The Promotion Trends Report by Promo Magazine, revealed that consumer promotional spending for companies in 2002 was 233.7 billion. Spending increased 3.7% in 2002, signaling a strong trend of businesses adding promotional marketing to their overall advertising budget.



Web Design and Promotional Marketing?

Promotional marketing is a business marketing strategy designed to draw customers in. It allows a first time buyer the opportunity to try your product or service while remaining in a comfort zone. Who can't resist a deal? You have probably even made a purchase based on the just because it was a good deal right. Promotional marketing is a technique that includes various incentives to buy such as:

Contests: We all like to win something for free. Contests offer an attractive marketing vehicle for small business to acquire new clients and create awareness. This doesn't need to be expensive and extravagant; just a valuable prize to your target market.

Consider using your Web site to promote a simple contest. Getting people to register through your site in return for the possibility to win a giveaway is an excellent way to bather a client list that will help you keep in contact with those potential customers.

Coupons: Over 76% of the population use coupons, according to the Promotion Marketing Association (PMA) Coupon Council. Coupons still work and provide an affordable marketing strategy for small business. Overall coupon distribution in 2004 grew 9% to 342 billion coupons according to CMS, a promotion management company.

Have your Web Designer create a scheduler that puts up a coupon on your typical slow days. If you do this running a small program on your website there is no need to continually change pages, the scheduler will do it for you. This is an effective way to eliminate the need for print and mailing. Take it a step further and have your customers sign up to receive the coupons and build your customer list.

Sampling: Do free samples work? Giving your product away for free may seem profit limiting but consider the case of Seth Godin. Godin released a book called "The Idea Virus" in 2000. Unlike other authors, he did not charge for the book instead gave it away for free as an e-book. In less than 30 days over 400,000 copies were downloaded. This created a buzz about the book and even through free, people bought the hard cover; making the book #5 on the Amazon best seller list.

This may not work in all cases but consider a bar that sells t-shirts and hats. Place your promotional items in an online catalog for pickup only; no shipping option. Then promote it by offering a free drink when they purchase online. This gets the customer back to your establishment one more time and they feel like they got a deal. As an added bonus you now have their contact information in your data file and you can send them a coupon!