Promotional tools are items imprinted with your business or organization name, logo, or message. They are good for increasing brand recognition, spreading the word about special events, and highlighting new products or services. Promotional tools include high quality promotional pens with your logo on them, promotional t-shirts tailored to your needs. Many of our promotional items come in various colors for you to choose from. If you are looking to advertise your business or organization with affordable promotional tools that increase the visibility of your brand, then you have come to the right place!
Tools are something that everyone likes to have at their disposal when they are working on a project, but not everyone can afford to keep an entire set around in case they need it. This is why promotional tools are so useful for companies to give out at trade shows or special events. These tools are imprinted with an excellent logo or slogan, making them great giveaways in exchange for people’s business. Not only do these items work great for businesses, but they are also handy items for personal use.
Advertising
Advertising is defined as any form of paid communication or promotion for product, service and idea. Advertisement is not only used by companies but in many cases by museum, government and charitable organizations. However, the treatment meted out to advertisement defers from an organization to an organization.
Advertising development involves a decision across five Ms Mission, Money, Message, Media and Measurement.
Mission looks at setting objectives for advertising. The objectives could be to inform, persuade, remind or reinforce. Objective has to follow the marketing strategy set by the company.
Money or budget decision for advertising should look at stage of product life cycle, market share and consumer base, competition, advertising frequency and product substitutability.
Message’s development further is divided into four steps, message generation, message evaluation and selection, message execution, and social responsibility review.
Once the message is decided the next step is finalizing the media for delivering the message. The choice of depends on reach of media, frequency of transmission and potential impact on customer. Based on this choice of media types are made from newspaper, television, direct mail, radio, magazine and the internet. After which timing of broadcast of the message is essential as to grab attention of the target audience.
Checking on the effectiveness of communication is essential to company’s strategy. There are two types of research communication effect research and sales effect research.
Sales Promotion
Promotion is an incentive tool used to drive up short term sales. Promotion can be launched directed at consumer or trade. The focus of advertising to create reason for purchase the focus of promotion is to create an incentive to buy. Consumer incentives could be samples, coupons, free trial and demonstration. Trade incentive could be price off, free goods and allowances. Sales force incentive could be convention, trade shows, competition among sales people.
Sales promotion activity can have many objectives, for example, to grab attention of new customer, reward the existing customer, increase consumption of occasional users. Sales promotion is usually targeted at the fence sitters and brand switchers.
Sales promotional activity for the product is selected looking at the overall marketing objective of the company. The final selection of the consumer promotional tools needs to consider target audience, budget, competitive response and each tool’s purpose.
Sales promotion activity should under-go pretest before implementation. Once the activity is launched it should be controlled as to remain within the budget. Evaluation program is a must after implementation of the promotional scheme.
Public Relations
Companies cannot survive in isolation they need to have a constant interaction with customers, employees and different stakeholders. This servicing of relation is done by the public relation office. The major function of the public relation office is to handle press releases, support product publicity, create and maintain the corporate image, handle matters with lawmakers, guide management with respect to public issues.
Companies are looking at ways to converge with functions of marketing and public relation in marketing public relation. The direct responsibility of marketing public relation (MPR) is to support corporate and product branding activities.
MPR is an efficient tool in building awareness by generating stories in media. Once the story is in circulation MPR can establish credibility and create a sense of enigma among sales people as well as dealers to boost enthusiasm. MPR is much more cost effective tool than other promotional activities.
Sampling
Offering a sample of your product or service is a tool to get your customers to try it, with the goal of them paying for it next time. This is typically effective if you position yourself as different from other businesses, where customers might be unwilling to pay for something new when what they are purchasing now is familiar to them and satisfying.
Discounts and Sales
Implement pricing strategies such as discounts and sales as promotional incentives for customers to buy. Discounts can be offered in advance, such as through direct-mail offers. You can also send quick response codes, known as QR or bar codes, to customers’ phones for instant discounts that don’t require a paper coupon or ad. Sales can be promoted in advance and also on location for retail businesses. These tactics can encourage sales during the offer period; devise customer follow-up methods to turn these into repeat buyers, particularly if what you are selling is similar to what your competitors sell.
Direct Marketing
Direct marketing may take the following forms.
- Telemarketing
- Electronic Marketing
- Online Marketing
- Direct Mail
There are four distinct characteristics that are shared in all of the above forms. The first characteristic is direct marketing, which is non-public in nature. It means that a specific person is addressed in this form of promotion tool rather than focusing on the general public.
Furthermore, direct marketing is customized and immediate, which means that the messages can be fitted to the specific requirements of the customers and they are developing very quickly. At last, direct marketing is interactive which means that customers and Marketing may show a dialogue with each other.
Conclusion
Promotional tools range from small items like ballpoint pens and flash drives to items with a larger imprint area such as umbrellas, backpacks, and cutting boards. Promotional tools allow for a lasting impression and can be used to promote a variety of businesses.