A promotional marketing program is a great way to increase brand awareness and sales, but developing goals is critical to your long-term success.
Before starting a promotional marketing program for your brand, it’s important to define realistic and measurable goals to achieve in order to measure success. It’s easy to say that you want to “increase sales” or “build brand awareness,” but to execute a successful program you should define multiple goals while constantly measuring your results and making improvements to future promotional events (also known as “activations”).
1. Increase Consumer Sales This one is a no-brainer. Selling your product or service is the end goal of any successful program. If your activation is at the point of sale this is easy; your brand ambassadors should be enthusiastically promoting your product while encouraging consumers to buy. If your activation isn’t at the point of sale, such as at a music festival or trade show, your brand ambassadors should be trained to educate the consumer on the brand’s price point(s), identify the point of sale as well as create a “call to action” to motivate and incentivize the consumer to purchase quickly.
2. Brand Awareness Selling your product/service to a consumer once is great, but developing a repeat customer exponentially rewards your program’s costs and efforts. Promotional marketing achieves this goal in two ways: by the product or service making a positive impression on the consumer through personal use as well as the positive, memorable experience while interacting with the ambassador promoting the brand. While your brand may be amazing, picking a sample off a table doesn’t leave as strong of an impression as also engaging directly with a friendly, knowledgeable brand ambassador.
3. Grow Social Media Influencers and Followers While “influencer marketing” is commonly targeted at influential people, anyone can be an influencer to their friends, family, co-workers as well as their personal social media followers. When setting up your program, be sure to incorporate a contest or offer of rewards (i.e. free product, coupons, promotional merchandise, etc.) for individuals who publish a positive social media post and include a hashtag or link to your brand. Likewise, during the activation, incorporate ways for you to engage with your consumers during and after an activation, such as renting a branded “selfie station” and encouraging consumers to follow you on social media.
4. Educating the Consumer What differentiates your brand from your competitor? Alternatively, what competitors’ product is most similar to your brand? If your brand has multiple product lines, such as a brewery that makes lagers, ales, stouts and IPA’s, it’s important to be able to relate consumers to a brand they connect with to encourage them to try yours: “If you like (their brand), try (your brand)!” Also, every brand ambassador should be trained on the basic details about the brand: what it’s made of, how it works and the positive attributes that using the brand will create in their lives.
5. Learning From the Consumer While many programs focus on engaging the consumer and simply heaping samples, information and merchandise upon them, obtaining direct brand feedback and sharing that with the internal company staff is often overlooked. Finding out directly from the consumer what they like/don’t like about the brand, why it is better or worse than the competitor and literal quotes from consumers when the brand ambassador asks “what do you think?” provides valuable feedback to fine-tune the brand as well as improve the brand’s message to best target consumers.
6. Selecting and Using Relevant Promotional Materials Each year, billions of dollars are spent by companies on branded promotional materials: pens, koozies, thumb drives and so forth that are given away at tastings, trade shows, music festivals and other consumer-focused activations. Instead of slapping your logo on something cheap just to have promotional products to give away, ask yourself if the products are directly relevant to your brand and/or the activation, if they will add value for the consumer and will be something they use. For beer samplings, consider beer bottle openers. For outdoor music festivals, try branded water bottles, handheld fans or baseball caps to help attendees beat the heat. Also, be sure your brand ambassadors are gauging consumer feedback to these items: how many were taken and attendee reaction (positive or negative). If consumers are dropping your promotional materials in the trash after they leave your booth then they aren’t being used to grow your brand.
7. Quality Recap Develop a list of quality information and metrics to obtain during each activation, such as how many individuals weren’t familiar with the brand, foot traffic at the retail point of sale (the “account”), demographics, location of the activation within the venue/account and anything else that will help with fine-tuning your program so that each activation provides increased value.
8. Improving Your Promotional Program Throwing lots of money and resources at a promotional marketing program may seem like a great idea, but unless your concept is killer and properly executed with measurable goals you’ll wind up throwing money down the drain. While it’s important to have volume and consistency, such as running promotions in different locations week after to introduce your brand to new consumers, it’s equally important to evaluate and “tweak” your program during and after execution. Before investing in a long-term program, create a short-term program to “test the waters” and don’t be afraid to make changes early in your program if you aren’t achieving the desired results.
9. Bringing Value to The Account The account is your biggest ally in end-user consumer sales. Before you start your program, be sure the account’s staff is aware of the program, is directing consumers to the activation and encouraging people to sample your brand. Also, promote the activation in advance of the event date through social media and other advertising means, which will introduce new consumers to the account, and also encourage the account to do the same, which introduces existing customers to the brand. A simple sign in the window stating “(brand) sampling/tasting/demonstration” as well as the date and time will strongly encourage people to visit the account. Sales for the account means sales for you, so leverage your common goal and work together.
10. Creating A Memorable Experience! Phil Knight of Nike once said: “You can have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows about it, what good is it?” Even if your product is great, would the consumer remember a conversation with your brand’s ambassador a week – or even a day – later? Would they learn something new about your brand? Would they feel they have been provided value above the brand they currently use? Generating excitement and buzz is the key to growing your sales and getting people talking about YOUR BRAND!