How To Put Together A Promotional Campaign That Works

Promotional campaigns are an essential part of a firm's marketing strategy. Aiming to stimulate customer interest and awareness of a product, brand or service, promotional campaigns convey the right message across the target audience clearly, quickly and at the least possible cost.

Typically, promotional campaigns use the AIDA Model (Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action) model of advertising and promotion, which facilitates the flow of marketing communications and direct sales efforts. With the AIDA Model a firm creates attention, generates interest, develops desire and initiates action. In this context, it sets SMART targets (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time related) to make sure that all the people involved in the campaign project are focused, and know exactly what they are supposed to be doing and where they are going.

Promotional budget is an important consideration when developing a promotional campaign. A pre-determined budget provides planners with an idea of the available funds and thus determines the type of promotional media used. The promotional budget may be related to the expected return on investment from the undertaken project or the amount of investment being put in advance. After the promotional budget is determined, promotional activities are chosen based on the firm's media and communication objectives and the firm's target audience.

Normally, the advertising media used in promotional campaigns are magazines and newspapers, outdoor displays, sales promotion (free sampling) and publicity through radio.

In particular, magazines and newspapers offer the ability to deliver memorable messages to specific target audiences, which can be easily identified based on the nature of the material. The benefit for the firm is that the message for its operations is communicated to a bigger audience through the selection of leading magazines and newspapers with high circulation, which capture the attention of several target groups.

Outdoor displays offer the opportunity of visual contact that the customers gain with the product. Typically, outdoor displays are placed close to the point of sales in order to realize immediate and spontaneous product sales.

Sales promotion is an extremely effective and low-cost means of advertising because it primarily generates awareness about a firm's offerings and secondly it creates interpersonal relationships with a firm's customers. In that way, sales are boosted as soon as customers try the product, like it and make repeat purchases. Thus, the cost of sales promotion may be considered as a long-term investment. The free samples, coupons, calendars, pens and so on increase the satisfaction the customer derives from the interaction with the firm.

Publicity through radio is an efficient promotional tool because it reacts swiftly to the changing market conditions and it reaches smaller and niche segments. Radio is a mobile medium, which gives the opportunity to influence the customer near the purchase decision and achieve instant sales.

Promotional campaigns should also be evaluated in order to identify any possible gap between development and implementation. Assessing if and to what extent the campaign has met its objectives is critical for the direction of other campaigns in the future.