How many door-to-door sales people have you invited in for dinner lately? Approaching strangers is a lot easier when there’s some background knowledge to work with. That’s where your promotional marketing strategy comes in.
In marketing, knowledge is everything. Reaching new customers, selling to them, and keeping them loyal all rely on how well you know your audience.
Successful marketing doesn’t happen by accident; it’s built on careful planning and solid data. You might stumble into a few great ideas, but if you want lasting results, it’s essential to get the process right from the start.
Just like any good building project, a solid foundation is key. Marketing strategy may not be the flashiest part, but building it right sets you up for a brighter future.
Navigating promotional marketing can be complex, but with a partner like Imprint Engine, you have experts in both strategy and branded merchandise to streamline each step and make a real impact.
Let’s walk through the essentials to help you draw up a promotional marketing strategy grounded in the right information.
Need to Skim? Key Takeaways:
- A solid promotional marketing strategy helps you understand your customers’ needs, align your product benefits with those needs, and communicate effectively.
- Promotional marketing spans every stage of the sales funnel—reaching new customers, educating them about your products, and building long-term loyalty.
- Strategic partnerships can strengthen your brand image and help you achieve better results.
Table of Contents
What is a Promotional Marketing Strategy?
Promotional marketing is all about boosting brand awareness and sharing knowledge of your products with the world. It’s one of the 4 P’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.
Promotion may be just one word, but involves a wide range of tactics. Promotional marketing strategies cover everything from customer loyalty programs to personalized marketing and advertising. Together, these efforts bring in more customers, whether they’re new or returning.
Now that we know what a promotional strategy is, let’s look at how it impacts each level of the sales funnel.
How Does a Promotional Strategy Impact the Levels of the Sales Funnel?
Since you’re casting a wide net with promotional marketing, you’ll naturally see pieces of it throughout the sales funnel. Here’s a quick look at how promotion aligns with each stage:
- Top-of-Funnel: Awareness and Interest. Promotion creates awareness and interest in what you’re selling through email campaigns, ads, and direct marketing efforts.
- Middle-of-Funnel: Evaluation and Engagement. During lead nurturing, strategies like personal selling, PR, and persuasive marketing help tip the scales.
- Bottom-of-Funnel: Action and Retention. Companies use tactics like incentivized pricing, customer loyalty programs, and re-marketing to encourage people to take the plunge and build loyalty.
Best Practices of Promotional Strategy We Use With Clients
Our clients come in all shapes and sizes. They operate in different industries with vastly different products and priorities. At the end of the day, none of this matters. We’ve come to realize that the principles behind promotional marketing strategies don’t change.
Here’s what we’ve learned through years of trial and error:
Emphasize Your Distinct Brand
Building a distinct brand image does two things for you. First, it helps you put a good reputation in front of your name. The first thing people hear about your brand should be something good. What sets you apart?
Differentiation also forms a strong community around your brand. People who love what you do become your brand advocates and bring others on board. We see this a lot with companies that put a healthy focus on what makes them special.
Questions to guide you: What do I want my brand to look like and feel like? How can my promotional products reflect this?
Keep It SMART
For your company’s promotional marketing strategy to work, it has to start with a clear goal. Marketing goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. This is true whether you’re promoting a new product at a trade show or launching a million-dollar advertising campaign.
Work out your goals early on. With a defined goal, you can line up everything you’re doing to push in the same direction instead of accidentally working against yourself.
Be Flexible
There are no guarantees in marketing. People can always surprise you, even if you’ve put in the hours to thoroughly research your target market. Flexibility is key!
Being flexible doesn’t mean that you operate without a plan. Keep your structure in place and move toward your goals, but be ready to change course if the market wind’s shifts or you get different reactions than you were expecting.
Build On Previous Learnings
Take everything you’ve done as a lesson. Instead of just doing the same old things because that’s what you do, keep track of what worked or didn’t work in your marketing campaigns.
Look for trends in the data that point to what might work better in the future. If you can catch trends early and jump into something while it’s still fresh, you can get that sweet sweet trendsetter glory rather than trailing behind everyone else.
Most of all, remember that you’re not married to the marketing. If it’s not working, let it go and try something new.
Types of Promotional Strategies
Promotional marketing is very involved, but I like to boil it down to 10 main components. These are the pieces I consider to be essential to your promotional marketing strategy. Mix and match to get the right balance.
1. Content Marketing
Education is a big part of promotional marketing. Online content lets you get the word out without breaking the bank, with the added benefit of being scalable and long-lasting. With good content marketing, you’re not just seen online—you’re seen on your terms.
What’s involved in content marketing? It’s everything your brand creates to connect with customers and leads. Think blog posts, landing pages, infographics, market reports, and anything else that shares your brand’s message and offerings.
2. Paid Advertising
It’s hard to beat paid advertising when you want to get real insights on who your customers are and where to find them. Investing a part of your budget in ads can help you capture new leads and even bring back past customers for more.
Online advertising is one of the most popular forms, with options like Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Pinterest Ads making it easy to reach specific audiences directly. Of course, advertising doesn’t stop online—traditional options like radio, TV, and print are still powerful ways to get your message out there.
3. Social Media Advertising
As of July 2024, more than 5.17 billion people were on social media. Wow. It’s hard to get a bigger market than that! Social media marketing carves out a slice of this enormous pie for you, giving you direct access to people around the world.
Free posts are good for staying in view, while paid posts get your content in front of fresh eyes. Most social media platforms allow you to boost existing posts or create sponsored content.
4. Email Marketing
No matter how many headlines claim email marketing is dead, the truth is it’s an even more powerful tool than ever before. Will it ever die? Maybe, but until then emails are unique in that they’re delivered straight to the recipient, allowing you to make them even more personal and tailored to fit your audience.
Email marketing can be used at almost every stage of the sales funnel. It can be educational, persuasive, nurturing, and remarketing. If you haven’t tapped into the power of email marketing yet, it’s well past time to get started with it!
5. Sponsorships
Tap into the goodwill that others have with their fans or audience through brand sponsorships. Word of mouth is still one of the strongest forms of marketing, which explains why sponsorships work so well. People trust their favorite personalities almost as much as they trust their friends and families.
Your sponsorship opportunities are as endless as the internet itself. Work with online streamers, influencers, media personalities, athletes… You name it! Choose personalities whose following lines up with your target market.
6. Referral Marketing
Everyone loves getting rewarded. Referral marketing gives your existing customers a good reason to spread the word and bring others on board. It’s like affiliate marketing but with a bigger focus on turning your customers into brand advocates.
Referral programs usually give existing customers a discount or a voucher when they bring in a new customer for you. It’s a way of pushing people to talk about your company, especially if they use it and love it already. These people are your best sales people.
7. Events
Company events attract attention, build up hype, introduce new products, and show your industry expertise. They’re a focal point for your content marketing, giving you something specific to talk about with your audience.
Events are not a one-size-fits-all. Anything from a public charity event, a trade show, or even a webinar can all be used for promotional marketing if you aim it at the right audience.
8. Influencer Partnerships
As a step up from simple sponsorships, you can choose to partner with specific influencers to boost your brand even more with their audience. Partnerships tend to go for longer than sponsorships and have a more permanent feel.
Most top brands utilize influencer partnerships. Try to imagine Nike without their athletic partnerships or Pepsi without the celebrity ads! Influencer partnerships work because they attach your brand to popular people and spread your message in a voice that speaks to new audiences.
9. Samples & Coupons
If people are sitting on the fence deciding whether to buy or not, discounts and samples can give them a push in the right direction. That’s why coupons, sales, and offers are such a win. If you can get someone through the door once, it’ll be easier the second time!
Samples aren’t just for food brands at supermarkets. There’s always a way to offer some kind of sample before the customer buys. Companies like Amazon and Netflix offer samples by handing out a free, limited-time demo of their service to new customers.
10. Customer Loyalty Programs
It’s hard to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. You have to first patch the leak before you can keep anything inside. A great way to patch the leaks in your business is to offer a solid loyalty program for existing customers. The longer a customer stays with you, the better it gets for them.
You want people to think twice before they leave because they know the grass may not be greener on the other side.
Airlines and hotel chains have the loyalty program model figured out. The more you book with them, the better your rewards. Even if you don’t use their services often, you still get a benefit just for being part of the program when you book. Priority boarding for your flights, free room upgrades, and more are all part of being a member. It’s hard to resist!
Ready to Rock Your Promotions? We’re Your Secret Weapon!
Promotional marketing involves a lot of moving pieces. It’s a juggling act that balances customer outreach, sales, and retention. Get it right and you’ll set your brand up for success. Get it wrong and… Well…
Ditch that fear. Working with Imprint Engine, you won’t have to worry about promotional marketing. Our team can help you supercharge your promotional marketing campaign, building a strong brand image with an impact. Product selection, customization? Done and done.
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