This week we will look into Promotion Goals. Here is the marketing strategy template again, for your reference.
Marketing Strategy
- Unique Sales Proposition
- Brand
- Product or Service
- Promotion Goals
Promotion Goals
Marketing plans don’t have to be complicated, but they do need to be well thought out. Identifying where you want to be or what outcome you hope to see from your efforts will help you lay out specific action plans to achieve the success you desire.
Identify the Goals
What do you want the marketing plan to accomplish? How long will it take? You need to establish specific market objectives and timeframes for accomplishing your goals. If you haven’t identified specifics, at best you’ll spin your wheels and not accomplish much. At worst, you’ll throw away a pile of money and get nothing out of it.
Identify the Message
What’s the message you want your customers to associate with your business name or product? Keep it simple, descriptive of some benefit to your customer or problem solved, and differentiate your company from your competitors. Do you have a secret weapon? Do you have a product or service that nobody else has? If you do, great, use it to your advantage. If not, you need to keep your message focused on your customer, fulfilling their needs and solving their problems.
Identify the Budget
How much will you spend? Don’t start asking that question when you get the bill from the advertising sales rep. Define the budget for marketing your product up front when developing the plan and then manage to it.
How Will You Measure
How will you measure and how will you define success? It’s important to identify these issues before you begin. If you don’t know what the end result should look like, how will you know if you got there or not? And, if you don’t get what you hoped for, how will you change your plan to better achieve your goals?
You will need a way to test your results so that you can make improvements to the plan. If you’re looking at a radio spot to promote a particular product or service, maybe you run two different spots to determine which wording and portrayal works best. Maybe two different print ads could be used to see which draws more calls from interested customers. Make sure to include a different website, phone number, email or identifier so that you can tell which ad drove which result. Some people will remember a radio spot from several years ago or confuse a competitor’s ad with one from your business.
You must constantly monitor, measure, and test your promotional programs for effectiveness. If they aren’t working, figure out why and make the necessary changes. Don’t launch a promotional campaign and then forget about it. The ad sales people love customers who do that. They can sell you spots without ever having to answer for the promotional effectiveness. That’s the same as a big tattoo on your forehead that says “SUCKER.”
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