place.

Related resources

15 creative elevator pitch examples for every scenario

How Asana streamlines strategic planning with work management

How to create a CRM strategy: 6 steps (with examples)

What is management by objectives (MBO)?

Strategy Studies

10 successful promotion strategies with examples.

Home > Back

Specialties

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.

Get the Strategies

Get the latest posts delivered to your inbox for free.

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.

Subscribe to Forward Weekly

Related posts.

Competitive Positioning: Strategies for Business Success

The Ultimate Local SEO Checklist for Better Search Rankings

Long-Tail Keyword Examples for Successful SEO Marketing

Top Keyword Research Tools for Effective SEO Marketing

Leave a Reply

Get The Marketing Strategies in Your Inbox

Sign up for our 1x a week newsletter (no spam!)

Popular Posts

Get the Guide

You'll learn how to:

• Generate more demand for your product or service
• What channels to start with at first
• Strategies to maximize your lead generation
• And so much more!

Houston, we have a problem... you need to login first!

Register For This Site

A password will be e-mailed to you.

Get In-Depth Marketing Strategies

Sign up to get in-depth marketing strategies, tactics, and case studies delivered right to your inbox.

100% privacy. We will never spam you!

Copyright @ MarketingStrategy.com 2024. All Right Reserved.

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.

Related Posts

• Hsbc Online Money Market Savings Interest Rate
• Hertz Car Rental Slogan
• Greek Food Market Online
• Late Start Late Finish
• Mobile Redirect
• Buy Ads On Facebook
• Mobile Ads: Boost Your Campaigns with Froggy Ads
• Best Marketing Manager Resume
• How To Calculate Cpm Advertising
• Tags advertising , best , Business , business plan , example , marketing , plan , practices , promotion , promotion strategy , strategy

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.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Here at Evinex, we value your privacy and peace of mind. That's why we promise never to reach out without your prior consent, and you won't be receiving any text messages (SMS) from us. Let's join forces to fight SPAM and SCAM together!

Please note: Evinex only sends emails from our main domain, evinex.com. If you receive an email from a similar-looking domain, it is most likely from a scammer.

Have you received contact from someone claiming to be part of our team?

We're here to help – please let us know and learn how you can help us combat this issue:  Evinex Against SCAM

Reach out to us for a consultation.

Let us help you find the talent your business needs. Contact us today for expert staffing and technology consulting services.

and connect with us on LinkedIn!

📍 620 Newport Center Dr #1100 Newport Beach, CA 92660

📍 1300 South Blvd Unit D Charlotte, NC 28203

[email protected]

© Evinex Corporation

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.

You may also like

Everything You Need To Know About Marketing Design

10 Ideas to Help You Create Remarkable Social Media Design

17 Inspiring Real Estate Ad Examples to Boost Your Marketing Campaign

More in digital marketing.

20 Creative Health Ads Examples to Get Inspired by

15 Creative Visual Metaphors in Advertising: Examples and Tips

How to Write Effective Ad Copy? Ad Copywriting Guide for 2024

• Inspiration
• – Display ads
• – Social media ads
• – Video ads
• – Automation
• – Collaboration
• – Animation
• Product updates
• Start free trial

Latest Posts

25 jaw-dropping typography art examples from 15 inspiring artists, white space in graphic design: guidelines & examples.

Filter by Keywords

Effective Promotion Strategies: Drive Sales and Boost Brand Awareness

Sudarshan Somanathan

Head of Content

March 14, 2024

Start using ClickUp today

• Manage all your work in one place
• Collaborate with your team
• Use ClickUp for FREE—forever

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 .

Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.

Receive the latest WriteClick Newsletter updates.

Thanks for subscribing to our blog!

Please enter a valid email

• Free training & 24-hour support
• Serious about security & privacy
• 99.99% uptime the last 12 months

• Content Marketing
• Paid Advertising
• Performance Creative
• Crypto & Blockchain
• Case Studies
• Press & Media
• Write for Single Grain
• General Inquiries
• Leveling Up Podcast
• Marketing School Podcast
• Executive Mastermind

Boost Your Growth

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

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!

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

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 .

Get Your Free 2024 Growth Guide with Our Newsletter, Leveling Up

Subscribe to Leveling Up and receive a free 2024 Growth Guide in your inbox. These emails are brimming with marketing strategies that are working right now and must-have resources. Join our community of 15,000+ subscribers, including professionals from Amazon, Google, and Samsung.

IN Digital Marketing Strategy How Removing Ads Can Increase Organic Reach BY Eric Siu Learn how removing ads can increase organic reach. Discover the impact on user experience, SEO, and visibility through real-world examples and strategic tips. Read Article

IN Digital Marketing Strategy From Traffic to Profits: The Evolution and Automation of Online Marketing Tactics BY Eric Siu Explore the evolution of online marketing tactics, from traffic generation to the focus on ROI. See what it takes to stand out. Read Article

IN Digital Marketing Strategy SEO Strategy Shifts: Increase Revenue with Smart Tactics BY Eric Siu Explore advanced SEO strategies to transform your enterprise with technical SEO and high-quality content for sustained revenue growth. Read Article

Leverage Targeted Strategies for Business Growth

Receive tailored expert advice for enhancing your promotional strategy.

Get Free Instant Access

8 Effective Online Marketing Tactics

That Have Generated 1,545%+ ROI for our Customers (and You Can Easily Use)

We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe.

Fill out the form below to receive personalized expert guidance for your promotional strategy.

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

Jacqueline Foster , Demand Generation Marketing, Lever.co

Get The Latest Customer Acquisition Strategies

Get the latest customer acquisition strategies from the best companies

Which would you like to learn more about? (Check all that apply)

Are you looking for slow growth or fast growth?

“Single Grain enables us to increase our impact without increasing our headcount”

Kim Cooper , Director of Marketing, Amazon Alexa

Do you have the infrastructure to take on 2x, 5x, 10x scale?

“They act like an extension of our team, proactively fixing issues as they arise”

Samantha Goldman , Sr. Director of Marketing, CastLightHealth

How much are you spending on marketing per month right now?

“Their expertise has helped Nextiva grow its brand and overall business”

Yaniv Masjedi , CMO, Nextiva

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.

Featured Resource:   Free Marketing Plan Template

Looking to develop a marketing plan for your business?   Click here to download HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template to get started .

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.

Free Marketing Plan Template

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

• Pre-Sectioned Template
• Completely Customizable
• Example Prompts
• Professionally Designed

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

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

1. Create an overview or primary objective.

Our business mission is to provide [service, product, solution] to help [audience] reach their [financial, educational, business related] goals without compromising their [your audience’s valuable asset: free time, mental health, budget, etc.]. We want to improve our social media presence while nurturing our relationships with collaborators and clients.

For example, if I wanted to focus on social media growth, my KPIs might look like this:

We want to achieve a minimum of [followers] with an engagement rate of [X] on [social media platform].

The goal is to achieve an increase of [Y] on recurring clients and new meaningful connections outside the platform by the end of the year.

Use the following categories to create a target audience for your campaign.

• Profession:
• Background:
• Pain points:
• Social media platforms that they use:
• Streaming platforms that they prefer:

For more useful strategies, consider creating a buyer persona in our Make My Persona tool .

Our content pillars will be: [X, Y, Z].

Content pillars should be based on topics your audience needs to know. If your ideal clients are female entrepreneurs, then your content pillars might be: marketing, being a woman in business, remote working, and productivity hacks for entrepreneurs.

Then, determine any omissions.

This marketing plan won’t be focusing on the following areas of improvement: [A, B, C].

5. Define your marketing budget.

Our marketing strategy will use a total of [Y] monthly. This will include anything from freelance collaborations to advertising.

6. Identify your competitors.

I like to work through the following questions to clearly indicate who my competitors are:

• Which platforms do they use the most?
• How does their branding differentiate?
• How do they talk to their audiences?
• What valuable assets do customers talk about? And if they are receiving any negative feedback, what is it about?

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

Create responsible parties for each portion of the plan.

Marketing will manage the content plan, implementation, and community interaction to reach the KPIs.

• Social media manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Content strategist: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Community manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Sales will follow the line of the marketing work while creating and implementing an outreach strategy.
• Sales strategists: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Sales executives: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Customer Service will nurture clients’ relationships to ensure that they have what they want. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Project Managers will track the progress and team communication during the project. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Get started on your marketing plan.

These marketing plans are initial resources to get your content marketing plan started. But to truly deliver what your audience wants and needs, you'll likely need to test some different ideas out, measure their success, and then refine your goals as you go.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in April 2019, but was updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Strategies & How to Improve Your Digital Presence

5 Steps to Create an Outstanding Marketing Plan [Free Templates]

4 Clever Olympics Marketing Campaigns [+Top Takeaways]

6 Steps to Create an Outstanding Marketing Plan [Free Templates]

50 Small Business Marketing Ideas for 2024

The 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report: Data from 1400+ Global Marketers

Mastering Social Media for Nonprofit Promotion: Insights and New Data from Experts

The AIDA Model: A Proven Framework for Converting Strangers Into Customers

Demystifying Marketing's 6 Biggest Mixed Messages of 2024 with Jasper's Head of Enterprise Marketing

9 Pivotal Marketing Trends to Watch in 2024, According to Experts

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

Free Marketing Plan Examples: Real-World Samples & Templates

By Joe Weller | April 27, 2024

• Share on Facebook
• Share on LinkedIn

Link copied

A  marketing plan  is a comprehensive document that outlines a company’s marketing strategy and tactics, and ensures that its marketing goals align with its overall objectives. Effective marketing plans include detailed analysis of the market along with roadmaps for upcoming campaigns. Inside this article, you’ll find the  elements of a marketing plan , 10 real-world examples of marketing plans with commentary from experienced marketing professionals, free marketing plan templates and samples , and a  chart to help you determine which template suits your needs .

Marketing Plan Elements

Typical marketing plans begin with an executive summary and include audience demographics, company objectives, situational analysis of the business, and marketing strategies and tactics. Market research and analysis provide campaign direction, and the budget and timeline offer practical parameters. A marketing plan can provide an overview of all strategies and campaigns to be executed in a certain time frame, or it can focus on a specific product, channel, or strategy. The level of detail and the sections included might vary, depending on the organization’s needs. The nine main elements of a marketing plan are:  

Executive Summary and Mission Statement:  A concise, high-level summary conveys the purpose of your marketing plan, introduces key strategies and research insights, and highlights the most important takeaways for stakeholders. For example, an executive summary might outline your brand’s identity, its place within the competitive landscape, and the major opportunities that upcoming marketing campaigns will target. Longer plans might include a separate mission statement or vision statement to align marketing efforts with your company’s larger goals. Discover more  examples of executive summaries with templates to help you write one effectively.  

Situational Analysis:  One of the most crucial elements of your marketing plan, a situational analysis is an assessment of the internal and external factors affecting a business’s performance. It should include research-based insights into market trends and dynamics, customer demographics and pain points, and internal resources.  A strong situational analysis often includes a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis, which provides a foundation for an effective marketing strategy. Learn more about  how to perform a SWOT analysis .  

Competitive Analysis:  Understanding the competition is key to developing a compelling marketing plan. This analysis should consider recent marketing campaigns from similar brands to identify successful ways to reach a shared target audience. Being aware of the competitive landscape can also help your business develop a unique selling proposition and stand out in the market. The competitive analysis might be included in the larger situational analysis, or it might be a stand-alone section. For example, a marketing plan could include data on how competitors rank on keywords, or it could evaluate the performance of competitors’ recent social media campaigns. One common framework for understanding market dynamics is a Porter’s five forces analysis, which identifies the forces that contribute to industry rivals. Learn how to evaluate the competitive landscape with  free industry analysis templates .  

Target Audience: In order to implement marketing strategies that engage consumers and drive conversions, businesses need to know who their audience is, what they want, and how they behave. A marketing plan should define a specific, segmented target audience with demographic, geographical, psychographic, and behavioral data.  This section often includes customer profiles or buyer personas — fictionalized representations of ideal customers or audience segments — which help marketers typify consumer behaviors. These profiles should include media habits and most-used platforms to ensure that your marketing plan selects the right channels for each campaign. Learn how to analyze your target market with  free customer profile templates .  

Goals and Objectives:  Marketing plans typically include both long-term goals, which provide broad direction for the company’s marketing strategy, and short-term objectives, which focus on more immediate tactics and campaigns. Goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) and include corresponding key performance indicators (KPIs).  The goals and objectives in a marketing plan often focus on conversions, market share, brand awareness, or engagement. Clearly defined goals ensure strategically aligned marketing initiatives with measurable results. Take a look at  real-world examples of SMART goals for more insights.  

Marketing Strategy:  This section of a marketing plan details the business’s unique value proposition and the channels that will communicate it. A robust marketing strategy addresses the touchpoints in a consumer’s buying cycle and breaks down the 4 Ps (product, price, place, promotion) of the marketing mix. Channels might include digital marketing, advertisements, social media, and influencer partnerships. To develop an overarching marketing strategy, consider using a  marketing strategy template . To learn more about the 4 Ps, read this  product marketing guide .  

Tactics and Action Plan:  A marketing plan is not an abstract strategy document, but a concrete roadmap for executing specific campaigns with specific tactics. Your plan should detail the messaging for each campaign and the corresponding methods for communication — such as email newsletters, social content, targeted ads, and public relations.  This section provides KPIs and actionable steps such as resource allocation, deliverables, and distribution plans. It might also include the expected outcome for each campaign. To plan individual campaigns, consider using a  marketing project plan template .  

Budget:  Marketing expenses might include the cost of advertising, content creation, website maintenance, or promotional materials; no marketing plan is complete without a budget that breaks down the costs of such initiatives. A clear, comprehensive budget ensures that marketing efforts are financially feasible and resources can be allocated for maximum impact. The budget also enables the marketing team to track the return on investment (ROI) of each campaign. To create a comprehensive budget, try our  free marketing budget templates .    

Timeline:  Finally, a marketing plan includes a clear schedule for implementing its initiatives and tactics. This timeline details the start and end dates of each campaign, deadlines for deliverables, and key events or milestones. It keeps the marketing team aligned and initiatives on track, ensuring that marketing objectives can be achieved within the set time frame. Organize dates and deadlines with the help of a  marketing timeline template .  

Marketing Plan Examples

Real-world marketing plans show how businesses utilize effective planning documents. These 10 examples from various industries exhibit unique strengths and weaknesses. With insightful commentary from marketing experts, these plans offer practical takeaways any marketer can use.  

Delmarva and the Ground for Change This  in-depth marketing plan for a documentary produced by the USDA Northeast Climate Hub includes audience profiles, competitive analysis, and a distribution plan. Along with a detailed breakdown of its digital marketing strategy, it considers how different tactics will affect the viewer’s content journey.   

John Dinsmore , a marketing consultant and professor at Wright State University, praises this plan for its attractive design and thoughtful, thorough content: “They do a nice job of extrapolating on who the target market is and tying their tactics to achieving specific goals.”  He appreciates the inclusion of a SWOT analysis, but feels it could be done more effectively. “‘Opportunities’ is not a place for business ideas. It’s a place to identify external, positive trends that can help your initiative. In this context, an opportunity could be ‘Rising concern for and awareness of climate issues.’ Similarly, ‘threats’ is not a place to list things that are difficult. It’s for negative external trends such as ‘Increased skepticism over ability to combat climate change.’” 

Dekker Fraser , former Global Marketing Manager at Sony PlayStation, adds that this plan includes a strong focus on collaborations with media and influencers: “Many marketing plans place too much emphasis on target customers and not enough on target collaborators.”  

Minnesota Tourism This  marketing plan by Explore Minnesota , the state’s Department of Tourism, showcases Minnesota’s beauty with vivid imagery. It uses a variety of demographic information to identify priority audience segments and includes well-designed infographics that analyze audience and competition. As a result, the campaigns are clearly targeted at specific audiences and objectives. 

John Rarrick , Head of Marketing at Movius Corp., admires the strength of the message behind the strategy. “This plan has a very well-developed ‘why,’” he says. “You’ll see that often when the plan is to repair or save something that has undergone a time of great loss — such as a loss of revenue or reputation. The audience personas, goals, tactics, and budget are all detailed and measurable.” 

Gold Coast Transit District  

A  short, high-level marketing plan for Gold Coast Transit highlights key campaigns and includes the most important details, such as timelines, budgets, and tactics. It begins with a bulleted overview of the most important takeaways and takes into account general marketing efforts that don’t fit under a specific campaign umbrella. Fraser notes that this plan includes year-round marketing initiatives, with an effective “emphasis on strong offers, such as youth-free fares.” However, he points out that its brand awareness goals could be more specific. “Instead, use context-specific awareness goals such as ‘When commuting to work, residents first think of Gold Coast Transit’ or ‘When coming home from the library at night, I think of taking the bus,’” he says. “In other words, peg awareness to specific category-entry points.”  

University of Arizona College of Engineering This  marketing, branding, and communications plan for the University of Arizona College of Engineering sets out a long-term vision, high-level goals, and strategies for achieving these goals. It has a section for methodology — including promotional videos and email newsletters — and segments its audience to align with its strategies. This plan “demonstrates a clearly defined audience,” according to Rarrick. That said, not every section of the plan includes the same level of specificity. “The KPIs are vague,” he adds. “I would expect to see something more measurable, rather than ‘increase’ or ‘improve.’” 

Timberland Regional Library This  library's two-year marketing plan sets initiatives in motion with a clear schedule for action. It includes both promotional and production calendars for effective planning, which is especially important for campaigns pegged to external events.  Dinsmore cites this plan’s “professional and elegant graphic design” as a strength. It also offers a roadmap for tackling several marketing campaigns on different timelines. However, he suggests that the plan needs more measurable goals and defined strategies. “There’s no overarching strategy that ties all of these tactics and initiatives together,” he says. “It’s just a laundry list of dates and actions.” 

Safe Haven Family Shelter Nonprofit organizations need creative marketing strategies to reach their targets and use funds efficiently. With specific objectives and actionable steps, this  marketing plan for Safe Haven Family Shelter delineates high-level goals and details the path to achieving them. It identifies the roles and responsibilities of individual team members to ensure alignment. Rarrick commends this plan for its “clearly defined audience and very clearly defined goals.” The plan showcases the differences between strategic business goals and measurable marketing objectives.  

Visit Myrtle Beach This  destination marketing plan by the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Chamber of Commerce  incorporates detailed information about target markets, audience personas, and key behaviors. It includes an infographic that illuminates the touchpoints in a traveler’s journey and shows the marketing team how each tactic contributes to conversions.  Overall, Dinsmore praises this plan as a “very smart and thoughtful presentation.” It outlines a distinct media mix for each target audience, defines its objectives clearly, and ties these objectives to success metrics. He continues, “I want to thank the Myrtle Beach folks for planning to measure their efforts. Measurement is often anathema to marketing people, but if you’re not measuring, you don’t know how to improve.”  With so much information to cover, the plan would benefit from an executive summary to introduce key takeaways. “The bigger the scope, the harder it is to make everything feel connected, and that’s a bit of an issue with this plan,” Dinsmore adds.  

Tropical Avocados This  example of a no-frills plan was commissioned by the nonprofit Improving Economies for Stronger Communities (IESC) to help brand and launch tropical avocados in the U.S. market. It shows the importance of making branding decisions backed by market and consumer research. A detailed SWOT analysis and competitive analysis provide essential insights that enable the company to determine the best unique selling proposition.  A key strength of this plan is its detailed research into its audience. Fraser cites its “excellent identification of consumer objections — e.g., concern over how natural the avocado size is — and consumer behavior.” As a result, the brand can adopt effective messaging in its marketing campaigns. As with USDA Northeast Climate Hub’s Delmarva and the Ground for Change documentary, “target collaborators — e.g., food writers, organizations, and chefs — are included in the target audience. Collaborators are often more critical to the marketing plan than the consumers themselves,” Fraser adds.  

Rochelle Community Hospital This  case study of Rochelle Community Hospital in Rochelle, Illinois, shows how a targeted marketing plan can be used to achieve significant results. The report by Legato Healthcare Marketing showcases the importance of reevaluating an existing marketing strategy — in this case, shifting the emphasis from print to digital. External marketing agencies often have more tools at their disposal, particularly if the business has not had a strong digital presence. With targeted ads and website updates, the agency employed tactics with direct metrics in order to track its impact.   

Visit Concord This  example from the Concord Tourism Improvement District marketing plan is concise and includes streamlined insights on the audience and market. It details each marketing channel with specific tactics and measurable KPIs.  The overall strategy, according to Fraser, offers “an excellent emphasis on social proof and word-of-mouth marketing,” as well as a “good balance of awareness and activation marketing.” In order to improve, he suggests, “the plan should factor in the following critical quantitative factors to help drive the media strategy: reach, frequency, and the total-addressable market.” 

Marketing Plan Templates

Using a template takes the guesswork out of organizing a marketing plan document. These customizable templates include essential elements and options for specific industries or marketing channels, and they range from one-page plans to comprehensive, presentation-ready reports.

Microsoft Word Simple Marketing Plan Template

Download the Simple Marketing Plan Example Template for Microsoft Word Download the Blank Simple Marketing Plan Template for Microsoft Word

This example of a simple, customizable plan focuses on key strategies and prioritizes readability. This one-page marketing plan template includes space to summarize marketing strategy and overarching business objectives, along with an action plan to highlight responsibilities and deadlines.

Microsoft Word Annual Marketing Plan Template

Download the Annual Marketing Plan Example Template for Microsoft Word Download the Blank Annual Marketing Plan Template for Microsoft Word  

This comprehensive marketing plan template includes a number of key sections — such as goals, target market, marketing channels, and performance standards — that can be customized to suit a variety of businesses. In the situational analysis, you can find space for both a 5C (company, collaborators, customers, competitors, climate) analysis and a SWOT analysis. The blank template begins with a table of contents, a business summary, and a mission statement to allow for easy readability. The sample focuses on marketing strategies for one fiscal year, but you can modify this plan for any time period. 

Microsoft Word Small Business Marketing Plan Template

Download the Small Business Marketing Plan Example Template for Microsoft Word Download the Blank Small Business Marketing Plan Template for Microsoft Word

A strong marketing plan is essential for small businesses looking to stand out from larger competitors. This small business marketing plan template provides an outline for a detailed marketing strategy, including a unique selling proposition, the 4Ps marketing mix, and marketing channels. It builds its strategy on situational analysis and identification of the business’s core capabilities. Find  more marketing plan templates  for different industries.

Microsoft Word Nonprofit Marketing Plan Template

Download the Nonprofit Marketing Plan Example Template for Microsoft Word Download the Blank Nonprofit Marketing Plan Template for Microsoft Word

This example marketing plan for a nonprofit incorporates information on the funding climate into its situational analysis, as well as a detailed organizational summary. With sections for short- and long-term goals, marketing strategies and channels, and stakeholder profiles, the template is comprehensive and customizable. Find  more nonprofit marketing plan templates here .

Excel Product Marketing Plan Template

Download the Product Marketing Plan Example Template for Excel Download the Blank Product Marketing Plan Template for Excel

When integrating a new product into existing marketing strategies, it’s important to take into account all the elements of the marketing mix. This product marketing plan template is organized by product, price, place, promotion, process, people, and physical evidence. In these sections, you can find space to consider market research, consumer behaviors, and marketing channels.

Excel Social Media Marketing Plan Template

Download the Social Media Marketing Plan Example Template for Excel Download the Blank Social Media Marketing Plan Template for Excel

For planning specific campaigns, this social media marketing action plan template begins with the campaign goal, highlights important promo dates, and separates actions by platform. It’s useful for executing targeted social media campaigns within a larger marketing strategy. Find  more marketing action plan templates here .

Excel Digital Marketing Plan Template

Download the Digital Marketing Plan Example Template for Excel Download the Blank Digital Marketing Plan Template for Excel

Focusing on digital marketing channels is an effective way to organize strategies into a streamlined and actionable plan. This strategic digital marketing template highlights important audience behaviors and access channels to ensure messaging reaches consumers. Customizable for a variety of digital marketing projects, the template includes space for keywords, goals, and tasks. Find  more digital marketing plan templates here .

Which Marketing Plan Format Is Right for You?

To choose the right marketing plan format for your needs, consider the plan’s role in your marketing strategy. Do you need a comprehensive plan to provide an overview of tactics that will take place over a long period of time? Or are you looking for a plan to focus on specific channels, campaigns, or product launches? 

Each template in this article offers space to detail market research, strategies, and access channels. The longer plans include more sections for in-depth situational analysis and audience demographics, while the shorter plans focus on the marketing mix and action plan. This chart highlights the key elements of each marketing plan:  

Streamline Your Marketing Plan Efforts with Smartsheet

The best marketing teams know the importance of effective campaign management, consistent creative operations, and powerful event logistics -- and Smartsheet helps you deliver on all three so you can be more effective and achieve more. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Improve your marketing efforts and deliver best-in-class campaigns.

• Dopinger Blog
• 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.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

No comments to show.

Jun 12, 2024

May 30, 2024

May 21, 2024

We use essential cookies to make Venngage work. By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.

Manage Cookies

Cookies and similar technologies collect certain information about how you’re using our website. Some of them are essential, and without them you wouldn’t be able to use Venngage. But others are optional, and you get to choose whether we use them or not.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are always on, as they’re essential for making Venngage work, and making it safe. Without these cookies, services you’ve asked for can’t be provided.

Show cookie providers

• Google Login

Functionality Cookies

These cookies help us provide enhanced functionality and personalisation, and remember your settings. They may be set by us or by third party providers.

Performance Cookies

These cookies help us analyze how many people are using Venngage, where they come from and how they're using it. If you opt out of these cookies, we can’t get feedback to make Venngage better for you and all our users.

• Google Analytics

Targeting Cookies

These cookies are set by our advertising partners to track your activity and show you relevant Venngage ads on other sites as you browse the internet.

• Google Tag Manager
• Infographics
• Daily Infographics
• Popular Templates
• Accessibility
• Graphic Design
• Graphs and Charts
• Data Visualization
• Human Resources
• Beginner Guides

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 , 9 marketing plan examples to inspire your growth strategy.

• Marketing plan v.s. business plan
• Types of marketing plans

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 marketing plan performance

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:

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 inbound 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:

1. Nonprofit marketing plan

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. Social media marketing plan

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 plan

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 plan

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.

Marketing plan vs. 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:

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]

Discover popular designs

Infographic maker

Brochure maker

White paper online

Newsletter creator

Flyer maker

Timeline maker

Letterhead maker

Mind map maker

Ebook maker

Marketing91

15 Promotional Strategies to Use in 2023 (Types, Steps & Role in Marketing)

August 14, 2023 | By Hitesh Bhasin | Filed Under: Marketing

Promotion is an important part of marketing . It’s how you get your message out to potential customers and build your brand voice. 2023 is a great time to evaluate the promotional strategies you’re currently using and look for new, more effective ways to reach your target audience.

Promotional strategies are the plans and tactics implemented by brands that want to promote themselves in the market and increase their sales, drive more revenue, build brand equity , and build recall for their products and company . The applications of promotion strategies are manifold and they can be used in various methods to achieve different objectives. The best part about promotions is that they are versatile. If you are creative, the sky is the limit.

Table of Contents

What is a Promotion Strategy?

A promotion strategy is a set of marketing activities and methods used to increase customer awareness of a product or service, attract new customers, encourage existing customers to purchase additional products or services, and build brand loyalty . It can be used in any type of marketing including digital, print, radio, television, and more.

You are not a marketer if you haven’t heard about the four Ps of marketing mix which is the product, price, place, and promotion. In this article, you will learn about the last P – Promotion. Nowadays, promotion has become an integral part of every business .

In present times, companies opt for various techniques and methods to attract customers and convince them to buy their products. Let us understand this better with an example.

Example of a Promotion Strategy-

Just assume you are a marketing manager of a company that manufactures jogging shoes.

You want people to know about the existence of your product and you want that everyone should own at least one pair of jogging shoes manufactured by your company. Now, it is your job to figure out how to make people aware of your plan or how to convince them to buy specifically jogging shoes manufactured by your company only.

Your plan to make this happen will be your promotional strategy to promote your product. There are various components that will influence your promotional strategy. In the next section, you will learn about the various components of a promotional strategy.

Components of Promotional Strategies

Budget is one of the factors that influence your promotional strategies a lot. Sometimes you have the freedom to decide the budget of your strategy and on other times you will be given a budget by others to plan your promotional strategy. However, whatever the situation is you should know beforehand how much you can invest in promotion to boost the sale of the product.

When you are setting your product out in marketing, you require a message that will make your product stand out among other similar products. What are the qualities of your jogging shoes that everyone should have them? It is not an easy task to find the right message for your product. It will require a lot of brainstorming .

3) Target Market

A promotional strategy is incomplete without the target market . whether your product is designed for females or males? of what age? You must decide your target market before setting your product out in the market. if you are sure of your target market your work will become easy to plan your promotional strategy.

4) Strategy

There are various types of marketing strategies that you can opt for to promote your product. You must figure out which type of promotional strategy is going to boost your sales. You can also observe the promotional styles of companies that are selling similar products. for example, you can use the “ Push Strategy of “ Nestle ” which uses high-profile advertising to push its products onto people. Or you can use the promotional strategy of Rolls -Royce, which has built a prestigious brand name that people what to own their car. The promotional strategy used by Rolls Royce is called the “ Pull Strategy ”, where merely the name of your brand will pull customers. Choose your strategy wisely before investing in it.

5 Types Of Promotion Strategies Marketers Can Use

1. pull promotion strategy.

The Pull Promotional Strategies is about creating a strong brand name and identity that will attract customers. It generally involves heavy branding efforts such as extensive advertising, PR activities, product placement , and other marketing tactics. The goal of this strategy is to create a need for the product in the minds of consumers, thereby increasing demand.

2. Push Promotion Strategy

The Push Promotion Strategy is about forcefully pushing the product out into the market. It usually involves a heavy focus on sales team efforts, discounts, rebates, and other incentives that encourage customers to buy the product. The goal of this strategy is to increase sales by creating awareness and providing added value for existing customers.

3. Sales Promotion Strategy

The Sales Promotion Strategy is focused on directly making the product available to the customer. This involves direct mail, coupons, loyalty programs , and other promotions that make it easier for customers to purchase your product or service. The goal of this strategy is to increase customer loyalty and usage by offering incentives and discounts.

4. Retail Promotion Strategy

The Retail Promotion Strategy focuses on increasing product visibility in stores. This involves strategies such as merchandising , display solutions, special offers, and more that make customers aware of the product when they are shopping for it. The goal of this strategy is to increase store traffic and sales by making the product more accessible.

5. E-commerce Promotion Strategy

The Ecommerce Promotion Strategy is all about getting your product in front of online customers. This involves strategies such as SEO, social media marketing, display advertising, and more that make customers aware of the product when they are browsing for it. The goal of this strategy is to increase website traffic and sales by making the product more visible on the web.

15 Promotional Strategies for 2023

1) social media.

There are various platforms online where you can promote your products and can reach a huge number of audiences. There is hardly any person who is not using either Facebook or Instagram . By using this platform, you can make people aware of your product.

You can talk about its uses and how it is essential for them. In addition to this, you can show people how your product is better than other similar products. Unlike other promotional strategies which are blindly pushing their product on everyone. You can make sure that your product has reachability to your potential customers who have a high chance to get converted. if you don’t believe me.

Just go and open your Facebook app. You will understand what I am trying to say. There is a 90% chance that you will find the advertisement for “ Zomato ” offering you a 50% discount on your first order. If you are either feeling hungry or it is 12 pm (lunchtime).

2) Content Marketing & SEO

Content marketing and SEO are one of the most effective yet underrated promotional strategies for e- commerce businesses. By using content marketing, you can make sure that your product is placed in front of people who have a high chance to buy it.

You can also target certain age groups or geolocation depending on your product-market fit. Moreover, if you want to increase the visibility of your product on search engines, SEO can help you rank higher in the relevant searches. You need to do proper keyword research so that you can understand what terms people are using while searching for a product similar to yours.

3) Mail Order Marketing

Just think that your company is still breathing just because of your customers. Once customers have used your product and liked it, there are chances that they are going to be connected with you for a long time. Therefore, don’t make a mistake to overlook these customers.

You can ask them to share their personal details in exchange for free gifts or services. You can use that information to promote your product in a new market where people are totally unaware of the existence of your product.

4) Paid Advertising

One of the most popular yet costly promotional strategies, paid advertising is a great way to create brand awareness for your e-commerce business. You can use Google Ads or Facebook Ads to target potential customers who are more likely to buy your product.

However, you need to plan and decide which type of ads you are going to use in order to get maximum ROI from your campaigns. Additionally, if you are targeting a certain age group or geolocation, you can use the right keywords to display your ad in front of them.

5) Free Product and sample Giveaways

This promotional strategy is used by both small as well as powerful companies. By using this strategy, you can boost the sale of your product instantly. This strategy is mostly adopted by food or cosmetic companies. They provide a sample of their products free of cost and make people try new products.

You must have noticed a small counter of some brand in a shopping mall that gives away samples of products to every passer-by or sometimes they ask for personal details like an email address from people whom they are giving free samples. Later you can use this information to promote your product.

6) Customer Referral Incentive Program

This promotional strategy will use your current customers and encourage them to refer your products or services to their families and friends. You can offer them gifts or discounts on their next purchase in exchange for their referral. For example, many e-commerce companies run the “Customer Incentive Referral Program” to increase their customer base using their existing customers. this strategy is far less expensive than the traditional style of advertising.

7) Point of Sale Promotion and End Marketing

In stores, products are displayed strategically so that they come first in the eyes of customers as soon as they enter the store. Stores do this for two reasons convenience and impulse.

Many times, you have noticed a rack displaying attractive offers on a certain product, or many products are displayed near the aisle of the store. There are reasons why stores do this. They do this either to boost the sale of the product or when they want their stock moving. This strategy makes people buy certain products impulsively while they wait for their turn to check out.

8) Customer Loyalty Program

This is another promotional strategy that many companies use to reward their most loyal customers. Loyalty programs are a great way to turn one-time customers into regular buyers or even regulars into brand ambassadors .

Companies offer loyalty points or discount coupons on future purchases as an incentive for the people who keep coming back to make further purchases. This strategy not only encourages people to come back and shop but also helps companies build long-term relationships with their customers. Loyalty programs can be great tools to retain customers in the long run as well as create brand loyalty among them.

9) Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective direct marketing promotion strategies out there. It involves partnering up with influential people on social media platforms to promote and endorse your brand. Companies are often ready to pay influencers a fee or free product samples for their endorsements.

This strategy is becoming increasingly popular among businesses because it gives them access to a wider audience, and influencers have the power to influence people’s behaviors and decisions through their posts.

10) Branded Promotional Gifts

This is an effective strategy used by many companies to promote their brand. In this strategy, rather than handing out the business card they print the business name, logo, and contact information on a functional gift. For example, companies in Japan distribute millions of napkins with their brand’s name printed on its envelope.

The logic behind doing this is that people usually discard business cards without even looking at them, however, a napkin is a useful thing people don’t throw it away and there is a high chance that it will stay with the person it is handed to, for a longer period of time. This is also the best way to keep your customers happy because people love getting free gifts and a happy customer will definitely bring you more business.

11) Causes and Charity

People want to connect with those companies which are giving back to society along with providing excellent services. Therefore, many small, as well as powerful companies, use this strategy to strengthen their customer base.

To do this, you need to tie up with some charity organization or an NGO and then you can advertise your initiative on your social media handles, website, and in your stores so that people become aware of it and will buy your products to do their bit for the society.

A classic example of this promotional strategy used by a stationery company “Classmate”. A classmate tells their buyers that they will pay “one rupee” for the education of unprivileged children for every product bought by you. This strategy makes the use of emotions of human beings to boost sales. There is no harm to give a try to this strategy.

12) After-Sale Customer Survey

Reaching your customers through telephonic calls or emails or text messages to know about their experience shopping with you does three jobs: 1. It makes your customers believe that you care for them. 2. It opens the doors for promotional activities. 3. Your customer feedback can help you to improve your business.

During the conversation, you can also educate your customers about the ongoing or upcoming offers on your products and if they are happy with your services then you can politely ask them to give a positive review online. It will improve the image of your business.

13) Customer’s Appreciation Events

This type of strategy involves throwing a small party for your customers. this small gesture will not cost you as much as fancy advertisements will cost you, but it will definitely improve the loyalty of customers toward your brand. You can also organize small competitions where you can provide gift hampers to the winner or you can also give them a discount on their next purchase.

To make this kind of event more attractive you can also offer food items like pizza, soft drinks or some other snacks. This will attract customers to your store. Make sure to display products that you want to promote strategically so that it comes into the eyes of people.

14) Throwing contests for promotion

This type of promotional strategy is quite frequently used by companies to make a place for their newly launched product in the market. you must have noticed many bloggers and YouTubers posting about their partnerships with various brands and asking their customers to go do various tasks to get a chance to win the contest.

In addition to this, companies also offer a certain discount if a customer enters the code provided by a specific YouTuber or Blogger. Or you can also organize contests in a traditional way such as organizing a contest in the store and asking customers to participate to stand a chance to win.

15) Event sponsoring

Event sponsorship is a great way to promote your products. You can sponsor events such as music concerts or fashion shows in order to reach out to a larger audience. The best thing about event sponsoring is that you will get an opportunity to attract the attention of thousands of people in one go.

Apart from this, you can also use this strategy for the promotion of your services. You can organize an event or sponsor an existing one in order to create brand awareness and increase customer loyalty. This will not only help you build a good reputation but also generate more leads for your business.

Here is a video by Marketing91 on Promotional Strategies.

What Steps Go Into Making a Promotion Strategy?

• Identify your target audience to develop personalized promotional strategies.
• Establish your budget for promotional activities.
• Set clear goals and objectives for the promotions campaign.
• Decide on which channels (TV, radio, print, digital, word-of-mouth marketing, etc.) you want to promote your product/service.
• Create powerful ads and content that appeal to potential customers
• Measure and track performance and customer satisfaction with analytics tools.
• Adjust your strategies to maximize success.
• Track customer feedback and use it to make further improvements in the promotion strategy.
• Leverage new technologies for better outreach and more accurate predictions of consumer behavior.

Promotion Strategy vs. Marketing Strategy

While a marketing strategy is a broader plan formulated to achieve overall business objectives, a promotion strategy is a component of this, focusing specifically on tactics to increase visibility and awareness of the product or service by using right marketing channels .

So, a marketing strategy is an overall plan to increase customers and sales, while a promotion strategy is a specific plan that outlines how you will achieve that.

What are the Roles of Promotion Strategies in Marketing?

Promotional strategies are an integral part of any marketing plan . They can help you to –

• Increase brand awareness among your target audience
• Enhance customer loyalty and credibility
• Generate leads for more sales
• Demonstrate the advantages of your products and services compared to your competitors
• Create a unified brand voice across different channels, such as social media, email, and print
• Increase customer engagement with your product or service.

Finally, promotion strategies are a great way to measure the success of your marketing campaigns . By tracking how customers respond to different promotions and channels, you can adjust your approach in order to maximize results. This will help you get the most out of every marketing dollar.

Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Marketing

Related posts:

• Promotional Pricing: Definition, Types, Importance and Advantages
• Promotional Mix: Definition, Examples & How to Use It
• What is Customer Acquisition? Definition, Steps, Channels, Calculation & Strategies
• What is Brand Development Strategy? 17 Strategies Explained with Steps
• What is Tourism Marketing? 15 Strategies in 2023
• What is B2B Marketing? A Comprehensive Guide with Strategies, Examples & Trends in 2024
• Steps in Prospecting – Prospecting steps
• What is Mobile Marketing? Definition, Steps & Top Trends for 2023
• What is the Purchasing Process? Definition, Steps & Modern Practices for 2023
• What is Event Marketing? Types, Roles, and Examples

About Hitesh Bhasin

Hitesh Bhasin is the CEO of Marketing91 and has over a decade of experience in the marketing field. He is an accomplished author of thousands of insightful articles, including in-depth analyses of brands and companies. Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.

All Knowledge Banks (Hub Pages)

• Marketing Hub
• Management Hub
• Marketing Strategy
• Advertising Hub
• Branding Hub
• Market Research
• Small Business Marketing
• Sales and Selling
• Marketing Careers
• Internet Marketing
• Business Model of Brands
• Marketing Mix of Brands
• Brand Competitors
• Strategy of Brands
• SWOT of Brands
• Customer Management
• Top 10 Lists

Thank you very much sir, your work has help me greatly for to understand marketing strategies

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• About Marketing91
• Marketing91 Team
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Terms of Use
• Editorial Policy

WE WRITE ON

• Digital Marketing
• Human Resources
• Operations Management
• Marketing News
• Marketing mix's
• Competitors

Examples of Promotional Strategies in a Product

• Small Business
• Advertising & Marketing
• Product Strategies
• ')" data-event="social share" data-info="Pinterest" aria-label="Share on Pinterest">
• ')" data-event="social share" data-info="Reddit" aria-label="Share on Reddit">
• ')" data-event="social share" data-info="Flipboard" aria-label="Share on Flipboard">

Product Development Strategy for McDonald's

Grassroots marketing ideas for restaurants, product bundling strategy.

• Marketing Ideas for Pubs
• The Advantage of Psychological Pricing

Product promotion is a fundamental component of a business marketing plan. Consider the sales venue and the demographic when choosing which type of promotional product strategy will be most effective. You might need to test more than one strategy to find the one that results in the best sales and revenues. These examples of product promotional strategies are universally adaptable to any business that sells products and to many services.

Providing Free Samples

Give a sample to show how great the product is. Restaurants use free samples to introduce consumers to new menu items. Costco members flock around sample stations to taste-test food products. The strategy works when a product can be broken down into smaller components while still giving the full experience.

Digital book retailers allow consumers to read the first few pages or chapter of a book. Software companies offer a trial period. You can go to the mall and get a complete makeover or a spritz of a fresh new perfume. Samples are the no-obligation way to get consumers to try and fall in love with the product.

Free Gift With Purchase

Offering a gift with a purchase is a strategy that works with almost any business model. During the holidays, many bakeries and restaurants offer a free gift card with a purchase of a specific product. A coat retailer could offer a free pair of matching gloves with a coat purchase. Shoe retailers can give a pair of socks with purchase.

This strategy not only provides additional value for the purchase, it also exposes consumers to other products in the store. A twist on this strategy is a loyalty program frequently seen in several industries including smoothie stores and massage centers.

Limited Time Offer

Consumers don't like to miss out on opportunities. Limited time offers are a psychological strategy that ad consultants are well aware of. McDonald's doesn't make the McRib sandwich a permanent part of the regular menu because the company won't see the return on investment needed to add a new product to the menu. However, it does make enough to warrant an annual special menu item.

Limited time offers don't always refer to specialty products. These offers might be deals for discontinued or newly released products. Issuing an expiration date sets urgency in the mind of consumers who often choose to act rather than wait and miss the chance.

Discounted Pricing and Retailer Events

Consumers love getting deals. Car dealerships have holiday sales. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are cultural phenomena where consumers seek things they want or need for discounted prices. A retailer might offer one product at such a deep discount that it is a money loser, called a loss leader. However, if this product gets buyers in the door, the chance of up-sales increases.

Hardware stores might offer a small tool set for pennies on the dollar, encouraging consumers to wander the store and pick up other items with large markups. Some retailer holiday events such as 4th of July events might tout paying the sales tax. This is another discount strategy for high-priced items such as appliances.

Joint Offers With Partners

A joint offer uses the power and clout of another company to help yours company. The offer can be as simple as offering a $5 coffee gift card for getting a checking account. It could be a formal agreement with a strategic partner to offer your clients a discount for doing business with you. For example, AAA offers discounts to members who want to go to Disneyland. This is a joint offer.

• ThriveHive: 9 Sales Promotion Examples
• Oberlo: 10 Sales Promotion Examples and Ideas
• Business Victoria: Marketing Strategies and Tactics

With more than 15 years of small business ownership including owning a State Farm agency in Southern California, Kimberlee understands the needs of business owners first hand. When not writing, Kimberlee enjoys chasing waterfalls with her son in Hawaii.

Related Articles

Types of sales promotions, product strategies for restaurants, examples of products with differential pricing, consumer sales promotion techniques, grand opening ideas for hardware stores, sales negotiation techniques of a call center, examples of firms using a push strategy, sales promotion strategies, popular sales promotion tools, most popular.

• 1 Types of Sales Promotions
• 2 Product Strategies for Restaurants
• 3 Examples of Products With Differential Pricing
• 4 Consumer Sales Promotion Techniques

Plan Projections

ideas to numbers .. simple financial projections

Home > Business Plan > Marketing Strategy in a Business Plan

Marketing Strategy in a Business Plan

… we will get this market share by …

• Product USP : Why buy our product? What characteristics does the product have to meet customer needs?
• Promotion : What marketing activities will be undertaken? What means of communication will the business use to persuade customers of the benefits of the product? Will it use above the line promotion or below the line promotion?
• Place : What are the distribution channels? How is the business going to reach customers with its product?
• Price : What price will the business charge for the product, and what goal is it pursuing with the pricing strategy? Will the business use premium, penetration, economy or skimming pricing strategies.

Marketing Strategy Presentation

The marketing strategy section of the business plan can be presented in four sections relating to each of the four P’s product, promotion, place, and price as shown in the example layout below.

The marketing strategy is a key section of the business plan, at this stage you are not trying to present a complete marketing plan, but simply trying to show the investor that each major section of the marketing strategy has been thought about and that you have a good marketing mix.

All of the four sections should be consistent with and support each other, for example, if you are planning to adopt a high price strategy, then the product would be aimed at an upmarket target customer, distributed at high end stores, and make use of one to one personal selling.

This is part of the financial projections and Contents of a Business Plan Guide , a series of posts on what each section of a simple business plan should include. The next post in this series sets out the business model which the business intends to use to generate revenue.

About the Author

Chartered accountant Michael Brown is the founder and CEO of Plan Projections. He has worked as an accountant and consultant for more than 25 years and has built financial models for all types of industries. He has been the CFO or controller of both small and medium sized companies and has run small businesses of his own. He has been a manager and an auditor with Deloitte, a big 4 accountancy firm, and holds a degree from Loughborough University.

You May Also Like

Knock knock. Who's there? 2022.

You’re just in time to hop on the more sales wagon. Learn how .

12 Marketing Strategy Examples, How to Create One + Tips

What is a marketing strategy?

Marketing strategies vs. marketing plans vs. marketing tactics , types of marketing strategies, how to create the most effective marketing strategies.

• Top 11 great marketing strategy examples and 1 you shouldn't follow

Top tips for creating successful marketing strategies

• Marketing strategies make it more likely that you'll reach your goals

Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or just starting out on your very first small business venture, every company in the world needs an effective marketing strategy to build brand awareness and drive new customers to its products and services. However, if you’ve never been involved in successful marketing strategies, creating one can be easier said than done.

The most effective marketing strategies consider every aspect of the marketing flow, from a thorough understanding of your audience personas to a clear-cut marketing budget and so much more; there’s a lot to cover in a company marketing strategy.

In this guide, we’re going to look at some of the best marketing strategies of all time and explain how you can utilize different types of marketing strategies to maximize your returns in no time.

Before we tell you how to compose an effective marketing strategy, you need to understand what a marketing strategy is and how it can help you improve your advertising.

In simple terms, business marketing strategies are a tool marketers use to outline their various campaigns and marketing models. It’s the how of how you’ll get customers interested in your products and services.

To create an effective marketing strategy, you need to do four things:

• Understand who buys your products or services (who are your customers?)
• Understand how to motivate these people to buy/continue to buy your products or services
• Understand who your competitors are and what they’re doing to achieve the same objectives
• Understand how to measure the success of your marketing campaigns and efforts.

You can do it too.

Like a marketing plan, your marketing strategy should cover the five “Ps” of marketing:

• Product – What you’re trying to sell
• Price – Profit margins, marketing budget, etc. 
• Place – What channels or platforms will you use? (For example, will you be advertising on social media, utilizing email marketing, or going offline?) Consider where your customers already spend their time for the optimal marketing locations. 
• Promotion – What are you trying to achieve? (Are you hoping to build your social media presence, increase brand perception, promote a new product, or something else?)
• People – Who is your target audience? What drives them? 

Once you’ve answered these questions, you’ll be in a fantastic position to start building your company’s marketing strategy.

Although “marketing strategies” might seem relatively straightforward, there can often be some confusion when establishing whether you’re creating a marketing strategy, marketing plan, or marketing tactic. While all three of these marketing initiatives work together, they cover slightly different aspects and should not be used interchangeably.

Marketing plan

A marketing plan is an overview of all your marketing initiatives. This will include all the campaigns you intend to run over a set period of time, your goals and ambitions for the projects as a whole, and any research you’ve compiled to support these aims.

Marketing strategies

Marketing strategies at first glance appear very similar to the overarching marketing plan. However, the strategies will take a closer look at just a few select parts of the marketing plan.

For example, if your marketing plan is to promote a new product or service, you might have a strategy dedicated to how you’re going to use email marketing to support these broader goals. Every marketing plan will most likely produce several marketing strategies as part of the broader plan.

Marketing tactics

While the marketing plan and strategies are committed to explaining what you’re going to do, marketing tactics go deeper again and establish how you’re going to do it.

Using the above example, the marketing plan is to build awareness for a new product. The marketing strategy is how you’ll utilize email marketing as part of this. The marketing tactics will detail the specific actions you’ll take as part of the marketing campaign.

Now we understand some of the different marketing terms, it’s time to zone in on marketing strategies and how these work as part of your business plan.

There are numerous different types of marketing strategies you can use depending on your business needs. While we’re not going to cover every marketing strategy type today, these are some of the main ones that you’re likely to come across:

1. Social media marketing strategy 

Today, social media marketing is a huge part of any business’s marketing plan as it’s a hugely compelling way to drive traffic, build brand awareness, and take advantage of the social selling revelation that’s taking over online marketing. 

According to recent data, around 54% of social media users use social platforms to research brands and products, and 89% of consumers who follow a particular brand will purchase from that brand. 

With these figures, if you’re not utilizing an effective social media marketing strategy, you’re missing out on untold rewards.

2. Email marketing strategy

Anyone who’s ever told you “email is dead” is dead wrong. Capturing your customers’ emails and browsers should be an essential part of your marketing strategy and is an excellent way to continue a conversation with people who have expressed interest in your brand.

There are loads of email marketing tools available to help you in this area. However, you still need an effective email marketing strategy to produce consistent, compelling emails that convert readers into buyers. 

3. Inbound marketing strategy

An inbound marketing strategy is all about pulling customers in and driving traffic to your website or products. Rather than using “disruptive” marketing techniques (like TV advertising), inbound marketing is about lead generation using people who have shown interest in your products, services, or brand as a whole.

Email marketing can be a good example of an inbound marketing strategy. If someone has subscribed to your mailing list, chances are they’re at least somewhat interested in what you have to say. This enables you to take a softer approach to your marketing, as these leads are already more likely to become sales.

Another inbound marketing strategy could be blog posts. People will only see blog posts relevant to their search terms and interests, meaning they’ve expressed a need that at least somewhat relates to what you’re selling.

4. Content marketing strategy

A content marketing strategy is likely to overlap with an inbound marketing strategy, but it is more specific. With content marketing strategies, you focus on content creation that will draw people in and build interest.

This is likely to cover blog posts and white papers and can even overlap with your social media marketing.

Effectively, any part of your marketing campaigns that require content will require an effective content marketing strategy.

5. Editorial strategy

Taking an editorial approach is a particularly vital marketing strategy for advertising companies as it highlights the content formats, workflows, and channels you’ll be utilizing to hit your marketing goals.

It’s similar to the sort of marketing strategies you would expect to see in a news or media organization and can be essential for brand publishers or advertisers to keep their marketing efforts and ideas in focus.

6. Marketing communications strategy

Your marketing communications strategy should be primarily focused on your brand’s message and value proposition . It’s all about how you’re going to say what you need to say. 

For example, is your tone of voice serious or humorous? Are you marketing yourself as an expert in your industry? What is the message you want to get across?

7. Digital marketing strategy

Digital marketing probably doesn’t need much introduction… This marketing strategy will encompass all your online marketing, SEO , social media lead generation, performance marketing , and more…. Effectively, if it’s online, it should be covered by your digital marketing strategy. 

8. Internal marketing strategy

Although internal marketing will be less vital for SMBs, it can be a vital part of the marketing efforts for large companies. A good example of an internal marketing strategy would be an internal email that lets employees know they’re eligible to become shareholders or asks existing shareholders to support a new initiative.

Internal marketing can also cover more mundane issues, such as keeping staff up to date on any changes to the company, branding, or internal procedures.

9. Public relations strategy

If you’re in business, you’ll probably know how complicated PR strategies can be. Not only does getting PR right ensure you keep your customers happy, but it’s also vital for protecting your brand image in the eyes of your stakeholders, the media, and even governmental bodies or other influential institutions.

Any large business should have a dedicated PR team in charge of the brand’s public image. In addition to protecting it, good PR can also offer invaluable word-of-mouth advertising.

10. SEO strategy

SEO should form part of all the different marketing strategies. Still, you may find it beneficial to have some of your marketing efforts explicitly dedicated to SEO, as this is likely to be your primary source of lead generation.

SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is pretty much what it says on the tin: the art of using keywords and phrases to boost your visibility when users search for relevant terms on the internet. Getting SEO right is arguably the best way to drive traffic to your website and should be front of mind in all your digital marketing and content marketing strategies.

Naturally, SEO goes beyond just keyword optimization and considers a plethora of other aspects to help you rise on those search engine results pages (SERPs). So, it’s a good idea to have at least one marketing team member dedicated to the latest SEO trends so you can rank #1 on Google.  

When it comes to strategic marketing strategies, there isn’t always a one-size-fits-all solution. Strategies can take many different forms, from word documents to flowcharts to slides… But although they can look different on the outside, the most effective marketing strategies will always have a few things in common.

If nothing else, your marketing strategy should cover the following questions:

Who are you trying to reach? 

For this section, you need to really get into the mind of your target audience. This includes building detailed buyer personas and user personas, with information including their demographics, age, location, employment status, interests, passions, pain points, and anything else you can think of. The more detail you can include in your target market research, the better you will understand and communicate with your audience. 

Where will you reach your potential customers? 

As part of your research into your target audience, you should also spend some time considering the places (online and offline) where they spend their time. For many businesses today, most of your marketing strategies will probably be focused on social media. Still, even once you’ve narrowed this down, it can also be valuable to create marketing strategies for the various social media platforms and any other marketing channels you would like to use. 

What action do you want people to take?

The answer to this question will fuel your Call - to - Action phrases and is essentially nailing down the goals of your entire marketing campaign. Do you want to drive more website traffic? Increase sales? Raise awareness for a new product? Get more followers on social media? Boost your search results rankings? Whatever your goals are, having them clearly laid out as part of your digital marketing strategy is essential. 

How will you inspire potential customers to take action?

The next question leads off this, and it’s about how you’re going to convince or inspire consumers to take the desired action. This could incorporate discount codes, summer sales, referral programs, or you could even let your brand, product, or service speak for itself if you’re just hoping to build awareness.

How will you measure success? 

If you have no KPIs or objective method for measuring the success of your marketing campaign, you really have no way of monitoring whether or not your campaigns are working! Having clear, measurable goals and precise targets you can see whether you’re hitting are essential for an effective marketing strategy. For eg, if your target is to get more followers on Instagram for your brand… It’s easy to see when you’re on track. However, you’ll want to dive deeper than this, with goals for conversions, weekly and monthly targets, etc.

Top 11 great marketing strategy examples and 1 you shouldn’t follow

Now you have an idea of what a marketing strategy is and how to write some of the best marketing strategies, we wanted to give you some great marketing strategies examples so you can see how these work in the real world.

These examples of marketing strategies of a business will provide you with plenty of inspiration for your own campaigns and help you ace the advertising industry. Plus, we’ve included a bonus example of when a marketing strategy didn’t quite go to plan… Take a look!

1. Spotify: offering an alternative user experience

Spotify is the go-to music streaming service for most people around the world, but what is it that makes them stand out?

Spotify’s key marketing efforts focus on how the brand is different from other services, providing users with the chance to discover new music with ease and even lets you filter tracks by mood as well as genre. The artificial intelligence in Spotify’s algorithms provides users with carefully curated, bespoke playlists that actually suit their tastes and manages to turn playing music or listening to a podcast into a whole new experience.

2. Nordstrom: Retargeting campaigns

Nordstrom is well-known for dominating when it comes to marketing, and this campaign was remarkably successful. Employing the latest retargeting technology and tactics, Nordstrom was able to dramatically boost its bottom line and reduce cart abandonment. This campaign primarily utilized abandoned cart emails alongside social media ads that were activated following a website visit from the user.   

3. GoPro: User-generated content

GoPro certainly isn’t the first – or the last – company to achieve success with a user-generated-content-led marketing strategy, but that doesn’t make it any less effective or worthy of inclusion in our list! As a brand dedicated to creating on-the-go, fast content, the product lends itself nicely to this marketing tactic, so GoPro can benefit from a “spectacular” Instagram feed without needing a huge budget to take the images itself. And what’s more, each user-generated image that ends up on the feed motivates others to snap pics and share their experiences.

4. Sephora: Loyalty programs

Loyalty programs are a bit of a tale as old as time for maximizing customer retention, but that doesn’t mean all loyalty programs are created equal. Sephora discovered the trick to innovative, inspiring loyalty programs with its tiered approach and generous rewards. These rewards provide plenty of incentive for users to buy and are a fantastic way of increasing word-of-mouth marketing.

5. Rainforest alliance: “Follow the Frog.”

These days, the top online stores all offer information about how they engage in sustainable practices, have cruelty-free manufacturing, and/or how they support charities and initiatives around the world. Rainforest Alliance’s “ Follow the Frog ” campaign tapped into this priority by offering B2B and B2C organizations the chance to demonstrate their commitment to the environment and sustainability with a green frog seal on their products and website. This became a well-known symbol that’s highly desirable to other brands in all industries.

6. Twitch: Niche-specific marketing

Many brands make the mistake of trying to market their product or service to a target audience that’s simply too broad. But that only leads to a confusing message and few real customers. Instead, follow the lead of the social streaming service, Twitch. This company wasted no time or money advertising to people who won’t be interested in what makes the brand unique… Instead, all its efforts went into establishing precisely who the niche market is and how to attract them.

7. Nike: “Just Do It” – promoting values

We are all familiar with Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan , but have you ever given the marketing plan behind it any thought? Well, Nike used to be a brand dedicated to providing athleticwear to athletes… But they changed their model to appeal to the masses and put values first. The “Just Do It” and “*If you have a body, you’re an athlete” campaigns have been instrumental in Nike’s prolonged success by making everyone feel included and welcomed.

8. Chipotle: Fun contests

Contests are always an effective way to build brand awareness or promote a new product. Chipotle’s 2020 social media contest came at a perfect time and gave the audience a fun and unique way of interacting with the brand. The contest was called “Chipotle Royalty” and involved users posting a TikTok video explaining why their Chipotle order was the best. The prizes? A chance to win $10,000 and have their order become a permanent menu fixture. Definitely worth a video!

9. Red Bull: Putting identify before products

Similar to Nike’s values before products , Red Bull prioritizes experiences and identity of risk-taking front-and-center when it comes to marketing. With Red Bull sponsorships covering everything from Red Bull Stratos (seriously, take a look, it’s really cool) to rallycross racing to Formula One, and so much more, Red Bull had made its identity and brand persona clear… And ensures we won’t forget it any time soon! 

10. Starbucks: Making coffee into an experience and a lifestyle

Selling coffee certainly doesn’t sound like a unique endeavor, but Starbucks’ marketing team worked hard to create an experience that wasn’t just about the coffee. With an incredibly famous logo that can be spotted worldwide, Starbucks created a feeling of comfort, inclusion, and home that cannot be rivelled. Coschedule has an interesting, deep-dive article looking at Starbucks ‘ marketing strategy in more detail. 

11. AllBirds: Humorous, transparent, sustainable

Allbirds’ goal was to create “the world’s most comfortable shoe.” And while they did seem to manage this, it’s not why we’re highlighting their marketing strategy. This strategy really stands out because of the consistent tone of voice and values visible in every piece of marketing, every web page, and every interaction with the brand. The quirky and humorous voice is highly memorable and matches the values of transparency, sustainability, and comfort.

12. Segway: Failed to identify pain points

Now we’ve considered some of the best marketing strategies of all time, we also wanted to look at one brand that didn’t do quite so well. When Segway was first introduced, the idea was that it would replace walking as the primary A-to-B method and could go up to 12.5mph. The primary reason Segway failed is because people didn’t want to stop walking, running, or cycling (among others). So, the pain point the device was built to solve wasn’t really a pain point at all, and Segway offered little benefit to users. 

The lesson here? Do your target market research thoroughly , and don’t just build a product because you think it looks cool.

No matter how big or small your ad campaigns are, it’s essential to always support them with marketing strategies that summarize how you will convert browsers into consumers. To give you a head start at employing the best and most effective marketing techniques, ensure every strategy you create does the following:

Set specific goals

SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-based) goals are essential for an excellent marketing strategy. These will not only give you something to aim for, but they’ll also help you monitor your progress and hold you accountable.

Identify your target audience.

Correctly identifying your target audience, their passions, and their pain points is vital. As we learned from Segway, not having a thorough understanding of your audience and what they need/want is only ever going to be a recipe for disaster.

Identify your competition

There’s a lot to be learned from the competition. On the one hand, you can check on other businesses in your industry to see what they’re doing well and what their audience responds to. On the other hand, identifying your competition’s weaker points can be a brilliant springboard to help you find your unique selling proposition and help you stand out. 

Choose the most effective platform

There’s no point in shouting about your products in a location your customers never visit. As part of your market research, you should also investigate where your customers spend their time online and offline. Then, build a marketing strategy using the platforms and channels your customers are already using.

Marketing strategies make it more likely that you’ll reach your goals

You don’t need to be a Fortune 500 company to invest in an effective marketing strategy and reap the benefits. Even small businesses need marketing to build brand awareness and get people interested. After all, even with the best products in the world, nobody will buy them if they don’t know who you are!

As the famous quote goes, “failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” And the research backs this up, with 313% of marketers being more likely to report success when they have a documented marketing strategy than those without. 

So, don’t waste your precious time and money investing in poorly thought-out marketing campaigns. Instead, take the time to build a detailed plan and strategy with marketing tactics for success, and you’ll be sure to maximize your ROI in no time.

How do you create a marketing strategy?

Building a marketing strategy isn’t that different from writing a marketing plan… It’s just more detailed and niche than the overarching plan and focuses on one/two platforms at a time.

How do you write a marketing strategy example?

It’s worth (if you can) taking a look at some other successful marketing strategy examples from similar companies in your industry before writing your own if you’re not sure where to start. This will give you an idea of what has/hasn’t worked in the past and will enable you to cultivate a better strategy than the one before. Even if you can’t view the marketing strategy document, plenty of research is always necessary for any advertising campaign; the more information you have before you start, the better your marketing strategy will be.

What are the five marketing strategies?

The five “Ps” of marketing are Product, Price, Promotion, Place, and People. These “Ps” are essential to quality marketing efforts and should all be covered in your marketing strategy example.

• What is a Marketing Plan, How to Write One & 5 Great Examples
• 30 Small Business Marketing Ideas You Need to Know & Use
• 10 Low-Cost Marketing Strategies for eCommerce Startups

I'm a content manager at sixads. I'm fiery about marketing, writing and traveling, so you can often find me scribbling away in some unknown corner of the world. If you want to know more ways to increase traffic and attract buyers to your online store get in touch with sixads on one of the channels bellow.

23 Best Shopify Apps to Increase Sales in 2023

Best email marketing tools for shopify, 40 best black friday quotes to win the sales in 2022.

Strategic Marketing Plan Template & Examples

Imagine setting out to climb Mt. Everest guided only by intuition. You wouldn’t make it very far without a detailed plan (and an experienced sherpa) to guide the way. 

Marketing may not be an extreme sport with life-or-death consequences, but you’ve got big goals to reach nonetheless. And your team’s success relies on a lot more than gut instinct. 

That’s why a strategic marketing plan is a must, no matter your industry. Think of it as the roadmap that gets your business where it needs to go each and every year. 

Drafting your first marketing plan can feel intimidating, but don’t worry. We’ll walk you through the basics, show you what a strategic marketing plan looks like, and even give you a couple of free templates to get started. Here’s what we’ll cover:

What is a strategic marketing plan?

Essential elements of a strategic marketing plan, free marketing plan templates and examples.

Let’s start from square one and define what a strategic marketing plan is. 

A strategic marketing plan is a formal document that guides your team’s marketing efforts throughout the year. It maps your annual marketing goals to your company’s overall business objectives, while also outlining how you’ll spend your yearly marketing budget.

A good marketing plan clearly outlines:

• Your target market and key competitors
• Major goals for the year and how they’ll help you get ahead
• Key results that serve as indicators for success
• How you’ll use your money and resources to meet your goals 

Keep in mind that your plan may vary based on your industry and goals. Length and format don’t matter as much as the details you include. Do your research, and make it as easy as possible for company leaders to understand how your strategic marketing plan helps business grow.

What’s the difference between a marketing strategy vs. marketing plan?

A marketing strategy details how you’ll execute a piece of your marketing plan with a specific tactical goal in mind. You might do this by launching an email or social media campaign, publishing a blog series, offering a special promo, or hosting a live event. 

A marketing plan , on the other hand, is the high-level framework that drives all your marketing strategies. It’s a big-picture look at the who, what, and why behind your marketing goals, with a focus on tying them to larger organizational objectives. 

No two marketing plans are exactly the same, but they do share some common threads. Here are 6 important elements you’ll want to identify and research before you build out your next strategic marketing plan.

• Business objectives

Everything you do as a marketing team should support your company’s overall strategy and goals. So summarize your organization’s business objectives, and let it serve as your marketing plan’s true north. Your team and stakeholders should be able to clearly see how the marketing strategies and goals you outline in your plan align with your company’s top priorities.  

• SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis breaks down your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This enables you to assess both the internal and external factors that influence your success so you can build targeted strategies that close gaps and drive results. 

• Strengths and weaknesses : Take stock of your organization’s inner workings. Where does your team or company really shine? What’s working well, and what needs to be improved? Do you have any resource limitations?
• Opportunities and threats : Now look outward to consider your market and competition. Where do you have a chance to push ahead? Where are you struggling to keep up? Are there any market changes to consider?
• Market research

Research is the core of any marketing plan because it’s what you’ll use to shape your goals and strategy. Don’t be afraid to dive deep into the details here. A well-researched marketing plan is worth the time invested. 

Focusing your research energy on these areas will equip you with a solid base for smart marketing decisions.

It’s important to understand major movements in the industry you’re marketing to so you have a feel for the pulse of the market. Thoroughly research the industry your organization works in, and be sure to report on the general climate, as well as any noteworthy happenings. If your company serves any subindustries, don’t forget to include them in your analysis too. 

Target market

Marketing to the masses rarely pays off. That’s why narrowing down your target audience is a must for any marketing plan. Consider it the filter you run every marketing strategy through. 

The more specific you can get, the better. Answering questions like these can help you paint a clear picture of your ideal buyer so you know how to focus your resources for a bigger impact on the people you want to reach.

• What are your ideal buyer’s key demographics (e.g., age, location, job title)?
• What do they care about (e.g., interests, values)?
• What are their biggest challenges or pain points? 
• Where does your ideal buyer hang out (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, industry conferences or events)?

Competitive analysis

It’s also important to understand who and what you’re up against when it comes to attracting your perfect buyer. Identify the key players in your space, and give a brief rundown of what they’re doing to win. This groundwork will make it easier to see how to differentiate yourself from the competition. 

• Strategic marketing goals

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to talk strategy. Outline your strategic marketing goals for the year, and briefly explain how these strategies support company-wide goals. Use a gantt chart to establish a timeline for each goal and monitor results along the way. This is an easy way to set expectations and keep your team and stakeholders in the loop.

• Key marketing metrics

Metrics are where the rubber meets the road in your marketing plan. Use your market research to define specific KPIs or key marketing metrics that will serve as your measure for success. This will help you track progress so you know if you need to change course mid-project to ensure you hit your strategic marketing goals.

• Marketing channels

Marketing channels are the vehicles you’ll use to reach your target audience and grow your brand. Choose your channels wisely based on where you expect to get the most bang for your marketing buck. Briefly explain the purpose of each channel and how it supports your overall marketing strategy and business goals. 

Want to build a more detailed plan for each marketing channel so you can bring your ideas to life? Check out our free social media strategy plan and editorial content plan templates for more information on planning by channel. 

Marketing budget

Establishing a monthly budget for your marketing plan—and tracking it along the way—helps you maximize ROI and identify wasted spend before it drains your marketing dollars. 

Start by listing any ongoing expenses you have so you know what you can afford to spend on new initiatives. Then do your best to estimate any new costs you expect in the coming year. Don’t forget to account for any new hires, freelance workers, or third-party agencies you might need to rely on to get the work done. 

Not sure where to start? We’ve got you! Here are a few examples of how you might structure a marketing plan so you can easily start writing your own. 

Your marketing plan may shake out differently depending on the industry you work in or the goals you’re focused on. Use these marketing plan templates and samples as a guide to jumpstart the process and come up with a marketing plan structure that works for you. 

Google Docs marketing plan template and example

The most common way to create a marketing plan is simply to write it out as a text document. This format enables you to freely elaborate on any research findings you gathered during discovery, while also making a clear case for the marketing goals you’ve set for the year.

We put together a free Google Docs marketing plan template to help you save time so you can get your planning process off the ground faster. This marketing plan example is perfect for documenting and sharing the full scope of your strategic marketing plan with your team and stakeholders.

Here’s a basic breakdown of what the Google Docs marketing plan template covers:

• Company mission

Save a copy of the template to your Google Drive or download it as a Word document, and customize it to fit your own strategic marketing plan needs.  ‍

Use template in Google Docs

Gantt chart marketing plan template and examples

A plan’s no good if you set it and forget it. That’s where a gantt chart comes in handy. Use this free gantt chart marketing plan template to track your strategic marketing plan all the way to success. 

A gantt chart is a great way to lay your marketing plan out in a simple, visual timeline that’s easy to update as work progresses. It gives you a high-level view of your plan’s major goals and strategies, while enabling you to collaborate on and share your plan with your team and stakeholders.

How you use a gantt chart to put your plan into action is up to you. Build a timeline for the tasks you need to complete as you develop your marketing plan, like the example below. 

Once you’ve fleshed out the details of your marketing plan, you can use a gantt chart to define and track your strategic marketing goals. For example, you could break your marketing plan down by quarter to show when specific objectives will come into play and update progress as you close in on your goal. Here’s how that might look.

Use template in TeamGantt

Ready to build a strategic marketing plan of your own? 

We’ve created a free marketing plan template for you in TeamGantt so you can jump right in!

Customizing the template is quick and easy, thanks to TeamGantt’s drag and drop simplicity. And since everything’s online, your whole team can collaborate on activities in real time.

Here are a few pointers to help you get the most out of our free TeamGantt strategic marketing plan template.

Drag and drop tasks to schedule your plan

Configuring your marketing plan is as easy as dragging and dropping tasks—or entire task groups—into their new rightful place. Click and drag the edges of each taskbar to set a new task duration. 

Communicate with comments 

Collaboration is easy with TeamGantt's discussion feature . Share documents and chat with your team directly from a task’s Comments section. Use Notes to communicate important information—like goals, target audience, and budget—at the project level. 

Have a more formal marketing plan document? Attach the file or link to your project so everyone has easy access to it.

Share a copy with stakeholders

Plans are meant to be shared, so we made it easy to keep even the most inquisitive stakeholders in the loop. Export your plan to a printer-friendly PDF , or share a view-only link to your project so stakeholders can see your marketing plan progress in real time. 

Sign up for a free TeamGantt account today , and save time on project setup with this free marketing plan template!

Newly Launched - AI Presentation Maker

Researched by Consultants from Top-Tier Management Companies

AI PPT Maker

Powerpoint Templates

Icon Bundle

Kpi Dashboard

Professional

Business Plans

Swot Analysis

Gantt Chart

Business Proposal

Marketing Plan

Project Management

Business Case

Business Model

Cyber Security

Business PPT

Digital Marketing

Digital Transformation

Human Resources

Product Management

Artificial Intelligence

Company Profile

Acknowledgement PPT

PPT Presentation

Reports Brochures

One Page Pitch

Interview PPT

All Categories

Top 5 Promotion Strategy Templates with Examples and Samples

Mohammed Sameer

“The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time,” Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company. 

Time waits for no one, and every second counts in the business world. As business magnate Ford accurately observed, the notion of saving money by halting your advertising efforts is akin to pausing time itself, a futile endeavor that hinders progress and growth. In today's competitive landscape, a robust and well-executed promotion strategy is the key to success. It is the pulsating heartbeat that fuels brand awareness, drives customer engagement, and propels businesses forward. As we delve into promotions, let us explore the power and significance behind a well-crafted promotion strategy and discover why downloading SlideTeam’s   Promotion Strategy Templates  is an absolute must.

Around 80% of consumers conduct online research before making a purchase! In this digital age, where the internet reigns supreme, having a strong promotional presence is no longer a choice but a necessity. Every day, countless potential customers scour the virtual world, searching for products and services. By harnessing the power of effective promotion, you can grab their attention, captivate their interest, and guide them toward your offerings. Here, SlideTeam's Promotion Strategy Templates come into play, offering you a comprehensive framework to craft compelling campaigns that resonate with your target audience.

The 100% customizable nature of the templates provides you with the desired flexibility to edit your presentations. The content-ready slides give you the much-needed structure.

Let’s explore!

Template 1: Promotion Strategy Plan PPT Bundle

Here's a game-changing solution to elevate your promotional efforts. This PPT Set empowers you to craft comprehensive marketing and promotional strategy plans with ease. Build effective campaigns with dedicated slides tailored to digital marketing promotion strategies. From concept to execution, our PPT Layout provides a seamless experience, also equipping you with an analytics dashboard for strategic implementation. Get it now.

Download this template

Template 2: Promotion Strategy PPT Set

This holistic PPT Template explains the four Ps of marketing strategy, push and pull tactics, and diverse promotion pricing strategies. It offers performance analysis tools for data-driven decision-making. Craft compelling messages, select optimal channels, and strike the perfect balance to maximize outreach. With dynamic pricing techniques and a bundle of strategies, optimize revenue generation. Download now!

Get this template

Template 3: Promotion Strategy To Enhance Brand Awareness

Using this PPT design, explore the promotion mix, encompassing direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling, advertising, and online marketing. Dive into the promotion cycle using the RACE (Reach, Act, Convert, Engage) framework and gain actionable insights. Develop impactful quarterly budget plans and create compelling campaigns. Track and measure performance with these intuitive dashboards. Download now.

Grab this template

Template 4: Multi-Level Effective Promotional Strategy Campaigns

This versatile tool empowers you to strategize and execute successful promotional initiatives. Within this PPT Design lies a wealth of insights, carefully curated to elevate your promotional efforts. Navigate the complex marketing world as you discover the art of thoughtful leadership. Learn how to foster partnerships, where partners collaborate to share relevant content tailored to your target customers. Gain the competitive edge by using the power of email, a tried-and-true method to retain your valuable customer base and expand it with precision. Dive into the world of eight major strategy campaigns that guide business promotion. Understand paid search/PPC advertising, where every click holds the potential to propel your brand to new heights. Integrate social media into your promotional campaigns, leveraging its reach and influence to engage with your target market. Get it today!

Template 5: Three Sales Promotion Strategies to Boost Demand

Get this game-changing resource that uncovers the secrets behind skyrocketing demand and turbocharging sales. This PPT Slide is a goldmine of strategic insights designed to empower businesses with three unparalleled sales promotion strategies. Explaining the pull strategy, this PPT Set illuminates the art of enticing customers to actively seek out products and services. Learn how to create a magnetic allure that compels your target audience to flock toward your offerings, ensuring an ever-increasing demand that knows no bounds. Prepare to master the push strategy, a dynamic approach that propels your products directly into the hands of eager customers. Discover the tactics that cut through the noise and grab attention, channeling your brand's influence to captivate and convert, resulting in a surge of sales. And as you delve deeper, this PPT Design introduces you to the hybrid strategy – a potent blend of innovation and savings. Witness the ingenious application of coupons and incentives, captivating customers while simultaneously boosting sales. Download now.

Tick by Tick, Click by Click: Craft a Winning Promotion Strategy

In the race for success, a powerful promotion strategy can be the game-changer that sets you apart from the competition. As Henry Ford wisely proclaimed, stopping the clock to save time is futile, and likewise, neglecting the power of advertising to save money is a costly mistake. Download the templates that await you, armed with knowledge, inspiration, and the tools to shape your brand's destiny. 

FAQs on Promotion Strategy

What is a promotion strategy.

A promotion strategy refers to a planned and coordinated set of activities designed to communicate, persuade, and influence the target audience to achieve specific marketing objectives. It involves using promotional tools and tactics to create awareness, generate interest, and drive desired actions or behaviors related to a product, service, or brand.

What are the five promotional strategies?

The five common promotional strategies are:

• Advertising: This involves using paid messages through television, radio, print, online platforms, and social media to reach a wide audience and promote a product or service.
• Sales Promotion: This strategy includes short-term incentives, discounts, coupons, contests, giveaways, or special offers aimed at stimulating immediate sales or attracting new customers.
• Public Relations (PR): PR focuses on managing the reputation and public image of a company or brand through media relations, press releases, events, sponsorships, and other activities.
• Personal Selling: This strategy involves one-on-one communication between a salesperson and potential customers, providing personalized information, addressing concerns, and persuading individuals to make a purchase.
• Direct Marketing: Direct marketing involves reaching out to specific individuals or target segments through direct mail, email marketing, telemarketing, or other personalized communication methods to generate responses or sales.

Why is promotion strategy important?

Building Awareness: Promotion helps create visibility and generates awareness about a product, service, or brand among the target audience. It ensures that potential customers know about the offerings and the value they provide.

Increasing Sales and Revenue: By effectively promoting products or services, a promotion strategy can stimulate demand, attract customers, and drive sales. 

Competitive Advantage: In a competitive market, a well-executed promotion strategy can differentiate a brand from competitors. It helps highlight unique selling points, create a favorable perception, and position the brand as the preferred choice among consumers.

Influencing Customer Behavior: Promotion strategies aim to influence customer behavior, whether it's encouraging trials, repeat purchases, referrals, or other desired actions. Promotion persuades customers to take the desired actions.

Brand Building and Relationship Building: Promotion helps build and strengthen the brand image and customer relationships. Consistent and engaging promotional efforts can cultivate brand loyalty, foster trust, and establish long-term customer connections.

Related posts:

• How to Design the Perfect Service Launch Presentation [Custom Launch Deck Included]
• Quarterly Business Review Presentation: All the Essential Slides You Need in Your Deck
• [Updated 2023] How to Design The Perfect Product Launch Presentation [Best Templates Included]
• 99% of the Pitches Fail! Find Out What Makes Any Startup a Success

Liked this blog? Please recommend us

Top 7 Advertising Campaign Plan Samples with Templates and Examples

Top 7 Digital Marketing Plan Templates with Samples and Examples

This form is protected by reCAPTCHA - the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

• Areas of Study
• Courses and Curriculum
• Open Courses
• Register for a Program
• Associate in Addiction Counseling
• Associate in Agriculture Food And Resources
• Associate in Anti Terrorism Security
• Associate in Behavior Analysis In Special Education
• Associate in Bioethics
• Associate in Climatology
• Associate in Cultural Theological Communication
• Associate in Culinary Arts
• Associate in Ecotechnology
• View all Associates Programs
• Bachelors in Community Development
• Bachelors in Environmental Science
• Bachelor in Education (B.Ed, BS)
• Bachelors in Economics
• Bachelors in Entrepreneurship
• Bachelors in Financial Administration
• Bachelors in Human Resource Management
• Bachelors in Linguistics
• Bachelors in Nutritional Science
• Bachelors in Occupational Health and Safety
• Bachelors in Psychology
• View all Bachelor Programs
• Doctor | of Biology (PhD)
• Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA, PhD)
• Doctor of Economics (PhD)
• Doctor of Electrical Engineering (D.Sc, PhD)
• Doctor of Finance (PhD)
• Doctorate in International Relations
• Doctorate in Information Technology (D.Sc)
• Doctor of Legal Studies (PhD)
• Doctor of Project Management (PhD)
• Doctor of Sociology (PhD, D.Sc)
• Doctorate in Sustainable Natural Resources Management
• View all Doctorate Programs
• Master in Autonomous Vehicle Technology
• Masters in Business Administration
• Masters in Civil Engineering
• Master of Construction Management
• Master of Hydrology (MS)
• Masters in Mechanical Engineering
• Masters in Nutrition
• Masters of science in Educational Administration
• View all Masters Programs
• Postdoctoral in Animal Science
• Postdoctoral in Anti Terrorism Security
• Postdoctoral in Behavior Analysis In Special Education
• Postdoctoral in Bioethics
• Postdoctoral in Blockchain Technology and Digital Currency
• Postdoctoral in Business Management
• Postdoctoral in Cloud Computing
• Postdoctoral in Computer Engineering
• View all Postdoctoral Programs

Distance Learning at AIU is enhanced by vast academic resources and innovative technologies build into the Virtual Campus: Hundreds of self-paced courses with video lectures and step by step lessons, thousands of optional assignments, 140,000 e-books, the Social Media & Networking platform allowing collaboration/chat/communications between students, and MYAIU develop students holistically in 11 areas beyond just academics.

The world is YOUR campus!”, that is the message of AIU’s month magazine Campus Mundi. Hear the voices and see the faces that make up AIU. Campus Mundi brings the world of AIU to you every months with inspirational stories, news and achievements by AIU members from around the world (students and staff are located in over 200 countries).

Please enter your credentials

Student Advisor Administrator Admissions Quiz Editor Link Exchange

keep me logged-in

Key Marketing Strategies for Market Success

Marketing is crucial for any business aiming to grow and succeed in today’s competitive market. It’s not just about promoting products or services; it’s about building a connection with your customers, understanding their needs, and delivering value. Here are some key marketing strategies that can help your business stand out and thrive.

1. Know Your Audience

Understanding your audience is the foundation of any successful marketing strategy. Conduct thorough market research to identify who your potential customers are, what their needs and preferences are, and how they behave. This knowledge allows you to tailor your marketing messages to resonate with them more effectively, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

2. Develop a Unique Value Proposition (UVP)

Your unique value proposition is what differentiates your brand from the competition. Clearly define what you offer that is unique and why customers should choose your brand over others. This UVP should be central to all your marketing efforts, consistently communicated across all platforms to reinforce your brand’s distinct advantages.

3. Leverage Digital Marketing

Digital marketing provides numerous tools to reach and engage your target audience effectively. Consider these tactics:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Enhance your website’s visibility in search engine results to attract organic traffic. Optimizing your content for relevant keywords and improving your site’s technical performance can significantly boost your search rankings.
• Social Media Advertising: Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter allow you to target specific demographics with precision, making it easier to reach your ideal customers and drive conversions through tailored ad campaigns.
• Email Marketing: Keep your customers informed and engaged through regular email updates. Well-crafted email campaigns can nurture leads, promote new products or services, and provide valuable content that keeps your audience connected to your brand.

4. Create Valuable Content

Content marketing is a powerful way to attract and retain customers by providing them with valuable, relevant information. Create blogs, videos, infographics, and other types of content that address your audience’s pain points, answer their questions, and offer solutions. High-quality content not only positions your brand as an authority in your industry but also helps build trust with your audience, leading to long-term loyalty.

5. Build Relationships with Customers

Effective marketing goes beyond just making a sale; it’s about building lasting relationships with your customers. Engage with them on social media, respond to their inquiries promptly, and ensure they feel valued and appreciated. Personalization is key—use customer data to tailor your communications and offer products or services that meet their specific needs. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat buyers and advocates for your brand.

6. Measure and Adjust Your Strategy

Marketing is not a one-time effort but an ongoing process. It’s important to regularly measure the performance of your marketing campaigns to understand what’s working and what isn’t. Use analytics tools to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, website traffic, and social media engagement. Based on these insights, be prepared to adjust your strategies to optimize results continually.

Effective marketing does more than just drive sales; it builds a strong, loyal customer base that can sustain your business over the long term. By implementing these key strategies, you can position your brand effectively in the market, connect meaningfully with your audience, and achieve sustainable growth. Whether you’re a small startup or an established company, these marketing principles can guide you toward success in today’s dynamic marketplace.

How to Start a Business: A Step-by-Step Guide

Popular Tags

Contact Us Atlantic International University

Quick links.

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer
• QuestionPro

• Solutions Industries Gaming Automotive Sports and events Education Government Travel & Hospitality Financial Services Healthcare Cannabis Technology Use Case AskWhy Communities Audience Contactless surveys Mobile LivePolls Member Experience GDPR Positive People Science 360 Feedback Surveys
• Resources Blog eBooks Survey Templates Case Studies Training Help center

Home Market Research

Target Population: What It Is + Strategies for Targeting

Understanding your target population is key to any successful campaign, whether it’s marketing, public health, or social initiatives. But what exactly is a target population, and how can you effectively reach the right people? 

In this blog, we will explore the concept of a target population and outline the best strategies for targeting them to ensure your efforts are both effective and impactful.

What is the Target Population?

A target population is a specific group of individuals that a particular study, program, campaign, or intervention is designed to reach, influence, or study. This group is characterized by certain common attributes or criteria that make it the focus of the effort. 

Understanding and defining a target audience is crucial for the effectiveness and relevance of various activities in fields like research, marketing, and public health.

Importance of Identifying a Target Population

Identifying a target population is crucial across various fields— research , marketing, public health, and more. Identifying and understanding your target audience is crucial for several reasons:

Resource Efficiency

Focusing on a specific group can help you allocate your resources more effectively, ensuring that your efforts aren’t wasted on people who are unlikely to engage with your message.

Personalized Messaging: 

Knowing your target population allows you to tailor your messaging to resonate with their specific needs, challenges, and interests, increasing the chances of your message being well-received.

Higher Conversion Rates: 

When your efforts are directed toward those most likely to respond, you’re more likely to see higher conversion rates, whether that means more sales, higher customer engagement , or greater participation in your initiative.

Strategies for Effective Population Targeting

Once you’ve identified your target population, it’s important to employ strategies that effectively reach and engage them. Here’s how to do it:

1. Define Your Objectives

Start by clearly defining what you want to achieve. From boosting sales, raising awareness, to improving customer satisfaction , having clear goals helps you focus your efforts and measure success. Setting specific, measurable objectives of the research and data types ensures that you have a clear direction and criteria for evaluating your strategies.

2. Segment Your Audience

Segmentation involves dividing your target population into smaller, more manageable groups based on shared characteristics. This can be done through:

• Demographic Segmentation : Age, gender, income, education level.
• Geographic Segmentation : City, region, country.
• Psychographic Segmentation : Interests, values, lifestyle.
• Behavioral Segmentation : Buying habits, brand loyalty, usage patterns.

By understanding these segments, you can tailor your messaging to address the unique needs and preferences of each group. For example, within the entire population of “ millennials ,” you might identify sub-groups like “ tech-savvy young professionals ” or “ health-conscious parents .”

3. Utilize Data and Analytics

Leverage data to guide your targeting efforts. Collect data through surveys, social media sentiment analysis , and website analytics to better understand your audience. This data can reveal trends and patterns that help predict future behaviors. The more data-driven your approach, the more accurate your targeting will be.

• Surveys : Collect detailed information about your audience’s preferences and behaviors.
• Social Media Analytics: Track engagement, interests, and demographics.
• Website Analytics: Monitor user behavior and interaction patterns.

4. Create Detailed Audience Personas

Develop personas that represent your ideal customers or target groups. These personas should include demographic information, interests, challenges, and motivations. 

For example, a persona might be “Jessica, a 30-year-old marketing manager who loves fitness and is always on the lookout for new wellness apps.” Creating these profiles helps you understand and empathize with your audience, making it easier to craft messages that resonate with them.

5. Leverage Digital Marketing Tools

Take advantage of digital marketing tools to reach your target population effectively in your market research study. These tools include:

• Social Media Advertising: Target specific groups based on their interests and behaviors.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimize your website and content to attract relevant traffic.
• Programmatic Advertising: Use automated systems to buy and place ads that reach your audience in real time.

6. Test and Optimize Your Strategies

Continuously test different strategies to see what works best for your target population. Employ A/B testing to compare different messages, formats, or channels. Gather feedback from your audience and be prepared to adjust your approach based on the results. This iterative process helps you refine your targeting strategies and improve overall effectiveness.

7. Maintain Ethical Standards

Ensure that your targeting practices respect privacy and are free from bias. Follow data protection regulations like GDPR, and avoid stereotypes or unfair assumptions. Ethical targeting fosters trust and helps build long-term relationships with your audience.

8. Collaborate with Influencers and Partners

Partner with influencers or brands that share your target audience. Influencers can amplify your message to their followers, while partnerships can provide access to new segments of your population. For example, a fitness app might collaborate with a well-known fitness influencer to reach a larger, relevant audience.

9. Monitor and Adapt Your Approach

Regularly monitor the performance of your targeting efforts. Use analytics to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as engagement rates, conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI). Be ready to adapt your strategy based on new data, trends, or feedback. This flexibility ensures you stay relevant and effective in your target market.

10. Employ a Multichannel Strategy

Don’t rely on a single method to reach your audience. Use a mix of online and offline channels, such as social media, email marketing, events, and traditional advertising, to ensure you reach your target population wherever they are. Consistent messaging across all channels reinforces your brand and helps achieve your objectives.

Examples of Target Population

Here are some examples of target audiences across different contexts:

1. Marketing a Product

• Target audience: Young adults aged 18-24 who are tech-savvy and live in urban areas.
• Example: A smartphone company might target this group for a new feature-rich phone by advertising on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where this demographic spends a lot of time.

2. Public Health Campaign

• Target audience: Middle-aged adults (45-65) with a history of smoking.
• Example: A public health organization might target this group for a smoking cessation program, using outreach methods like community health seminars and informational brochures in clinics.

3. Educational Program

• Target audience: High school students in underprivileged areas.
• Example: A non-profit organization might target this group for a scholarship and mentoring program, focusing on schools in low-income neighborhoods and promoting the program through school counselors and community centers.

How QuestionPro Helps in Target Population?

QuestionPro offers a range of tools and features that can significantly help identify, understand, and effectively reach a target audience. Here’s how:

1. Survey Creation and Distribution

QuestionPro allows you to create detailed and customizable surveys that can be tailored to your specific target population. This helps in gathering relevant data directly from the group you want to study. You can distribute surveys through various channels like: 

• Social media

It ensures you reach your target population wherever they are.

2. Advanced Segmentation

With the data collected through surveys, you can segment your audience based on demographics (age, gender, income) or psychographics (lifestyle, values, interests). This helps you understand different sub-groups within your target population. QuestionPro also enables you to gather data on behaviors, such as purchase history or usage patterns, helping you refine your target population further.

3. Audience Targeting

QuestionPro’s audience targeting tools allow you to select specific criteria for your survey respondents. This ensures that you’re gathering insights from the exact population segment you’re interested in.

4. Data Analysis and Reporting

QuestionPro provides real-time data analysis, allowing you to quickly see trends and insights as responses come in. This helps you make timely decisions about your target population.

5. Persona Development

The insights gathered through QuestionPro can be used to create detailed personas that represent your target population. These personas can include demographic details, behavioral patterns, and preferences, making it easier to tailor your strategies.

6. Feedback Loops

By regularly using QuestionPro to collect feedback from your target population, you can continuously refine your understanding of their needs and preferences. This helps you adapt your strategies over time to better meet their expectations.

7. Global Reach

If your target population is spread across different regions or speaks multiple languages, QuestionPro supports multilingual surveys, making it easier to reach a global audience.

Targeting the right population is a crucial step in any successful campaign. By understanding who your target population is and employing these strategies to reach and engage them, you can maximize the effectiveness of your efforts, leading to better results and a higher return on investment. 

Effective population targeting is the key to success, whether you’re marketing a product, promoting a cause, or launching a new initiative.

QuestionPro helps organizations precisely identify and engage with their target population, gather meaningful insights, and make data-driven decisions to achieve their goals. Contact QuestionPro for more information!

MORE LIKE THIS

Closed-Loop Management: The Key to Customer Centricity

Sep 3, 2024

Net Trust Score: Tool for Measuring Trust in Organization

Sep 2, 2024

Why You Should Attend XDAY 2024

Aug 30, 2024

Alchemer vs Qualtrics: Find out which one you should choose

Other categories.

• Academic Research
• Artificial Intelligence
• Assessments
• Brand Awareness
• Case Studies
• Communities
• Consumer Insights
• Customer effort score
• Customer Engagement
• Customer Experience
• Customer Loyalty
• Customer Research
• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee Benefits
• Employee Engagement
• Employee Retention
• Friday Five
• General Data Protection Regulation
• Insights Hub
• Life@QuestionPro
• Market Research
• Mobile diaries
• Mobile Surveys
• New Features
• Online Communities
• Question Types
• Questionnaire
• QuestionPro Products
• Release Notes
• Research Tools and Apps
• Revenue at Risk
• Survey Templates
• Training Tips
• Tuesday CX Thoughts (TCXT)
• Uncategorized
• What’s Coming Up
• Workforce Intelligence

• Starting a Business
• Growing a Business
• Small Business Guide
• Business News
• Science & Technology
• Money & Finance
• For Subscribers
• Write for Entrepreneur
• Tips White Papers
• Entrepreneur Store
• United States
• Asia Pacific
• Middle East
• United Kingdom
• South Africa

Copyright © 2024 Entrepreneur Media, LLC All rights reserved. Entrepreneur® and its related marks are registered trademarks of Entrepreneur Media LLC

Your Current Marketing Plan May Not Work Overseas — Copy Strategies From Spotify and Snickers to Succeed Anywhere Drawing on inspiring examples from leading brands and our own successful expansions into various markets, here are some insights to help you expand your business globally in the most effective way.

By Alexander Storozhuk Edited by Kara McIntyre Sep 3, 2024

Key Takeaways

• Adapting PR strategies to local cultures and consumer behaviors is vital for international market success, as seen with brands like Uber in India and Nike in London.
• Engaging local media and influencers, alongside leveraging networks like Spotify did in India, can significantly enhance a brand's reputation and consumer trust in new markets.
• Comprehensive market research, local expertise and continuous strategy monitoring are essential in customizing PR efforts to resonate with international audiences.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Expanding into new international markets presents an exciting yet formidable challenge. With over two decades in the PR industry, I've navigated the complexities of diverse cultural landscapes and I've seen firsthand how a PR strategy that thrives in the U.K. might not resonate, for example, in the U.S., Asia or Brazil. The key to a successful international PR campaign lies in understanding and adapting to the unique characteristics of each market.

So, how do you ensure your PR strategies are optimized for foreign markets? This article will explore how to elevate your PR game to meet the demands of international audiences. Drawing on inspiring examples from leading brands and our own successful expansions into various markets, we'll provide insights to help you scale your business effectively.

Related: 10 Expert Insights for the Optimal (and Most Effective) PR Budget in 2024

Understanding the new market

Before venturing into a new market, comprehensive research is critical. This involves delving into the region's culture, consumer behavior, current market trends and competitive landscape. For instance, conducting targeted surveys can shed light on customer sentiments toward your competitors and identify key issues your target audience faces . This insight allows you to tailor your PR campaigns to address those specific needs.

Understanding the local culture is equally important. A prime example is Uber's adaptation to the Indian market by offering cash payments and auto-rickshaw options. This localized approach garnered significant media attention and resonated with the Indian audience, highlighting the importance of cultural adaptation in PR strategies.

Localized content and messaging

A one-size-fits-all approach to PR and communications is rarely effective when entering new markets. The success of your PR efforts hinges on your ability to adapt content and messaging to the local context. Here's how you can ensure your PR campaigns resonate with the new audience:

• Tailor your content : Use insights from your market research to customize your messaging. This involves adapting your brand's tone, style and content to align with the cultural and linguistic preferences of the local audience. For example, in Germany, where directness is valued, a straightforward approach might be more effective; whereas, in Japan, a more subtle and respectful tone might be preferred.
• Engage local PR experts : Collaborating with local PR firms can be helpful. They have a deep understanding of the cultural nuances and can help craft messages that are both culturally sensitive and engaging. They also offer insights into local media landscapes and consumer behavior, which can guide your PR strategy.
• Incorporate cultural significance : Recognize and respect local holidays , milestones and cultural events. Tailoring your PR campaigns to reflect these significant moments can enhance audience engagement. For instance, incorporating local stories and testimonials in your campaigns demonstrates your brand's commitment to understanding and valuing local traditions.
• Be sensitive to local norms : Ensure that your campaigns do not inadvertently offend or alienate the local audience. Familiarize yourself with cultural sensitivities and avoid using stereotypes or imagery that may be deemed inappropriate.

A nice example of localized content across regions is the Snickers campaign "You're not you when you're hungry," which ran for over six years across 58 markets. While the message remained the same globally, its presentation was tweaked for different markets . For instance, U.S. audiences were treated to the famous Betty White Superbowl ad in 2010, while in the U.K., the campaign was launched using Twitter (now X). National newspapers picked up the story and a campaign of just 25 tweets reached more than 26 million people.

Related: Beyond Borders: Five Tips For Expanding Your Business

Building relationships with local media

Cultivating positive relationships with local journalists and media professionals is crucial for gaining favorable coverage. If you're not familiar with the local media in a new area, a quick online search can help identify key newspapers, TV stations, radio channels and news sites.

Spotify's launch in India in 2019 serves as an excellent example. By engaging local media with relevant campaigns and participating in social media trends , Spotify gained substantial media coverage and built a strong presence, reaching over 100 million listens from more than 55 million active Indian users by December 2023.

Face-to-face interactions, such as conferences and product launches, can significantly enhance media relationships as well. Research shows that 61% of people consider such direct engagement the most effective marketing channel.

My team has experienced how valuable these interactions can be by attending major conferences like Latitude59 in Estonia and Money20/20 in Amsterdam and Thailand. These events provide invaluable opportunities to meet media representatives through side events, partnerships with organizers and pre-booked meetings. By building relationships in these settings, we've been able to collaborate on article pieces and extend invitations to our own media events , further solidifying our presence in these markets.

Related: Why Local Media is the Secret to Getting Free PR

Utilizing sponsored content

Sponsoring content is another effective strategy for penetrating new markets. By sponsoring sports teams, events, TV shows or online content, you can increase brand visibility and control the narrative presented to your audience. Sponsored content allows you to maintain creative control while ensuring rapid visibility across key media outlets.

For example, our own experience with a sponsored article in IBTimes significantly boosted our visibility as we expanded into the Asian market. The article highlighted our strategic move to incorporate a wholly-owned subsidiary in Hong Kong, effectively targeting a specific audience interested in market expansions and financial operations. This demonstrates how a timely paid piece can be more efficient than waiting to cultivate a new media relationship, especially when immediate visibility is crucial.

By combining paid and organic PR, you can maximize the impact of your brand in new markets and deliver its message more effectively.

Related: Does PR Actually Help Increase Sales? Yes — Just Do It Right and Be Patient

Leveraging influencers and local advocates

Influencers play a crucial role in amplifying your brand's reach in new markets. Their established trust with their followers can significantly enhance your product's credibility. To leverage this, identify influencers who align with your brand values and offer them exclusive access to your products. This strategy helps build trust and effectively engages new customers.

While global celebrities can boost brand visibility, partnering with local influencers and advocates who genuinely connect with the target audience can be more impactful. For instance, Nike's " Nothing Beats a Londoner " campaign successfully used local athletes to connect with young Londoners, resulting in a significant increase in searches for Nike products.

Another great example is the fintech company Wise, originally founded in Estonia, which specializes in international money transfers. To promote their international Visa debit card in Brazil, Wise recently launched a national campaign featuring local influencers and brand ambassadors. The positive media coverage and high engagement levels indicate that this localized approach is already proving successful.

Related: How Can Startups Leverage Influencers?

Developing a local network

Just as leveraging local influencers and advocates is key to establishing your brand, developing a robust local network is equally important. A strong network can open doors to future partnerships, provide valuable insights and offer resources that are crucial for navigating the cultural and regulatory landscapes of a new market.

When we expanded to Estonia, we experienced firsthand the power of a local network. Through Estonia's e-Residency program , we were able to quickly and efficiently set up our company and operate globally from a digital hub. But the benefits didn't stop there. The program introduced us to key stakeholders, bridged connections with local media and even provided a platform for us to share our news. This network facilitated our entry into the market and laid the foundation for sustainable growth.

By actively cultivating relationships with local business leaders and government agencies, your brand can gain the support and credibility needed to thrive in new markets. Engaging with local chambers of commerce, industry groups and other community organizations can also help you stay informed about market trends and opportunities, making your PR strategy even more effective.

Monitoring and measuring success

Last but not least, ongoing monitoring and evaluation are essential to gauge the effectiveness of your PR strategies. Establish KPIs to track progress against your objectives and measure ROI. Utilize tools like Google Analytics, social media monitoring and sentiment analysis to track engagement, brand awareness and media coverage.

As discussed, entering new markets successfully demands a well-researched and strategically tailored PR approach that adapts to local consumer needs and cultural nuances. By applying the insights shared in this article, you'll be well-equipped to effectively navigate international landscapes, build brand awareness, trust and credibility in new regions and drive sustainable growth for your brand.

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor

PRNEWS.IO Founder

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick Red Arrow

• Nick Offerman's Side Hustle as an Actor Helps Fund the Business He Started 23 Years Ago — and Still Works at Every Day
• Lock 8 Evening Routines With Surprising Effects on Your Ability to Get Things Done
• His Ex-Boss Issued Him a Cease-and-Desist Order . Neither Man Expected What Happened in a Parking Lot Next: 'I Bleed This Business. It's Cold-Blooded.'
• Lock I Sent My Role Model a DM, Never Imagining She'd Respond — Then This Happened
• Lock This Couple's Weekend Side Hustle Began With a $50 Facebook Marketplace Purchase — Now It Earns Millions of Dollars a Year: 'You Don't Need Money to Start'
• Walmart and Burger King's New Partnership Is Poised to Give a Boost to Franchise Traffic

Most Popular Red Arrow

Young people earning more than $200,000 a year are fleeing 1 u.s. state — and flocking to 2 others.

They have significantly higher salaries than many of their peers — and they want their money to go further.

6 Habits That Help Successful People Maximize Their Time

There aren't enough hours in the day, but these tips will make them feel slightly more productive.

Chase Bank Viral 'Glitch' Is Just Plain Old Bank Fraud, Company Says

Check fraud has increased by 385% since the pandemic.

63 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2024

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for entrepreneurs to pursue in 2024.

Canva Says Massive Subscription Price Increase Is Due to New AI Features

Canva hiked fees on some subscriptions by 300%.

AI Slop is Everywhere We Look — Here's How Businesses Can Avoid the AI Slop Cycle

AI slop is the latest iteration of digital clutter. It's the filler content produced by AI tools that prioritize speed and quantity over substance and quality. Here's how to avoid it as a business owner.

Successfully copied link

• PPC Management Services PPC perfected
• Social Media Marketing Spark conversations, grow your audience
• SEM Services Success through search
• SEO Services Race up the rankings
• Conversion Rate Optimization Don’t just drive traffic, drive conversions
• Google Ads Services Powerful platform, powerful results
• Content Marketing Services Content that converts
• Remarketing Turn curiosity into customers

By Campaign Type

• Ecommerce See your sales soar
• Lead Generation Turn leads into revenue
• Local Increase revenue: online & in-person
• Enterprise Scale and Dominate

By Industry

• Real Estate
• Cybersecurity
• Improve Conversion Rate
• Improve Quality Score
• Improve Lead Quality
• Reduce CPCs
• Lower Acquistion Costs
• Increase Sales
• Rank Higher on the SERP
• 11 Google Ads Scripts to Run
• Conversion Tracking Issues
• Scale Campaigns
• Recent Peformance Drops
• Google Ads & GA4 Not Matching
• Organic Traffic Flucuations
• Google Ads Overspending
• Losing to Competitors
• Website Architecture for SEO
• What's a Good ROAS
• What's a Good Conversion Rate
• PMax Campaigns: Full Guide
• Create PPC Analytics Reports
• Build Topic Clusters for SEO
• How to Best Split Your Budget
• How to do a Website Migration
• Do SKAGs Really Work?
• Content Marketing
• Social Media
• Best Audit Tools to Use
• Ecommerce Brand Drives 50% Higher AOV
• SaaS Brand Doubles Demo Requests
• University Achieves Enrollment Goals
• Social Media Drives a 60% Revenue Increase
• PPC Management
• SEO Marketing
• Google Ads Management
• Ecommerce Marketing
• Saas Marketing
• PPC Pricing: How Much Should You Pay?
• SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost?
• How to Optimize Google Ads
• Google SGE: Full Guide
• What is an SEO Consultant?
• Meet the Team
• Free Consultation

Seasonal Ad Strategies: 6 Timely Ideas + Advice from the Pros

Patience Hurlburt-Lawton

Senior Editor

Approved By

Caroline Cox

Content Manager

Seasonal ad strategies tailor your advertising efforts to align with seasonal trends and consumer behaviors. Learn how to optimize your campaigns for specific seasons, boost your marketing performance, and leverage expert tips for year-round success.

Last year, holiday sales hit a staggering $964 billion. That’s a nearly 4% increase from the previous year, according to the National Retail Federation .

This impressive growth highlights the immense potential of having seasonal ad strategies. But to create impactful seasonal ad campaigns, you must go beyond the basics.

In this guide, we delve into the intricacies of seasonal ad strategies, providing expert tips and advanced techniques to ensure your campaigns stand out year-round.

Plus, we share real-life examples and insights to help you navigate the ever-changing landscape of seasonal marketing.

Abercrombie Kids’ back-to-school campaign that launched in August. (Image: Screenshot)

What is a seasonal ad strategy?

A seasonal ad strategy is the practice of tailoring your advertising efforts to align with seasonal trends and consumer behaviors.

This can involve adjusting your ad creatives, targeting, and budget to capitalize on periods of heightened consumer interest and spending, such as holidays and special events.

By adapting your campaigns to align with seasonal peaks and trends, you can increase engagement, boost conversion rates, and maximize return on investment (ROI).

Seasonal ad strategies require careful planning and analysis of historical data to identify key periods and optimize your advertising efforts accordingly.

Whether it’s back-to-school season or the holiday shopping rush, a well-executed seasonal ad strategy can drive a rush of sales and improve your return on ad spend (ROAS).

Season-based marketing in an email advertising campaign from nail polish brand Olive & June. (Image: Screenshot)

Does your business require a seasonal ad strategy? HawkSEM Search Engine Marketing Manager Peter Miller tells us,”There are a plethora of businesses among varying industries that can capitalize on seasonal ad strategies.”

“From DTC ecomm clothing brands that want to drive holiday sales or even sales during changing seasons, (i.e. discounted summer clothes during the start of fall) to local service businesses (i.e. lawn care, snow plowing),” he says.

Miller explains that most businesses experience some sort of seasonality, and could benefit from these strategies.

Examples of seasonal opportunities

When you think of seasonal ads, your mind jumps straight to the winter holiday season, right?

Yes, that’s one of the biggest seasonal events of the year, but there’s also a lot of other ones that might well align with your business.

Here are some prime examples of holidays and events to focus your seasonal promotions around:

Focus on products or services related to health, wellness, organization, and self-improvement as people set new goals and resolutions.

A 2024 survey from Forbes found that nearly half of respondents made a fitness-related New Year’s resolution, making it the most popular type of resolution for the year.

New Year can be a great time to capitalize on people’s “New Year, new me” mentality if your business is in the health and fitness realm.

Valentine’s Day

Promote gift ideas, experiences, and special offers for couples and individuals looking to express affection.

For example, in 2024, $6.4 billion was spent on jewelry in the U.S. for Valentine’s Day , so this is a prime time to advertise if you have a jewelry store.

Capitalize on the rejuvenating spirit of spring by offering seasonal products, outdoor activities, home improvement services, and gardening supplies.

Mother’s Day/Father’s Day

Highlight gifts, experiences, and activities that celebrate love and appreciation for mothers and fathers.

Graduation season

Offer gift ideas, party supplies, travel packages, and career services to graduates and their families.

Back to school

Offer a wide range of products and services, including school supplies, clothing, electronics, tutoring services, and educational resources as students prepare to return to school.

Promote costumes, decorations, party supplies, and themed events to capitalize on this festive occasion for dressing up and indulging in spooky fun.

Black Friday/Cyber Monday

Attract customers with exclusive deals, discounts, and in-store and online promotions during the biggest shopping weekend of the year.

Religious holidays

There are a variety of opportunities surrounding Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, and other holidays. These can be anything from candy promotions to discounted flights to visit family.

Since some of the winter holidays happen in close succession, you can come up with creative marketing ideas to keep people engaged and buying throughout the end of the year.

How can seasonal ad strategies benefit your business?

Seasonal ad strategies offer several advantages that can increase ad performance throughout the year. Here are some key benefits:

• Increased engagement: Seasonal ads resonate with consumers because they align with their current interests and needs. By tapping into the excitement and relevance of holidays and seasonal events, you can capture your audience’s attention more effectively.
• Higher conversion rates: Timely and relevant ads are more likely to convert viewers into buyers. When your promotions match the season’s mood and consumer behavior, you’re more likely to see an uptick in sales and inquiries.
• Brand awareness: Consistent seasonal advertising keeps your brand top-of-mind. Regularly engaging with your audience during key times of the year helps build brand recognition and loyalty.
• Competitive advantage: Businesses that effectively leverage seasonal marketing can outshine competitors who fail to adapt. Staying ahead of seasonal trends can position your brand as proactive and customer-focused.
• Revenue boost: Seasonal peaks in consumer spending provide an excellent opportunity to maximize your revenue. Well-timed and targeted seasonal campaigns can lead to significant sales increases during high-demand periods.
• Leveraging loyal customers: Use the seasonal trends to reengage your loyal customers with promotions geared towards what matters most to them.

“As an example, if a business tends to have repeat customers, it’s possible to create an entire segment dedicated to previous shoppers, to then apply as an explicit audience target within an RLSA campaign,” Miller says.

How can I plan my ad spend around my seasonal service?

Planning your ad spend around seasonal services involves strategic budgeting and timing, as well as a lot of clever audience research. Here are some tips to help you plan your ad spend:

• Identify seasonal peaks: Analyze your historical data to determine when your business experiences the highest demand. Look at past sales trends, customer inquiries, and web traffic to pinpoint peak seasons.
• Allocate budget accordingly: Once you identify peak periods, allocate a larger portion of your ad budget to these times. Investing more during high-demand seasons can yield better returns and capitalize on increased consumer interest.
• Be flexible: Stay flexible with your budget to adjust based on performance. If certain campaigns perform exceptionally well, be prepared to allocate more funds to capitalize on the momentum.
• Use data-driven insights: Leverage analytics tools to monitor ad performance in real time. Use these insights to make informed decisions about reallocating your budget for maximum impact.
• Plan for off-peak periods: Don’t neglect the slower seasons. Use these times to build brand awareness and engage with your audience through less aggressive, cost-effective campaigns. This keeps your brand visible year-round and primes your audience for peak seasons.

Atlanta-based pizzeria Pielands leverages football season to try to increase orders and foot traffic. (Image: Screenshot)

Expert tips for managing seasonal marketing campaigns

Optimize with automation.

Automation is a game-changer in managing seasonal ad strategies and can increase the efficiency of your digital marketing efforts.

By using automated tools, you can efficiently handle bid adjustments, budget pacing, and ad scheduling.

• Bid adjustments: Set up automated rules to increase bids during peak times when your audience is most active. For example, if you know that evenings and weekends see higher engagement, automate your bids to rise during these periods. Google and Microsoft both offer tools to help with this. “An example of when to use seasonality adjustments may include if a business is expecting to experience a jump in conversion rate, due to a short-term holiday sale event,” says Miller.
• Budget pacing: Use budget pacing tools to ensure your budget lasts throughout the entire season. This prevents overspending early on and ensures consistent ad presence.
• Ad scheduling: Schedule ads to run at times when they are most likely to be seen by your target audience. Automation tools can help you adjust schedules based on real-time performance data.
• Use promotion assets: Outside of seasonal adjustments, businesses can also use promotion assets (formerly known as extensions). “[They] place an emphasis on sales/promotions,” Miller elaborates. “When setting these up, it’s possible to set them to only be active for a specified period of time.”

Leverage historical data

Your historical data is a goldmine for planning effective seasonal ad campaigns. By analyzing past performance, you can make informed decisions about future strategies.

• Identify trends: Look at sales, web traffic, and engagement data from previous seasons to identify patterns. This can help predict when demand will spike and allow you to prepare accordingly.
• Budget allocation: Allocate more budget to high-performing times and adjust your spending based on what has historically worked best. For instance, if last year’s Black Friday campaigns were able to boost sales, increase your budget for this period.
• Performance benchmarks: Use historical performance benchmarks to set realistic goals and KPIs for your current campaigns. Knowing your past click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and cost per acquisition (CPA) can guide your expectations and strategies.

Pro tip: Historical data can be useful in many ways, both year over year and over the course of several years. Observe year-over-year business performance both in and out of ad platforms to identify any consistent recurring patterns during certain times of the year, such as revenue and/or lead fluctuations, product/solution performance, audience and location performance, and the cost averages associated with capturing traffic, leads, and sales. 

Test and learn

A/B testing is crucial for refining your seasonal ad campaigns. You can discover what works best and optimize your efforts by continually testing different elements..

• Creative testing: Test different ad creatives to see which resonates most with your audience. This can include variations in images, headlines, and calls-to-action (CTAs). For example, test a festive-themed creative against a more generic one to see which drives higher engagement.
• Targeting experiments: Experiment with different audience segments to find the most responsive groups. Use demographic, geographic, and behavioral data to refine your targeting.
• Bid strategies: Test various bidding strategies, such as manual bidding versus smart bidding , to determine which delivers the best results. For instance, you might find that smart bidding increases efficiency during peak times, while manual adjustments work better during off-peak periods.

A Valentine’s Day-themed email ad from M Dash Creative. (Image: Screenshot)

Top tips for greater ROI in your seasonal marketing strategies

1. start early.

When it comes to seasonal ad strategies, timing is everything. Kick off your planning at least three months in advance. This gives you enough time to research market trends, design your creatives, and set up precise targeting strategies to ensure you reach the right potential customer.

For example, if you’re gearing up for a holiday marketing campaign, begin brainstorming and developing concepts well ahead of time. This way, you have plenty of opportunities to test and tweak your approach based on initial results.

2. Leverage historical data

Your past data is your golden ticket to seasonal ad success. Review the most important metrics and details of your previous campaigns to understand what worked and what didn’t.

For example, if your Black Friday email blast had high open rates but low conversions, maybe your CTA needs some work to help it drive sales. Tools like Google Analytics and your CRM system can help you dissect this data.

Look for patterns in customer behavior, peak shopping times, and product preferences. Understanding these trends lets you fine-tune your strategy to hit the bullseye.

3. Optimize your landing pages

Your landing pages can make or break your seasonal ad strategy. They are often overlooked or come last in the order of importance as more effort is put into the ad creative, but both need to be at their best.

Make sure your landing pages are decked out for the occasion. Create dedicated landing pages that reflect the seasonal theme with engaging visuals, limited-time offers, and clear CTAs.

A festive-themed page for holiday promotions can help you boost conversions and keep consistency between your ads and your landing page.

Consider adding countdown timers to create a sense of urgency and ensure the pages are mobile-friendly since many users will visit via smartphones. Use A/B testing to find the best-performing designs and messages.

4. Use advanced targeting

Not all customers are the same, and during seasonal peaks, precise targeting will really help you attract customers who are ready to convert.

Use demographic, behavioral, and geographic data to create detailed customer profiles. For example, target regions with colder climates if you’re selling winter gear.

Use remarketing lists to re-engage users who have shown interest but didn’t convert, tailoring the ads to reflect the current season.

Platforms like Facebook and Google Ads allow you to create lookalike audiences based on your best customers, expanding your reach. Advanced targeting ensures that your ads are hitting the right people at the right time, maximizing your ROI.

5. Cross-channel integration

Consistency is key when running seasonal campaigns. Integrate your efforts across multiple channels like Google, Facebook, Instagram, and email marketing for a cohesive approach.

For example, if you’re running a summer sale, promote it on social media, search ads, and email newsletters simultaneously with similar visuals and messaging. This multi-channel strategy amplifies your reach and reinforces your campaign message.

Tools like Hootsuite or HubSpot can help you manage and schedule your campaigns across different channels for better coordination and effectiveness.

6. Leverage influencer partnerships

Influencers can give your seasonal campaigns an extra boost. Partner with influencers to tap into new audiences and add authenticity to your promotions.

For example, collaborate with a fitness influencer to promote your New Year’s health and wellness products.

Ensure the influencer’s audience aligns with your target market and their style fits your brand. Give influencers creative freedom to maintain authenticity while guiding them with key messages and seasonal themes.

Track the performance of influencer partnerships using metrics like engagement rates, referral traffic, and conversions to measure ROI. It’s like getting a trusted friend to recommend your product, making it more relatable and trustworthy.

The takeaway

Incorporating a well-thought-out seasonal ad strategy into your marketing plan is crucial for boosting campaign performance during specific seasons.

By starting early, leveraging historical data, and optimizing your approach with advanced techniques, you can maximize engagement and conversions.

Remember, each season brings unique opportunities — capitalize on them to keep your brand relevant and top-of-mind. Ready to elevate your seasonal ad game? Contact HawkSEM for a free consultation today.

Privacy Overview

Your all-in-one hiring platform! See how VIVAHR can help you crush your hiring goals.

This toolkit includes a variety of resources, including templates for job descriptions, interview questions, and offers.

• Ecosystem Partners
• Integrations
• Group Coaching
• HR Conferences
• Trade Services
• Hospitality
• View All Industries
• Culture Profiles
• Social Job Sharing
• Automated Actions
• Email and Text
• Hiring Pipelines
• Questionnaires
• Custom User Roles
• Offer Letters
• Team Collaboration
• Customer Stories
• Knowledge Base
• Consultants
• About VIVAHR
• In the News
• Marketplace
• Job Descriptions
• Human Resource Templates
• Interview Questions
• Job Board Guide
• City Job Boards
• Ebooks and Guides

Posted on: September 4, 2024

Guest Article

10 Effective Recruitment Marketing Strategies for HR Pros

Recruiters face constant challenges in finding and retaining top talent. The job market is fiercely competitive, and many industries suffer from talent shortages. Technology evolves rapidly, making it harder for companies to keep up.

A recent survey revealed that 62% of recruiters believe finding quality candidates is more difficult now than it was five years ago .

This makes it crucial to stay up-to-date with the latest requirements and modify your recruitment strategies accordingly. In this blog, I will go through ten latest recruitment marketing strategies that can help companies boost their visibility, engage candidates more, and discover the best talent.

Let’s get started!

What is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing is like putting out a giant “We’re hiring!” sign, but way cooler .

The process is about attracting talented people to your company by showing them why it’s a great workplace. It goes beyond simply advertising open positions.

Instead, it focuses on building a strong employer brand that highlights your company culture , values, and employee value proposition. This can involve creating content like blog posts, social media campaigns, or even employer branding videos.

By showcasing what makes your company unique and desirable as a workplace, recruitment marketing helps you build a pool of qualified candidates interested in working with you .

Now, let’s have a look at how exactly you can achieve the goal of attracting top talent to work for your organization.

10 Recruitment Marketing Strategies to Attract Top Talent

1. build a solid employer brand.

Companies need to have a good reputation as a great place to work to attract the best employees. This means showing off the company’s values, culture, how engaged your employees are and the work environment in a positive way.

You can do this by sharing stories from employees, talking about the company’s accomplishments, and posting behind-the-scenes stuff on your website and social media .

Employee engagement plays a crucial role here.

Engaged employees are likely to interact with the company’s social media pages which results in creating a strong employer brand .

For example, you can create a “Day in the Life” video series featuring different employees, or post on social media highlighting team successes or individual employee experience.

Also, make sure you always share the same message about your company and it fits with your overall business goals and values.

2. Increase Search Visibility Using SEO & PPC Ads

When aiming to maximize your website’s visibility to potential candidates, using both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) is the way to go!

When these two marketing strategies complement each other, you can expect increased visibility, valuable data, heightened brand awareness, high-quality content, enhanced traffic, and more .

Make sure your career page and job descriptions have relevant keywords for job seekers. With PPC ads, you can even target specific demographics and job titles. For example, use keywords like “marketing jobs” and direct your PPC ads to marketing professionals.

Creating high-quality industry-related content such as blogs and articles can also improve your organic search rankings. This two-pronged approach boosts the likelihood of your job openings appearing at the top of search results, driving more qualified candidates.

3. Improve Candidate Experience With Mobile Recruiting

Make sure that when you’re hiring new people, the whole process works well on phones and tablets. Your company’s website where you advertise jobs and accept job applications should work smoothly on mobile devices.

It should load quickly and look good on any screen size. You can further simplify the process with shorter forms, easy resume uploads, and the ability to save progress. Using text messages to send interview reminders and updates is a good idea too .

When you’re advertising job openings, make sure the descriptions are easy to read on a phone and that it’s easy for people to apply for the job using their mobile devices. It’s also a good idea to do job interviews with video conferencing and flexible scheduling.

4. Create an Attractive Career Page

Your career page is often the first place potential candidates will explore, so make it engaging and informative. Highlight your company culture, values, and benefits, and share employee testimonials to give a personal touch.

Use visuals and videos to showcase your work environment and provide a glimpse into daily life at your company. Ensure the page is easy to navigate with clear sections for job listings, application instructions, and details about the hiring process .

An attractive and user-friendly career page can significantly boost candidate interest and applications by making a strong first impression and offering all the information they need in one place. Here’s an example of a simple yet engaging career page.

5. Setup Employee Referral Programs

Employee referrals are one of the most effective ways to find top talent. Your current employees can help identify and refer qualified candidates from their networks. To motivate them to refer more candidates you offer incentives and rewards in exchange for successful referrals.

You can set up a structured employee referral program using VIVAHR that can help you cut down your recruitment time by 50% and even make your hiring process more efficient .

This not only helps you find quality candidates but also increases employee engagement and satisfaction by involving them in the hiring process. It’s a win-win situation that can enhance your recruitment efforts and build a stronger team.

6. Use Social Recruiting

80% of candidates are considered passive job seekers, indicating that they are currently employed but open to considering better job offers if approached.

These candidates may not be actively searching through job boards, making social media a convenient avenue to connect with them .

By sharing job openings and engaging with your social media followers, you can capture the interest of potential candidates, streamlining and expediting the recruitment process.

You can use Vivahr’s Social Job Sharing feature to easily create a job posting URL that can be circulated among employees and partners for sharing. This URL can be used to post job openings on websites, social media, or anywhere else online.

7. Utilize Email Marketing to Nurture Candidates

Once you have got a list of interested candidates or some good leads, you can start using emails to nurture them. This is a great way to keep potential candidates engaged and maintain a talent pipeline.

Create a nurturing email campaign with the purpose of familiarizing them with the brand, keeping them posted about job openings, and eventually converting them. Try segmenting your email list to send personalized content to different groups, ensuring relevance and engagement .

Use subject lines that are to the point and use email tracking to check how your campaigns are performing. Be regular with emails to keep your company top-of-mind for candidates, increasing the likelihood of them applying when a suitable position arises.

8. Use Recruitment Chatbots

Recruiters are not always available to answer candidates’ questions immediately, but a chatbot can fill this gap. By employing a chatbot, you can ensure 24/7 availability and reduce a significant portion of your initial workload.

A chatbot provides swift and precise responses to common or frequently asked questions, such as inquiries about job descriptions, location, or essential job skills .

Moreover, recruitment chatbots are adept at conducting the initial screening of candidates. They can evaluate resumes and applications based on predetermined criteria, effectively identifying the most promising candidates.

This automated screening process saves considerable time and allows recruiters to concentrate on more detailed assessments.

9. Invest in the Right Hiring Tools

Investing in the right hiring tools can make a significant difference in your recruitment process. Tools like VIVAHR offer features for recruiting, candidate management, employee referrals, social recruiting, candidate qualification, and collaboration.

It also helps streamline workflows, improve collaboration, and provide valuable insights through analytics. By using these features, you can optimize your recruitment strategy, reduce time-to-hire, and attract top talent more effectively .

VIVAHR can help you manage the entire hiring process from start to finish, making it easier to find and hire the best candidates for your organization.

10. Host Killer Recruitment Events

Lastly, recruitment events are a good platform to spot and connect with potential candidates in a more personal and interactive setting. You can organize job fairs, open houses, webinars, and networking events to showcase your company and its opportunities.

In these events, try to provide valuable insights about your industry and career growth paths. You can even promote these events through social media, email marketing, and partnerships with industry organizations to expand your reach and get more people to join .

These events also give candidates a chance to learn more about your company and see firsthand what makes it a great place to work. Here’s how Spotify pulled up their recruitment event – Diversify

Spotify promoted the event through word-of-mouth advertising and achieved a 43% female and 57% male participant ratio, unseen before at tech events.

Recruitment Marketing Strategy For Your Organization

Attracting top talent involves a multifaceted approach. No matter which strategies you choose to promote your hiring campaigns, you must focus on showcasing your company culture authentically and consistently across all platforms.

Closely analyze the process to understand where your best candidates are coming from and double down on those channels. Also, make sure to create a seamless application process and maintain open, honest communication with candidates throughout .

And the final piece of advice for all recruiters – Don’t forget to engage with passive candidates – those who aren’t actively looking but might be open to new opportunities.

Sometimes the best talent is already employed but willing to make a move for the right opportunity. Keep them in mind and nurture those relationships !

Author Bio :

Pratik Shinde is a Founder at Growthbuzz Media , a Content Creator at Make SaaS Better , and an SEO enthusiast. He helps fast-paced B2B SaaS startups acquire customers through organic marketing efforts. He likes reading philosophy, writing non-fiction, thoughtful walking, running, and traveling.

Let’s grow together

Explore our complete hiring platform with a 7-day free trial. Post jobs, get candidates, and manage applicants all in one place.

From the VIVAHR Blog

Explore over 600 resources to help you hire the right person

A recent survey revealed that 62% of recruiters believe finding quality candidates is more difficult now than it was five years ago. This makes it crucial to stay up-to-date with the latest requirements and modify your recruitment strategies accordingly…

Jobvite Competitors and Alternatives: Find the Best ATS

This guide will walk you through each one’s key features, pros, and cons, and how they compare to Jobvite itself, so you can confidently choose the best tool for your business. Whether you’re thinking of moving on from Jobvite or just exploring your options, we’re here to help you find the perfect fit for your hiring needs. ⭐

Best ATS for Small Business: Top 5 Hiring Software

Simplifying your hiring process is a must, and that’s why we’ve put together this comparison of VIVAHR, BambooHR, Workable, JazzHR, and Zoho Recruit. Our goal is to help you discover the best applicant tracking system for your specific needs, so you can focus on what really matters: growing your business.🎯

• How It Works
• VIVAHR Reseller Program
• All Industries
• Landscaping
• Pest Control
• City Job Posting Sites
• Free Job Posting Sites
• Guest Blogging
• HR Conferences 2024
• Job Description Templates
• Top HR Blogs
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy

Church Marketing Plan

Church attendance is very important as it can help church members to reach out to more people. With the growing members of the church, there will be higher chances of getting the Word of God out there. The underlying question with regards these instances is on how the church can gather as much people as possible. This is where the essential usage of a church marketing plan comes in. Just like an  outreach strategy plan , churches also use a marketing plan to bring people to church services, biblical readings, and other relevant or related activities and programs. This allows them to spread their message to a wider audience.

• 5-Year Strategic Plan Examples – PDF
• Fundraising Plan Examples – PDF

If you need help in developing your church’s own marketing plan, you do not need to fret or worry. We have put together a list of downloadable church marketing plan examples in PDF that you can use as references. Alongside these examples are discussions of tips, guidelines, and step-by-step church marketing plan development suggestions that you can also use as guides.

Collegiate Church Marketing Plan Example

Size: 188 KB

Marketing Plan for Multi-Site Church Example

Size: 161 KB

How to Prepare a Church Marketing Plan

Just like a wellness recovery action plan , your church marketing plan must also contain call-to-actions that can serve as a guide on how you can execute your plan properly and accordingly. The church marketing plan that you will come up with must be able to present regulations, guidelines, and other particular discussions that can thoroughly showcase how the ideal condition of the church can be achieved. Here are the initial activities that you can execute if you want to start preparing a marketing plan for your church:

• Know the factors and elements that can affect the efficiency and effectiveness of your church marketing plan, especially those that are coming from external sources. It is important for your church marketing plan to address particular issues especially with regards the reasons on why people tend to attend church lesser these days.
• Develop a message that can reflect the ideals, facts, and other items of value that you would like to disseminate. You have to make sure that the message of your church is strong enough that it can persuade people to be more observant with their church attendance.
• Be aware of the essence of the church marketing plan. If you want to reach out to more people through evangelism, it is essential for you to have an end goal in mind. What does your church marketing plan really want to achieve? How can your church marketing plan help your church get its goals or address certain issues at hand? If you can answer these items and if you can provide a presentation of your message discussion in a thorough church marketing plan, then it is most likely that you can realize the objectives of developing and using the specified document.
• Use organizational tools that can help you list down all the details per clauses of your church marketing plan. Being organized and detailed in the development of a church marketing plan can make it easier for you to have a clear and concise discussion that can be easily understood by any reasonable person.

Church Marketing Plan Example

Size: 643 KB

Church Marketing: Promotional Plans Using Modern Methods Example

Size: 84 KB

Church Marketing: Efficient Strategic Planning for Ministry Effectiveness Example

Size: 238 KB

Importance of a Church Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is not only limited to be used by corporate entities, organizations and businesses. There are also other bodies or groups that can benefit from the specified document. As an example, churches can also use a marketing plan so that they can have access to the people who they were not able to reach before. Listed below are some of the reasons why a church marketing plan is considered or deemed as an important document by churches.

• A church marketing plan can help you plot the activities that can provide amazing opportunities for your church to evangelize. With the help of a church marketing plan, it will be easier and more efficient for you to get the attention of your desired audience especially those that are within the community where the church belongs.
• A church marketing plan can make it more effective for you to come up with counteractions should challenges arise during the development and implementation stages of your church marketing plan. Going to church has now been harder than ever as there are companies and establishments who require their employees to work on Sundays due to the demands of the operations. Aside from this, there are still other reasons why gathering people and letting them go to church can be quite a challenge. Having a church marketing plan can help you address these issues and concerns accordingly.
• A church marketing plan, in comparison to a hotel business plan and other kinds of organizational plans, can set the direction where the church members and other people involved must be going. Through this document, church members can have a sense of responsibility and ownership as they can be more aware of their obligations and all the other tasks that they have been given with.
• A church marketing plan can give you a lead time when it comes to preparing the ways on how you can align your vision with the lifestyle of the community. If you will have a church marketing plan at hand, you can list down all the items of priority that you can look into for your action plans to be put into reality.

Church Planning: Strategic Marketing Guide for Church Leaders Example

Size: 886 KB

Parish Church Strategic Plan and Marketing Call-to-Actions Example

Parish Marketing Plan Example

How to Create a Church Marketing Plan

The processes that you need to follow to create different kinds of plans vary from one another. Even if there are phases and activities that can be similar, the approach on how specific deliverable should be applied differs. More so, this is for the reason that there are differences with the factors that should be considered to come up with these plans. As an example, developing community project plan examples  requires a different procedure and element identification when compared to the creation of a church marketing plan. A basic procedure that you can refer to if you want to develop your own church marketing plan is presented below.

• Identify your church brand or image first. Know how your church members see you as a whole and how they relate to the message that you are championing as an entity. Strengthening your internal operations can help you further when it comes to presenting your marketing idea. Hence, it is also essential for you to consider the vision that the church would like to achieve and the missions that it would like to realize.
• Once internal identity has already been established, the next thing to do is to think of ways on how you can present your identity to your target audience in the most appealing ways possible. You should learn how to communicate your actual identity to the people around you so that you can reflect your brand or your image accordingly.
• It is essential for you to assess your target audience. In this manner, you can have an easier time when identifying ways on how you can connect with them. You can think of the geographic considerations that you must consider as well as the demographic features that you need to look into so that you can come up with an effective approach for evangelism.
• If you are already aware of who your audience is, then it is already time for you to know the marketing channels that can potentially provide you with your desired results. You have to be selective and strategic when using your marketing channels as these can sometimes require you to spend. If you want to lessen costs, you can just set up a social media account or any online pages for your church.
• Being able to acknowledge the key points for consideration should lead you to the setting of your goals and objectives. You should list down all the things that you would like to realize and achieve so you can be more direct and precise when associating your strategies to your activities. It is also essential for you to know how to measure your objectives, which is why you need to ensure that there will be metrics for evaluation that will be based on the level of successes that you would like to achieve when compared to the output that you will deliver.
• Organize your tactical plan and present a discussion that is clear, understandable, and well written. Make sure that you will present how you will execute your action plans as well as how you will evaluate your plan results for objectivity and transparency purposes.

Church Marketing and Operations: Strategic Planning for Your Church Example

Size: 127 KB

Marketing Planning Tools for Churches Example

Useful Suggestions, Tips, and Guidelines in Creating a Church Marketing Plan That Works

Making a church marketing plan is a hard and crucial task as there are different things that are needed to be looked into and considered so you can come up with the best document possible. Hence, it is important for you to exert your time and effort when developing a church marketing plan so that you can get the most benefits out of its usage especially when it comes to the ease of spreading or disseminating the Word of God to your target community. Here are a few suggestions, tips, and guidelines that you can follow if you want to start making a marketing plan for your church:

• Just like when creating a business marketing plan with a marketing plan executive summary , it is also recommended for your church marketing plan to have its own summary. Being able to create an executive summary can help you present an overview of what the marketing plan is all about and how the church, the action plan’s target audience, and the church members can benefit from it.
• Ensure that you will review the church marketing plan draft first before putting all your strategies and tactics into action. You also have to make sure that the development and execution of the church marketing plan is a collaborative endeavor and that the majority, if not all, of the church members and/or other entities involved have agreed upon the procedures of the marketing efforts for the church.
• Make updates from time to time. Since there are both internal and external factors that can affect the successful implementation of your church marketing plan, you have to make sure that the document is always up to date. Doing this can also give you an idea about the trends that can impact your actions and the reactions of your target audience on varying time periods.

Even if it can be very tedious when creating your church marketing plan, there are still ways on how you can make particular activities and development phases easier. This is the reason why we have presented you with different kinds of church marketing plan examples. With the help of these downloadable examples, you can already have an idea on how you can maximize the effects of your efforts and how you can yield the most favorable results in a given time duration.

Browse through the examples available in this post and start from there. Make a church marketing plan now and update it whenever necessary so you can have a guide when it comes to executing your church marketing strategies and plan of action.

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

Create a study plan for final exams in high school

Develop a project timeline for a middle school science fair.