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Basic Concepts in Market Dynamics

8. Promotional Tactics

Promotional tactics are those one applies to build awareness, in the markets you serve, that a solution to their need exists, and that you are one of the sources who offers a product or offer to satisfy that need. It is not enough for the market to know you exist, but that you actively communicate both the relationship to the need your offer satisfies and your selling proposition.

A promotional strategy involves three categories of tactics. Institutional, Developmental and Maintenance.

Foundation or institutional tactics are the basic steps of establishing your identity which include your business name, signage, logo, business cards, and company identity. Your institutional components should carry through for all of your promotion. Repetition and consistency are key. How you present your business in terms of design and slogan are qualitative. The quantitative aspect of your institutional promotion would include yellow pages advertising, directory ads, advertising specialties, "T" shirts, and every other opportunity to get your name and identity out to the public.

The second category of promotional tactics are called developmental or market builder tactics. This is how you educate the market and position your offering to maximize appeal. There are hundreds of tools at a marketer's disposal to accomplish this, but the single most important guideline for applying developmental tactics is that they must be on-going and fully integrated to your day-to-day operation. Developmental tactics are your primary source of new prospects and are key to a high market conversion rate.

It is important to remember that the impact of promotion is long-term. You will not, usually, see results overnight. There is also a cost/efficiency trade off. Buying space for developmental advertising has a high cost and high efficiency. Free publicity has little or no cost but is less efficient. Additionally, a marketer can use seminars, events, tours, tie-ins, sponsorships, web sites, newsletters, community service, personal contact, and positive customer relations to build word-of-mouth. The idea is to use everything at your disposal and keep at it. As long as you continuously tell your story in a positive manner (ie. never use a negative proposition for market development of an on-going business), you will create positive market conversion. You will win the hearts and minds of your market.

The quantitative factors of developmental promotion are the number of people who you reach with your message and the frequency of the exposure. The qualitative factors are how the messages are targeted. While repetition is essential to the institutional component (ie. keep your logo consistent), diversity is often critical to the success of the developmental component. Repeating the same message becomes boring, so use your developmental strategy to build a story, piece-by-piece over time. Target different audiences and avoid trying to cover every point in one single ad, piece of literature, web page, or press release.

The third category of promotional tactics are called maintenance or sales builder tactics. Maintenance promotion is one of the key tactics you use to control the flow of traffic or level of sales to your business. This category includes sale price ads, catalogs, and product feature advertising. Maintenance is also the most misunderstood and misapplied promotional tactic for most businesses. For this reason the next section is devoted entirely on what to do and not to do with maintenance promotion.

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