Designing a Promotional plan

Marketing strategy

The promotional plan must be consistent with the company’s Marketing Strategy. This is the overall plan to deliver the targeted marketing objectives for the brand, product or company. A key objective of marketing strategy is often to keep marketing in line with a company’s mission statement.




For example, if the marketing strategy is to build a brand that is expensive and exclusive, the promotional plan for a new addition to the range cannot be built on competitive pricing and flooding the market place. It must be consistent with the overall strategy.

Promotional plan

A promotional plan is used by a Marketing team to produce a strategic plan to support or promote sales of a product or range of products.

The plan details the tools and strategies that will be used to achieve sales targets. It should include how leads and customers for the product will be generated and retained.

The route that a global corporation takes will be very different from that which will work for a corner shop or other small local business. Many factors will come into play, such as what the product is, who the target customer is, whether this is suitable for selling online, whether the business itself is an online business.

There are many ways of promoting a new company or a new or existing product. Some are more effective than others, and some are more expensive than others

Think about what you need the customer to know about the company or product. Is information and explanation an important part of what you need to communicate?

Is the product a staple, where price will be a major determinant?

Is it an impulse buy, a throwaway product? Do you want them to come back to you for repeat purchases? Are you selling on price or quality?

Here are some promotional tools which we will discuss in more detail later, so that you can choose the ones that suit your business and product.

TRADITIONAL MARKETING TOOLS

  • print adverts in newspapers or magazines
  • radio or TV ads
  • In -store promotions
  • Joint launch between manufacturer and retailer
  • Offer Customers an Exclusive Preview
  • Get influencers to review
  • flyers and leaflets
  • billboards
  • Run a competition, promoting it widely, maybe giving away your product or service as a prize, or cash prizes, if they can answer questions about your product
  • getting testimonials from satisfied clients and publicising them
  • in store promotions
  • events such as a one-day promotion, free drink, open evening
  • Branded Promotional Gifts
  • Offer special deals
  • offer a discount
  • a free upgrade
  • trade in offer
  • an exclusive preview
  • run a loyalty scheme
  • run an affiliate programme
  • use referral marketing
  • use a buy button online (Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest)
  • Sponsoring a charitable organization/cause
  • use PR
  • posts on social media
  • social media adverts
  • run a competition on social media
  • e-commerce website
  • internet marketing
  • add to gift guides
  • email marketing, perhaps using newsletters
  • content marketing -writing blog posts for your website

The promotional plan needs to be factual and include objectives, and actual numbers you expect to achieve, and the costs that will be incurred.