2024 is just around the corner and with any luck, your marketing budget is set for the year and you’re in planning mode. Most marketers we know are trying to figure out how much of their total budget should be allocated to B-B outreach and how much to B-C outreach. If you’re operating with one budget for both, you’re not alone!
Some common B-C marketing line items include social media advertising, influencer partnerships, point-of-sale materials, out-of-home advertising, couponing and promotions. They each have their place in a marketing budget and serve brands in particular ways. Consumer promotions are a fun way to create exponential brand reach and engagement for a modest investment. Let’s look at three reasons to host a promotion and three things they require to receive successful results for your brand:
3 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD ADD CONSUMER PROMOTIONS TO YOUR MARKETING PLAN
1. Exponential Brand Reach
Promotions will inevitably reach shoppers outside your typical reach and give you an opportunity to inspire purchase with secondary messaging and web links that they would not come across otherwise. Promotions are a reliable entry point if you are looking for ways to build your consumer database.
2. Consumer Intel
With a powerful CRM tool such as HubSpot, your promotional efforts will result in a deep well of consumer intel. This proprietary information allows you to get to know your shoppers’ preferences first-hand at a much more affordable cost than more traditional means of gathering consumer insights. Not only is the cost savings a benefit, but you can easily change the data points you want to focus on at any given time, and you have much more flexibility on the amount and frequency at which you gather the data.
3. Brand Relevance and Engagement
Feeling a little stagnant in your consumer communications? Promotions provide a theme and a purpose for your content that helps spur interesting and intersecting ideas that you can build messaging around during the promotion timeframe. The more energized you are about your content, the more engaging your content will become.
3 THINGS EVERY CONSUMER PROMOTION REQUIRES FOR SUCCESS
1. Strong Design and Reliable Coding
Make the user experience as exceptional as possible. Create a fun and engaging graphic design that touches all your brand assets for a positive consumer experience and unified look and feel. Make sure that the promotion link you are driving traffic to makes the giveaway entry point very clear. Host your promotion on a reliable platform with minimal widgets and plugins that could fail.
2. 360° Support
Leverage your entire marketing toolbox to encourage engagement with your promotion from website CTAs and pop-ups to emails, social media posts, blog posts, influencers, and media touchpoints. Plan well in advance to pitch retailers a promotion plan that includes in-store activations such as on-pack labeling, display signage, and standalone units. Consider any number of couponing programs to run during the promotion to tie the promotion more directly to sales.
3. Advertising Investment
Promotions can certainly get organic lift through sweepstakes aggregators and your own re-marketing efforts to an existing database, but digital advertising provides a massive uptick in overall participation. Maximize your promotion results with a social media ad campaign at a minimum and best case scenario – with a Google ad campaign as well.
Take your consumer marketing efforts to the next level in 2024 with a promotion. We can help you brainstorm, strategize, budget, design, launch, manage, and report. Let DMA be your extended promotion team!
