Objectives of Promotional Strategies

A promotional strategy provides a road map for making potential customers aware of your products and services. Often, promotional strategies include more than one objective. Once you establish your objectives, it becomes easier to determine the promotional tools required to meet your goals. Include a method of tracking the success of your promotional strategy to see if it truly met your objectives.

Some companies set an objective of expanding their markets to support goals for growing the company. Your company might want to approach a secondary market or expand its reach to more of your primary audience. Some companies plan to open new stores or expand their Internet presence as part of a growth strategy.

Selling to the people most likely to buy your product or service makes an objective of targeting specific markets important in a promotional strategy. Once you create the objective, your plan needs to identify the traits and demographics of potential customers. You also need to develop a plan that clearly shows what tools you’ll use to approach your audience and convince them to buy.

Introducing new products or services may be key to your business. To meet this objective, you need to find ways to get your message in front of prospective buyers. Your strategy may include educating your audience, such as by using the press to help people understand the value and benefits of a new item. Discounts or coupons may also be part of the strategy to encourage people to try the new offering.

If you have competition, one of your objectives may focus on differentiating your product or service from other companies’ offerings. To reach your objective, you must find ways to communicate how your product’s price, quality, features or benefits differ from the competition. If you do not have direct competitors, you may want to establish a position in the market to deal with indirect competition, such as explaining how your bakery products differ from the packaged products found in the nearby grocery store.

Increasing sales is an objective that requires finding ways to build your customer base. Or the objective might focus on finding ways to encourage your current customers to buy more products or services from you. If your business is already selling as much as it can, you may want to use an objective of stabilizing sales so the company qualifies for more financing or to cut costs involved with production or staffing.