57 Promotion Strategies

Promotion strategies are communication techniques that aim to sell a product, service or cause. They include advertising, publicity, selling and persuasion strategies such as:

Alliance Marketing

A shared marketing strategy between two or more firms that may be designed to generate publicity. For example, two technology giants may announce a shared initiative to work on artificial intelligence that generates more publicity than actual research results.

Attribution Marketing

Modeling events that lead to sales and then using promotion to achieve these events with each target customer. Attribution marketing is typically aimed at achieving brand recognition, awareness, customer interactions and other precursor events to purchases and other goals such as loyal customers.

Awards

Establishing awards in some area of achievement that is associated with your brand.

Behavioral Advertising

Digital advertising that targets customers based on behavior such as the websites they have visited.

Brand Promotion

Promotion such as advertising that is designed to generate positive feelings or social status for a brand. Typically includes no sales pitch or call to action.

Call To Action

A short, commanding and direct request to customers such as "call now." Considered a fundamental tool of promotion.

Causes And Charities

Supporting causes and charities in order to build goodwill with communities and customers.

Content Marketing

Developing content related to your business to demonstrate your expertise and build relationships with customers.

Contests

Running contests designed to generate publicity and traffic to your locations or website.

Contextual Advertising

Advertising that targets a particular context such as ads for cameras on a camera review website.

Corporate Anniversary

Celebrating the history of your company, products and brand.

Coupons

Coupons are a form of price discrimination that can also be considered a type of promotional item. In many cases, direct marketing that contains coupons generates increased interest from customers.

Customer Appreciation

Customer appreciation events and actions such as thanking customers for writing a positive review or sending them a gift certificate at an anniversary such as five years of patronage.

Customer Referral Programs

Asking customers to refer their friends, family and associates and giving them incentives to do so.

Direct Marketing

Marketing communications sent directly to a customer using email, mail, phone calls and social media messages.

Drip Marketing

Marketing communications that are sent to customers at a set pace such as once a day. Examples include a weekly phone call or a daily newsletter.

Email Marketing

Gaining a customer's permission to send them a regular email and using techniques such as newsletters to build a relationship with them.

Endorsements

Asking influencers or celebrities for public support or approval.

Evangelism Marketing

Employing an evangelist for your products who is enthusiastic, respected and well spoken to represent you with the media and at events. In some cases, firms develop an evangelist program to identify prominent customers or partners to speak on the firm's behalf.

Event Marketing

Sponsoring or attending events to generate publicity and engage customers.

Factory Tours

Opening your organization to the public can generate content about your business such as photographs, blog posts and social media conversations.

Free Trials

Offering your product or service for free for a limited period. Allows the media to review the product and may achieve a high rate of conversion to paying customers.

Games

Developing a game that features your products or advertising in games.

Industry Conferences

In some industries, conferences are important to the sales process, particularly lead generation. In other industries, they are important venues to establish relationships with media figures who cover your business.

Influence Marketing

Engaging influencers such as celebrities, media heavyweights, social media personalities, prominent reviewers and trend leaders in your industry to ask for their promotional help. For example, you might openly give prominent reviewers free products in exchange for a review without demanding that it be positive.

Local Advertising

Advertising in local media, locations such as billboards and with digital ads that are served based on current geographical location.

Mass Media Advertising

Media that reaches a large audience that isn't particularly targeted as compared with digital advertising.

Native Advertising

Advertising that matches the form and function of content such as sponsored social media posts.

Outbound Sales

Techniques such as cold calling a prospective customer that involve directly reaching out to qualified leads.

Participation Marketing

Encouraging customers to participate in the evolution of your products and brand. For example, asking customers to help you design a new product.

Personal Selling

Using a sales force to develop relationships with customers. Often includes face-to-face meetings, phone calls and digital interactions such as email or messaging. Extremely common in high value business-to-business sales.

Persuasion Techniques

Persuasion is the ability to influence people's ideas and actions. It is a fundamental technique of promotion that defines the results achieved from advertising, marketing copy and customer interactions.

Photo Op

An event that is designed to generate photographs that will have media appeal such as a politician visiting local businesses to hear their concerns.

Press Conferences

A media event for announcing significant news. Tends to generate a sense of competition between the media, resulting in greater coverage than a press release.

Press Releases

A notification to the media of news. The effectiveness of a press release depends on the newsworthiness of its content.

Product Demonstrations

Demonstrating products for customers at public venues or at your customer's office.

Product Placement

Paying to have your product featured in entertainment such as a movie or video game.

Promotional Products

Giving out useful items that feature your brand symbols.

Public Relations

The practice of managing communications between an organization and the public. Typically gives the public a single point of contact for inquiries. Public relations serves a marketing, corporate governance and risk management function. For example, strategies may be developed to manage negative publicity should it occur.

Public Speaking

Encouraging your employees to speak on a variety of topics at conferences even if they are not directly related to your product and brand. For example, a security expert in your IT team may speak at a security conference generating free publicity for your organization.

Publicity

Publicity is anything that attracts media attention such as achievements, discoveries, people stories, technology breakthroughs, unconventional approaches and anything that's generally entertaining and informative.

Publicity Stunt

A dramatic or imaginative event designed to generate publicity such as a world record attempt.

Reference Customers

A list of customers who have chosen your product, possibly with detailed success stories related to each. Reference customers are often required to bid for certain contracts. They can also be used as a promotional device, particularly if your customers are large, well respected organizations.

Relationship Marketing

A marketing strategy that relies on social interactions such as face-to-face and social media conversations to promote a business.

Remarketing

Remarketing is the practice of following up on recent customers interactions with techniques such as advertising, direct marketing and personal selling.

Reverse Placement

Creating a product and brand based on a fictional product in a movie or television show.

Road Shows

A traveling presentation or event.

Samples

Giving out free samples for a product that you believe will generate word-of-mouth.

Scarcity Marketing

Techniques that generate emotions such as curiosity and desire by making products, services and events difficult to obtain.

Slogans

Short memorable phrases that communicate emotions or information about your products and brand.

Social Media Marketing

Using social media to engage customers or advertise.

Testimonial

A statement that communicates the value of a product from an "ordinary" customer. In the cases of a celebrity or influential individual, a testimonial is typically termed an endorsement.

Underwriting Spot

Sponsoring content such as a radio news broadcast in exchange for a short credit that mentions your brand, often without a call to action.

Vapourware

Announcing plans for an exciting new product that doesn't exist. In many cases, such announcements are based on research or vague plans that never produce working products but garner media attention nonetheless.

Vision

A firm's mission and vision statements are often viewed as a promotional tool.

Visual Merchandising

Visual displays of your product at retail locations such as the elaborate displays in the store windows of department stores.

Word Of Mouth

Focusing on product and customer experience over promotion with the idea that a good product promotes itself though word of mouth.