There are various ways to communicate with potential customers. Promotional strategy includes a mix of advertising, publicity, sales promotions, personal selling, and public relations. Each component of the promotional mix plays a role in your effort to have potential customers learn about your business and buy your goods or services. Your promotional strategy must address the who, what, when, where, and how much money to spend.
The "Who" of Your Promotional Strategy
No business can be all things to all people, and no business has an unlimited amount of money to spend on its promotions. You will need to be sure you direct your effort and money to your target market.
The better you can identify who is in your target market, where they live, what magazines and newspapers they read, what television stations they watch, and what radio stations they listen to, the higher the probability that you will be able to get their attention and influence their behavior. If you can identify your target market's demographics, then you can check the listenership, viewership, and readership profiles for various media, including local radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and television stations. For example, if you are opening a clothing store and the primary target market is teenage girls, then you should review the rating of radio listenership in your geographic area. Most radio stations have a copy of the ratings. You will be able to determine which radio station has the highest listenership in that age category. The A. C. Nielsen rating service does the same for television viewership.
The "What" of Your Promotional Strategy
The "what" involves determining the message you should communicate to your target market. Your promotional strategy is intended to take people who may have varying degrees of interest in your type of goods and services and get them to become your customers. You will need to know who they are, who they are currently