Promotion strategies are communication techniques that aim to sell a product, service or cause. They include advertising, publicity, selling and persuasion. Promotion is an essential element of a marketing strategy, as it involves communicating with customers and potential customers about the benefits and features of a product or service. There are many different promotion strategies that businesses can use to reach and engage their target audience. Some of the most common promotion strategies include advertising, public relations, sales promotions, personal selling, and direct marketing.

Advertising is a paid form of communication that uses various media channels, such as television, radio, print, and digital, to reach a large number of people. Advertising can be effective for introducing a new product or service, building brand awareness, and promoting special offers or discounts.

Public relations involves building and maintaining a positive relationship between a business and its stakeholders, such as customers, employees, investors, and the media. Public relations can be used to communicate important information about the business, manage its reputation, and respond to crisis situations.

Sales promotions are short-term incentives that aim to increase sales and drive customer loyalty. These promotions can include discounts, coupons, free trials, or other offers that are designed to encourage customers to buy a product or service.

Personal selling involves one-on-one communication between a salesperson and a customer, with the aim of persuading the customer to buy a product or service. This approach can be effective for building relationships with customers and providing personalized recommendations.

Direct marketing is a form of promotion that involves sending marketing messages directly to potential customers through channels such as email, SMS, or direct mail. Direct marketing allows businesses to target specific customers and tailor their messages to their interests and needs.

Promotion is a crucial part of a marketing strategy, as it allows businesses to communicate with customers and potential customers about their products and services. By using a combination of different promotion strategies, businesses can effectively reach and engage their target audience and drive sales. The following are some additional concepts.

Alliance Marketing
A shared marketing strategy between two or more firms that may be designed to generate publicity. For example, two technology giants may announce a shared initiative to work on artificial intelligence that generates more publicity than actual research results.

Attribution Marketing
Modeling events that lead to sales and then using promotion to achieve these events with each target customer. Attribution marketing is typically aimed at achieving brand recognition, awareness, customer interactions and other precursor events to purchases and other goals such as loyal customers.

Awards
Establishing awards in some area of achievement that is associated with your brand.

Behavioral Advertising
Digital advertising that targets customers based on behavior such as the websites they have visited.

Brand Promotion
Promotion such as advertising that is designed to generate positive feelings or social status for a brand. Typically includes no sales pitch or call to action.

Call To Action
A short, commanding and direct request to customers such as “call now.” Considered a fundamental tool of promotion.

Causes And Charities
Supporting causes and charities in order to build goodwill with communities and customers.

Content Marketing
Developing content related to your business to demonstrate your expertise and build relationships with customers.

Contests
Running contests designed to generate publicity and traffic to your locations or website.

Contextual Advertising
Advertising that targets a particular context such as ads for cameras on a camera review website.

Corporate Anniversary
Celebrating the history of your company, products and brand.

Coupons
Coupons are a form of price discrimination that can also be considered a type of promotional item. In many cases, direct marketing that contains coupons generates increased interest from customers.

Customer Appreciation
Customer appreciation events and actions such as thanking customers for writing a positive review or sending them a gift certificate at an anniversary such as five years of patronage.

Customer Referral Programs
Asking customers to refer their friends, family and associates and giving them incentives to do so.

Direct Marketing
Marketing communications sent directly to a customer using email, mail, phone calls and social media messages.

Drip Marketing
Marketing communications that are sent to customers at a set pace such as once a day. Examples include a weekly phone call or a daily newsletter.

Email Marketing
Gaining a customer’s permission to send them a regular email and using techniques such as newsletters to build a relationship with them.

Endorsements
Asking influencers or celebrities for public support or approval.

Evangelism Marketing
Employing an evangelist for your products who is enthusiastic, respected and well spoken to represent you with the media and at events. In some cases, firms develop an evangelist program to identify prominent customers or partners to speak on the firm’s behalf.

Event Marketing
Sponsoring or attending events to generate publicity and engage customers.

Factory Tours
Opening your organization to the public can generate content about your business such as photographs, blog posts and social media conversations.

Free Trials
Offering your product or service for free for a limited period. Allows the media to review the product and may achieve a high rate of conversion to paying customers.

Games
Developing a game that features your products or advertising in games.

Industry Conferences
In some industries, conferences are important to the sales process, particularly lead generation. In other industries, they are important venues to establish relationships with media figures who cover your business.

Influence Marketing
Engaging influencers such as celebrities, media heavyweights, social media personalities, prominent reviewers and trend leaders in your industry to ask for their promotional help. For example, you might openly give prominent reviewers free products in exchange for a review without demanding that it be positive.

Local Advertising
Advertising in local media, locations such as billboards and with digital ads that are served based on current geographical location.

Mass Media Advertising
Media that reaches a large audience that isn’t particularly targeted as compared with digital advertising.

Native Advertising
Advertising that matches the form and function of content such as sponsored social media posts.

Outbound Sales
Techniques such as cold calling a prospective customer that involve directly reaching out to qualified leads.

Participation Marketing
Encouraging customers to participate in the evolution of your products and brand. For example, asking customers to help you design a new product.

Personal Selling
Using a sales force to develop relationships with customers. Often includes face-to-face meetings, phone calls and digital interactions such as email or messaging. Extremely common in high value business-to-business sales.

Persuasion Techniques
Persuasion is the ability to influence people’s ideas and actions. It is a fundamental technique of promotion that defines the results achieved from advertising, marketing copy and customer interactions.

Photo Op
An event that is designed to generate photographs that will have media appeal such as a politician visiting local businesses to hear their concerns.

Press Conferences
A media event for announcing significant news. Tends to generate a sense of competition between the media, resulting in greater coverage than a press release.

Press Releases
A notification to the media of news. The effectiveness of a press release depends on the newsworthiness of its content.

Product Demonstrations
Demonstrating products for customers at public venues or at your customer’s office.

Product Placement
Paying to have your product featured in entertainment such as a movie or video game.

Promotional Products
Giving out useful items that feature your brand symbols.

Public Relations
The practice of managing communications between an organization and the public. Typically gives the public a single point of contact for inquiries. Public relations serves a marketing, corporate governance and risk management function. For example, strategies may be developed to manage negative publicity should it occur.

Public Speaking
Encouraging your employees to speak on a variety of topics at conferences even if they are not directly related to your product and brand. For example, a security expert in your IT team may speak at a security conference generating free publicity for your organization.

Publicity
Publicity is anything that attracts media attention such as achievements, discoveries, people stories, technology breakthroughs, unconventional approaches and anything that’s generally entertaining and informative.

Publicity Stunt
A dramatic or imaginative event designed to generate publicity such as a world record attempt.

Reference Customers
A list of customers who have chosen your product, possibly with detailed success stories related to each. Reference customers are often required to bid for certain contracts. They can also be used as a promotional device, particularly if your customers are large, well respected organizations.

Relationship Marketing
A marketing strategy that relies on social interactions such as face-to-face and social media conversations to promote a business.

Remarketing
Remarketing is the practice of following up on recent customers interactions with techniques such as advertising, direct marketing and personal selling.

Reverse Placement
Creating a product and brand based on a fictional product in a movie or television show.

Road Shows
A traveling presentation or event.

Samples
Giving out free samples for a product that you believe will generate word-of-mouth.

Scarcity Marketing
Techniques that generate emotions such as curiosity and desire by making products, services and events difficult to obtain.

Slogans
Short memorable phrases that communicate emotions or information about your products and brand.

Social Media Marketing
Using social media to engage customers or advertise.

Testimonial
A statement that communicates the value of a product from an “ordinary” customer. In the cases of a celebrity or influential individual, a testimonial is typically termed an endorsement.

Underwriting Spot
Sponsoring content such as a radio news broadcast in exchange for a short credit that mentions your brand, often without a call to action.

Vaporware
Announcing plans for an exciting new product that doesn’t exist. In many cases, such announcements are based on research or vague plans that never produce working products but garner media attention nonetheless.

Vision
A firm’s mission and vision statements are often viewed as a promotional tool.

Visual Merchandising
Visual displays of your product at retail locations such as the elaborate displays in the store windows of department stores.

Word Of Mouth
Focusing on product and customer experience over promotion with the idea that a good product promotes itself though word of mouth.