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We finally made it to the big one--the fishing lure that is dragging all of the businesses into the deep waters of the 'Net--promotional strategies. Promotional strategies, which would have been renamed "marketing communications" long ago if it had started with a "p", is simply anything you do to facilitate exchange by sharing meaning with your consumers. Although a rather broad definition, promotion typically concerns four major types of strategies -- direct marketing, advertising, sales, and public relations.
Do you see what I mean? These are the things everyone seems to be talking about, and I would venture to say that they are main reasons most businesses were convinced in using the Internet for their business in the first place. However, before we go any further, I want to make this very clear -- promotion is not the complete answer to increased revenue. Sure, it can be effective if used properly, but using promotional strategy by itself is ignoring a huge pile of money still left on the table.
Let me explain it this way. Promotion is where the web is at its roots and not using the web for some type of promotional purpose is almost impossible. This means that almost everyone out there, including your competitors, are using the web to promote their business in some form or another. If you have ever gone to Yahoo! and typed in something like "used cars" into the search engine you will know what I mean. There are already too many choices out there and simply using your web site strictly for promotional purposes will be considerably dampened by the sheer number of competitive sites.
The true key to overcoming this is to correctly balance the type and strength of your promotional strategy with a solid product or service, a good price that stimulates demand, and an efficient level of distribution. In essence, I am saying that you must balance promotional strategy with the other "3 P's" and give the consumer something that no other competitor is doing. The lead singer of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, probably explained this best when he said, "You do not merely want to be remembered as the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do."
With my "reader beware" attitude out of the way, let's take a closer look at each of the four types of promotion, how each is being used, and how you can use them successfully to increase both revenue and awareness.
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