B2B Marketing Promotions

Implementing promotional marketing strategies for small businesses is one of the biggest hurdles most small business owners face in their business marketing.

The Internet is rife with all kinds of promotional marketing strategies and ideas: Write a company blog. Start a company Facebook fan page. Engage people on Twitter.

But actually implementing the promotional marketing tactics is tough for small business owners. “I’m already busy enough, and now I have to do more?”

We feel your pain. We’re in small business as well, so we’re constantly dealing with the same struggles. If you’re a single person operation, or a small partnership with big aspirations, you’re wearing a lot of hats. You’re in charge of sales and marketing, and then fulfilling whatever you sold. You manage the billing, accounts payable, and taxes. You make sure the office is running smoothly, and that you maintain your business network. And now you’re supposed to try some new promotional marketing strategies.

But don’t worry, we’re not asking for much. In fact, we may make your life easier. Here are a few ideas you can use to implement your promotional marketing strategies with a minimal amount of pain:

Track the performance of all your promotional marketing efforts.

This one is crucial. You need to know what’s working for you and what’s not. The mistake many small businesses make is they don’t keep track of the ROI of their promotional marketing. They’ll run Yellow Pages listings, newspaper ads, radio spots, and dabble in social media. But they don’t know what works and what doesn’t.

Do things like sticking unique discount codes on your promotional marketing campaigns. Use special phone numbers in your Yellow Pages listings. Put analytics tracking on your websites. Track the sources of your leads, and see which campaigns result in traffic to your location and your website.

Then count up all of that traffic, and see which leads turned into sales. Total up the sales from each promotional marketing campaign, and then subtract the money you spent on that campaign. The amount remaining is your ROI.

Drop the promotional marketing tactics that don’t work.

This part is easy. If the money you spent is bigger than the money you made, you lost money. If you made more than you spent, you have a positive ROI, and that promotional marketing effort was a success.

Drop all the campaigns that lost you money, including the ones you thought were doing you some good. (Note: this does not include youth team sponsorships. There are some things, like goodwill in the community, that you just don’t mess with!) Pour that reclaimed money back into the campaigns that worked the best. Or if they all made you money, drop the lowest performing ones.

Social media promotional marketing in minutes a day.

When you try something new, like blogging, Facebook, or Twitter, you shouldn’t jump into it with both feet, and spend hours a day on it. You’ll run out of time to do other things, and when you go to play catch-up, everything will be too overwhelming, and you’ll quit. Then, you’ll say it was a complete failure, when in actuality, you haven’t touched that promotional marketing tool in nine months.

Instead, just pace yourself. Work on it a little bit each day. If you’re blogging, just write one 300 word blog post per week. It should take you no more than an hour, and can take less time per day if you break it up. If you’re using Twitter, just spend 30 minutes a day on it, 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the afternoon. Eventually you’ll reach a point that you’re so good at it, you’ll find that you’re actually spending 20 minutes a day in 60 second intervals, throughout the day, and wondering if you’re doing too much, rather than not enough.

Promotional marketing for small business is going to be what keeps you in business, but only if you actually try out some of the tactics you read about. Don’t make the mistake of trying something for two weeks and then quitting when you don’t see any results. It takes time, patience, and some work. But if you can make the time to do these tactics, whatever ones you’ll choose, you’ll be rewarded.

Promotional incentives are a powerful marketing lever that brand advertisers can use to engage and excite consumers. They play a key role in launching new products, lifting sales of existing products, and cultivating customer loyalty. From the smallest “mom and pop” retail stores to the largest brands in the world, promotional incentives encourage people to experience products they might otherwise ignore.

Creative Ways To Leverage Promotional Incentives

Giving away free items is one of the most effective ways to stimulate a response from your target market. Nothing excites consumers more than the chance to receive something with a high perceived value for free. There are a variety of ways in which you can use free promotional incentives to motivate your audience to take action.

You can give your customers something for free in exchange for trying a new product or service. For example, Starbucks recently launched their Via brand of instant coffee and used promotional incentives to spearhead the effort. They organized a Via Taste Challenge to entice customers to try their instant brew. Customers in the Los Angeles area were asked to order a cup of Via. In return, they received a coupon that could be redeemed for any cup of coffee in the future.

You can also use promotional incentives to create a surge in sales volume around your brand. For example, Estée Lauder launched a promotion in October 2009 called “Your Beauty. Your Style. Your Profile.” They invited women to visit participating counters and receive a free makeover and photo. The photos were emailed to women so they could be uploaded easily to dating and social networking sites. The Estée Lauder logo was in the background of each photo, strengthening their brand.

Using Promotional Incentives To Collect Customer Information

In the Estée Lauder example, the promotional incentives were emailed to women who received makeovers. That means in order to receive their digital photo, women had to provide a working email address. This mechanism helped Estée Lauder to create a database of customers to whom they could market their products in the future. For example, they can email these customers a targeted holiday promotion focusing on the products that were used during the makeovers.

Mobile promotions such as music download promotions can offer this same advantage. When consumers visit your customized landing page to download your promotional incentives (e.g. free music downloads), you can require them to provide their contact information. In doing so, you’ll build a database of customers for future marketing campaigns.

The Advantage Of Delivering Promotional Incentives Online

When your promotional incentives are delivered online, your expenses are limited to whatever it costs to fulfill redemption. For example, suppose you’re offering free music downloads to people who spend $70 at a certain clothing store. Provide a website address and promo code on their purchase receipt that directs them to your download site. They can redeem your promotional incentives online, which helps to minimize your costs while exposing customers to your brand and products.

Or, suppose you want to deliver a “buy three and get one free” promotion to customers’ mobile devices. The cost of delivery is practically zero. The same is true for launching instant win games, skins promotions, offering free ringtones, and other digital promotional incentives. While the cost is low compared to traditional advertising channels, the impact on your audience is high.

Why Promotional Incentives Are Effective

Brand sponsors realized long ago that promotional incentives were a potent trigger for stimulating a response from their market. Each year, billions of dollars are spent to launch promotions that improve brand awareness, drive traffic and sales, and strengthen customer loyalty.

The reason promotional incentives are so effective is because people always enjoy the chance to receive free products they consider valuable. Whether the incentive is a free tank of gas, limited access to an online fee-based service, or free song downloads, consumers are happy to participate. In some cases, they’ll increase their purchase order or buy new products in order to take advantage of a promotion. In other cases, they’ll willingly exchange their contact information to receive your promotional incentives.

Your marketing campaigns are ultimately designed to sell your products. The challenge is to motivate your audience to buy them. Digital promotional incentives will excite your market, educate them about your products, and encourage their loyalty to your brand. And they’ll do so at a lower cost than using other advertising channels. Now is the time to explore how promotional incentives can drive traffic and increase sales for your company.

Promotional Currency is THE leading digital promotions firm, merging digital technology, artist licensing and promotional risk coverage to deliver turnkey, fixed-cost solutions for the promotional marketplace.  Promotional incentives such as music download promotions, ringtone promotions, mobile promotion, skins promotions and online instant win games and sweepstakes are powerful, multi-pronged promotional marketing tools build customer loyalty and drive sales.

–Cynthia Walker

Entertain your consumers with promotional incentives to differentiate your brand and boost sales through increased brand interest and customer loyalty.