The A, B, C, D, E of effective promotion

Promotion of your business, or any of its individual products or services is a process of communication, so the same rules apply as would apply to any other form of communication. Let's take, for example, the situation where you decide to invite friends over for dinner one evening. Here are the likely steps that you would take:

Step A
You decide who you want to invite
Step B
You decide on how much money (and time) to spend on the invitations - is this an occasion that justifies splashing-out on printed invitations or just a low-key evening with costs kept the minimum?
Step C
You decide on what you want to say to your friends - is this a special occasion, for example, or perhaps just a long time since you saw these friends?
Step D
You then decide the best method of conveying the message - is it by phone, by letter, by e-mail, or by printed invitation?
Step E
You need to know your friends’ response - are they going to come? An "RSVP" on the invitation, for example, would let you know.

Now, let's go through the same sequence for your next business promotion:

Step A
Decide who your target audience is - be as specific as you can. Get a mental picture of the typical person you want to communicate with.
Step B
Decide on a budget! Be realistic; relate it to the likely returns from your promotional campaign. And don’t forget to “budget” for the time needed to carry out the campaign as well!
Step C
Decide on the message. You know what you want to tell people - but having got a mental picture of your audience in step 1, try to think what they want to hear, and how they expect to hear it - in other words, what tone to use in your message.
Step D
Decide on how to deliver your message - in other words what media are you going to use? Again, with the mental picture of your potential customer from Step 1, you should be able to imagine what papers/magazines they might read, what radio station they might listen to, and what else influences their decision-making.
Step E
and this is this step that’s so often forgotten! But, just as you want to know the response of your friends when you invite them to dinner (and for example, if you invite them several times but they always seem to have a reason for not coming, you'd maybe begin to get the message about them as "friends"). Well, isn't it the same with customers? Don't you want to know what they think about your business and the promotional messages you aim at them? Remember what we said at the beginning of this article - "promotion … is a form of communication." Any good communication is a two-way process and therefore needs feedback from recipients of the original message. And in promotional terms, eliciting response also gives you a means of measuring how effective the promotion has been.

So, here’s the summary of what the A, B, C, D, E of successful promotion stands for:

A is for Audience: who do you want to speak to?
B is for Budget: how much (money and time) are you going to spend?
C is for Content: what do you want to say and what does your audience want to hear?
D is for Delivery: what is the most appropriate medium to use to reach the your audience?
E is for Evaluation: have you built in a means of getting feedback, so you can judge the effectiveness of your campaign?

Comments

[Increase Web Traffic]

Here's the thing about eliciting a response about the effectiveness of your campaign: it really depends on the campaign you're doing. A lot of times the best way to measure it is just by seeing what type of return you're getting. Also, trying to get feedback in certain areas of marketing (say, an online form) can hinder the amount of return you'd otherwise get. Just a thought.

-Marc

[christian louboutin]

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