Your business’ promotional mix is the collection of tools you use that explicitly promote your business, products, or services. This includes advertising, public relations, personal selling, direct marketing, and sales promotions.
A promotional mix should be designed to show your target audience the benefits, features, and values of the products or services you offer. This helps differentiate you from your competition and drive sales.
Ingredients of a Promotional Mix
Creating the right promotional mix will depend on your business, customers, and industry. There are several elements to choose from.
Advertising is the paid promotion and presentation of ideas, services, and goods by a specific sponsor to a mass medium. This includes radio or Facebook ads, magazine advertorials, TV commercials, ads on websites or blogs, print ads in magazines and newspapers, or any other paid promotion.
Public relations (PR) is the practice of deliberately managing the spread of information between your company and the public. This usually takes the form of news stories, expert interviews, press releases, or other media coverage. PR aims to promote and publicize a business without paid advertising.
Personal selling involves one-on-one interaction with potential buyers to share the benefits of your goods or services, with the ultimate goal of convincing them to buy. This can happen in person, over the phone, through an online chat, or any other kind of direct interaction.
Sales promotion is any non-media marketing communication aimed at increasing consumer and market demand, as well as improving product availability. This includes coupons, holiday sales, customer loyalty discounts, or other deals aimed at increasing sales.
Other elements that could be included in your promotional mix include guerrilla marketing, product placement, sponsorship, and any other communication that directly promotes your business, products, or services.
Creating Your Promotional Mix
You can put together an effective promotional mix by considering your target audience, your marketing goals, the market in which you are selling, and your available budget.
Identifying your target market allows you to investigate the most effective method of reaching them. Some questions you should try to answer are:
Do they read online or prefer printed media?
Will they trust industry experts or outsiders?
What social media platforms do they use?
Which TV shows do they watch and what are their viewing habits?
Knowing where to find your target customer will guide you toward the promotional platforms that will be most effective for reaching them. Finding the information you need can be difficult on your own.
You might consider purchasing consumer data from a consumer data service provider that specializes in gathering and analyzing the data for marketing purposes.
This is also a good time to consider the market you are selling in. A business trying to work in a local market, for example, would choose different advertising options than one attempting to reach a national audience.
Next, identify your marketing goals. Different promotional choices will help you achieve different objectives:
If you’re trying to make sales before the end of the year, a holiday discount could be the best choice.
You should want to establish your reputation as an expert in your industry. Use public relations strategies to establish relationships with the media and be featured as a source in news stories.
Finally, consider your available budget. Every element of your promotional mix will cost time, effort, or money. In some stages of your business growth, you may find that you have more effort to invest than money.
At other times, you may have plenty of money but very little time available to achieve your goals. The promotional mix you create should always take realistic budget constraints into account.
The Advantage of a Promotional Mix in Marketing
Each kind of promotion has its limitations and costs, which means that your marketing will be more effective if you mix these tools together. A carefully planned promotional mix ensures that your business has multiple strategies in place for reaching customers, making sales, and achieving both short and long-term goals.