Promote a New Product and Marketing Activities
Promotion constitutes a variety of elements and tools that communicate the benefits and strengths of your new product or service. Ensuring that your marketing and sales teams execute the right promotional tools to the right audience can solidify your product's brand, as well as position your company favorably among the competition. Companies use a variety of tactics to promote a new product, ranging from public relations and advertising to social media and personal selling.
Instructions
1. Assess the competitive landscape and marketing situation for your product or service. This is very important, since competitors with similar products or services may have significant influence and challenge your entry into the market. Discerning who your competitors are and where their strengths and weaknesses lie can significantly impact the effectiveness of your promotional strategy.
2. Develop a concrete marketing plan. Identify the promotional elements that you'll use to inform the public about your new product or service. Promotional tools include print, magazine, newspaper, television or online banner advertisements. Communication vehicles such as your website, newsletters, press releases and telemarketing also fall into this category.
3. Execute your promotional strategy. Include your website address and customer-service number on advertisements so that prospects can contact you directly or seek out additional information. Advertise cash rebates and other sales incentives for buyers. Illustrate your product's benefits and differentiators in brochures and on your company website. Post short Web forms that customers and prospects can fill out so that information is quickly routed to your sales team for follow-up.
4. Incorporate social marketing strategies into your promotional mix, such as Twitter updates about your new product. Create a Facebook fan page for your product that touts its newest features. Brands are constantly being defined and redefined by consumers through status updates and word-of-mouth product reviews. According to a March 2009 survey by Knowledge Networks, 10 percent to 24 percent of social media users in the U.S. used online social networks when making purchasing decisions.
5. Analyze the results and measure your return on investment (ROI). Use software applications such as LexisNexis InterAction or those found at Salesforce.com to calculate whether the cost spent on promotional activities is more than revenue generated from product sales or services delivered (see Resources). An analysis of your promotional activities will show which communication strategies are working and generating significant ROI.
6. Tweak your promotional strategy based on the results of your analysis. For example, if you received two qualified leads using an online banner advertisement versus 10 qualified leads through cold-calling, reevaluate your spending on advertising. Cut back on the promotional activities that fail to generate sales revenue. By constantly refining your sales and promotional strategy, you can increase your marketing reach and impact on your target audience.
Tags: your product, your promotional, promotional strategy, product service, promotional activities, your product service