Planning Promotional Programs

Whatever you're selling, you'll need to communicate about it with your target buyers. Most businesses find that they need all three components of marketing communications (promotion, advertising, and public relations), in some combination. But how do you narrow down the available choices and build a communications program that makes sense? Here's how:

Step 1. Determine who the target buyer is. Identification of exactly who the target buyer is, in demographic, lifestyle, and other descriptive terms, is necessary before the construction of practical promotion, advertising, and public relations (PR) programs.

Step 2. Determine what is meaningfully unique about your product. Many small businesses can describe what is meaningfully unique about their product or service. For other businesses, careful market research may be the only way to determine meaningful sources of uniqueness on product features and benefits. For our purposes, "meaningful" differences are defined as those business or brand attributes that buyers or end users consider in making purchase decisions among different available choices. Customer perceptions control what is "meaningful."

Step 3. Construct a business positioning strategy statement. It is important to be consistent in all promotion, advertising, and PR programs, particularly with the scarce resources of most small businesses. A good business positioning strategy statement will address who the target buyer or end user is, what the competitive environment is, and what the meaningful differences in the products or services are when compared to the competition. The statement might also include reasons why these meaningful differences are valuable and perhaps some idea of a business "personality" that will be created and fostered in all marketing programs.

Step 4. Determine the best message to communicate your product positioning to target buyers. The key to communicating product uniqueness and positioning is constructing a memorable unique selling proposition (USP) about product features and benefits that are meaningful to your target buyer. This USP may be a memorable "slogan" or ad message that correlates with the needs and wants of your target buyer. The ad message is a result of a carefully constructed positioning statement.

Step 5. Determine promotion and advertising options and costs in terms of available budget. There is never enough money to do everything desirable to build the business. Often a promotional budget reality check for a small business means a choice between a little promotion, advertising, or PR, but not all three at the same time.