Digital Marketing: How to Develop a Promotion Strategy

11 September 2018

How can one develop a promotion strategy for just any product or service? This article discusses it. Here, you will find an action plan which marketers use to develop a promotion strategy. Having read this article, you will know more about a marketer’s job and acquire answers to the following questions:

  • What problems could the product have?
  • How to analyze competitors?
  • What is Censydiam?
  • How can one specify a target audience?
  • What is the customer journey?
  • How can one find touchpoints?

Digital marketing part 2

Development of Product Promotion Strategy

Development of a product promotion strategy is the third stage of every marketing campaign. As we know from the previous article, the stages, “business goals” and “development of value conception” are directed towards the product. The promotion strategy, in turn, focuses on potential customers. It specifies how people choose a product, why prefer one brand and ignore another. Moreover, promotion strategy is a plan on how to make customers purchase said promoted product, and what needs to be done for it.

“Marketing for Product… strategy for PEOPLE”

Steps of the Action Plan

1. The Ugly Truth About the Product

Sometimes, it’s difficult for the product team to impartially appraise their project, therefore, the first thing marketers appraise is the product itself. They require truthful answers to the following questions about the product:

  • What is my opinion about this product?
  • What place in my life does the product take?
  • Friends and relatives opinion about the product
  • If I buy/use the product/service, why do I do this?
  • If I don’t buy/use the product/service, why does that happen?
  • What plays the main role when choosing the product?
  • What is the main value of the product?
  • What differences does the product have in comparison with competitors’ products?

Also, they need to answers the questions:

  • Why do consumers purchase the product?
  • Why do people who could purchase the product, don’t?

Also, the product team has to tell about the problems that the product has. Here, a few examples of the potential problems and their reasons:

Problem: People don’t know our product/brand

Reasons:

  • New product/brand;
  • Nobody supports product;
  • Young product category in the market;
  • The product doesn’t outstand against competitors;
  • The market has a strong leader.

Problem: People know about the product but don’t buy/use it.

Reasons:

  • The product doesn’t satisfy the needs of the target audience;
  • In past the product had problems with low-quality;
  • The market has a strong leader (this annoying leader is everywhere)

Problem: People are going to buy the product but not to do this.

Reasons:

  • The product has issues with its characteristics;
  • People lack motivation to buy the product;
  • Distributors have a shortage of the product.

2. Client’s Brief

A Client’s brief helps marketers to develop the correct promotion strategy. It consists of information about the qualitative and quantitative goals which product team has to achieve, description of the real condition of the product and its competitors on the market. Sometimes the brief is not enough to thoroughly understand the client’s ideas and the vector of business development. In this case, marketers prepare additional questions to clarify the dark spots of the product or current business strategy.

3. Competitors

To develop working promotion strategy, marketers conduct marketing and strategic analysis of the competitors in the market. It makes for understanding how to beat competitors in a trading race and take their market share.

Marketing analysis includes:

  1. Assessment competition in the industry;
  2. Analysis of prices and features of products in the market;
  3. The business positioning in the market;
  4. Evaluation of promotion methods and budgets of competitors;
  5. Determining the customer’s prototype of the competitor;
  6. SWOT-analysis

Strategic analysis includes:

  1. Identifying direct and indirect competitors;
  2. Research the behavior of competitors;
  3. Core messages of competitors;
  4. To whom the competitors direct their communication activities
  5. Satisfaction of what needs do competitors promise consumers in communication actions?
  6. Functional advantages that competitors distinguish in their products;
  7. What voice intonation do competitors use in communication?
  8. Understand what actions all competitors equally conduct and identify differentiation in communication approaches?

4. Censydiam

Censydiam is a model developed by the firm Synovate Censydiam more than 20 years ago on the theories of Freud, Jung, and Adler. This research is based on both personal and social aspects of consumer motivations. It needs to understand a future place of the product in the consumer’s life. In other words, marketers specify psychological needs which the product will satisfy and what emotions it will evoke. The received knowledge marketers use to create communication, aimed at the specific group of customers.

5. Target Audience

A target audience means people with a need which the product can satisfy. Also, it’s people who potentially can be consumers of the promoted product. To specify it, marketers do the following steps:

  1. describe the motivation and needs of the potential consumers;
  2. identify drivers, barriers, and pain points;

Drivers is a trigger which makes people purchase our or our competitor’s products.

Barrier is causes that hinder customers to choose the promoted product.

Pain point is a drawback of the promoted product which emerges when the consumer begins to use the product. Depending on the situation, a qualified marketer can remove or even transform the drawback into benefits.

6.Insight

Insight is non-obvious reasons why people behave in the way they do, and no other way. If the promotion strategy touches these invisible strings, it is a guarantee that the target audience will get the message of the advertising company.

7. Big Idea

Any brand should have a big idea. It has to answer the question, “Why do we do what we do?” It helps to be closer to consumers. If people share the brand idea, it makes the product their love-brand. Also, it is an additional motivation for the company’s employees to work with maximum efficiency.

8.Message

The primary purpose is delivering the brand idea to people through communication channels. At the same time, the message must be about the product, and short and precise. It has to motivate, inspire customers to desire the product, and as a result, to make them purchase it.

9. Customer’s journey

The marketer identifies steps that the customer takes, buying something. Customer’s journey starts when the need occurs. After that, the consumer chooses and compares products on the market, and purchases the product, satisfying their need. However, a purchase is not the end of the customer journey. So, now the consumer begins to use the product. It’s called post purchasing experience, and it’s the crucial part of the whole customer’s journey. Depending on the experience that the customer gets, he or she will buy it the next time or never buy again.

The customer’s journey as every traveling has stops where an advertisement can influence the customer. These stops are called touchpoints.

10. Touchpoints

Touchpoints are places where the marketer is going to communicate with consumers and tell them about the product. The customer’s journey can include different stages such as active evaluation, purchase, positive or negative post-purchase experience. Each of this stages can involve one or a few touchpoints. For example, touchpoints of the active evaluation can be search, website and social media.

11. Creative Brief

As a result, marketers create a brief for product promotion. This document contains a detailed description of the main idea of the advertising message and the desired images, message stylistics. Creative briefs are used to order commercials, packaging design, advertising layouts, websites, preferable colors and more.

Summarizing

Now you know what Censydiam, Customer’s journey, and touchpoints are; know what problems products can have, how to analyze competitors and specify the target audience. All of this lets you better understand how marketing works and more easily find common ground with marketers.