How To Create A More Successful Promotional Marketing Campaign

Nowadays, companies can use more than one form of marketing to promote the services or products they provide and to gain more clients. From various online marketing techniques to offline campaigns and daring guerilla marketing tactics, companies can develop a series of strategies to ensure their success in the market. One of the most used forms of marketing was and still is promotional marketing, but in order to conduct a successful promotional marketing campaign companies have to stay up to date with industry trends and techniques they can pursue in order to obtain the desired results.

What Is Promotional Marketing?

Promotional marketing is a specific type of marketing that always includes a call to action message for the target audience. The purpose of the message is to cause an instant reaction and to make the potential customer to buy the product or service immediately.

Promotional marketing can be used online and offline but, in order to create a successful campaign, the message should be interesting for the target audience and it should cause an emotional reaction or, at least, curiosity.

What Are The Most Common Promotional Marketing Techniques?

When it comes to promotional marketing techniques, a company can choose between contests, giveaways, sweepstakes and loyalty programs.

Even though these tactics are similar, there are a few notable differences between them and, in order to have a successful promotional marketing campaign that will lead to new customers and future success, all companies have to acknowledge the differences and select the best tactic for their products.

Contests are based on the skills of the target audience. In order to win the prize, contenders have to do something that will be evaluated by a jury who will eventually select a winner.

Sweepstakes, on the other hand, are based on chance. There is no set of criteria that has to be followed, the winner is chosen randomly.

Both contests and sweepstakes can have prizes that are not related to the company’s products. In this case, these prizes are used to create a connection between the company and its public based on an experience that does not involve the company’s products alone.

Giveaways can be contests or sweepstakes, but the prize usually involves one or more products provided by the company that hosts or sponsors the giveaway.

Loyalty programs are based on a series of incentives used by a company to retain its customers for long term. There are a wide range of tactics that can be used to retain customers: discounts, special offers, special occasion prizes and many others.

How To Make Sure Your Promotional Marketing Campaign Will Be a Success?

In order to obtain the best results after running a promotional marketing campaign, the company has to study all the options and to decide which alternative is better for the product they promote. The public’s characteristics should also be taken into account before creating the strategy. Same things goes for the overall objectives of the campaign.

The best way to run sweepstakes is to make sure the company will have long term benefits. User generated content – photographs, essays, videos – can be a great way to engage the public and create a connection.

For contests, things are a little bit easier since people will be more engaged with the brand due to the set of rules they have to follow in order to qualify. However, making sure the rules are clear and the whole evaluation process is transparent are always important steps in the process.

Same rules apply to giveaways and loyalty programs – engagement, transparency and a long term relationship with the customers are always vital objectives in promotional marketing.