Using promotions such as marketing stunts, events, sales or giveaways can give your business a higher media profile, generate publicity and convince potential customers to try your services or products. Promotions cost money, though, so unless you have an unlimited publicity budget, you'll need to plan carefully to draw as many of the customers you most desire. You can hire a professional to plan your promotions, but if you have the time to work on it, you can save money by handling and advertising your event yourself.
Instructions
1. Target your efforts to a specific subgroup of customers, marketing strategist Barbara Findlay Schenck recommends in "Entrepreneur" magazine. Encouraging existing customers to shop more or attracting former customers involves different strategies than bringing in new customers.
2. Locate your target customers, business owner Lisa Cottrell-Bentley writes on the Vegan Mainstream website. If you want to bring in parents or their children, consider holding an event at school, donating to a school activity or attending local home-schooling gatherings. If your goal is to bring former customers back to the fold, use the information you have on file to email them or mail fliers touting your special promotion.
3. Announce the promotion in other venues as well. If you're having a special sale event or a product launch, announce it on your website, put banners up on the store in advance and send out press releases if the new product is newsworthy. Encourage your staff to mention it to their customers. You want to concentrate your spending on the target customers, but low-cost tactics to boost awareness may help you get more mileage out of it.
4. Offer something worthwhile to draw in customers. The offer should reflect what you want to promote, Schenck states: If you're announcing a new product or service, free samples for everyone at the product launch is one way to go; if you're drawing new customers to established products, discounts or coupons might be better. Think carefully about how much you can afford to give away: You want a big enough discount to attract customers, but not one that will hurt your bottom line.
Tags: former customers, product launch, target customers