Positioning

Positioning

Positioning your product correctly can make a significant difference in the success of your marketing campaign. Use these resources to learn how to properly position your product or service.

Planning a Productive and Successful Promotional Campaign
Learn how to plan a productive and successful promotional campaign in just seven easy steps.

7 Steps to Planning a Productive and Successful Promotional Campaign


When planning a promotional campaign keep in mind that a campaign generally consists of three desired outcomes:

Outcome 1: Your promotional message reaches your intended and targeted audience.

Outcome 2: Your message is understood by your audience.

Outcome 3: Your message stimulates the recipients and they take action.

The question is how do you achieve these outcomes with your campaign? The process is easy, but it takes "planning" time.

Here are seven steps that will get your campaign off to the right start.

Step 1: Assess Marketing Communication Opportunities.
It's important in this first step to examine and understand the needs of your target market. Who is your message going out to? Current users, influencers among individuals, decision-makers, groups, or the general public?

Step 2: What Communication Channels Will You Use? 
In the first step of planning you should have defined the markets, products, and environments. This information will assist you in deciding which communication channels will be most beneficial. Will you use personal communication channels such as face to face meeting, telephone contact, or perhaps a personal sales presentation? Or will the nonpersonal communication such as newspapers, magazines, or direct mail work better?

Step 3: Determine Your Objectives
Keep in mind that your objectives in a promotional campaign are slightly different from your marketing campaign. Promotional objectives should be stated in terms of long or short-term behaviors by people who have been exposed to your promotional communication. These objectives must be clearly stated, measurable, and appropriate to the phase of market development.

Step 4: Determine Your Promotion Mix 
This is where you will need to allocate resources among sales promotion, advertising, publicity, and of course personal selling. Don't skimp on either of these areas. You must create an awareness among your buyers in order for your promotional campaign to succeed. A well rounded promotion will use all these methods in some capacity.

Step 5: Develop Your Promotional Message
This is the time that you will need to sit down with your team and focus on the content, appeal, structure, format, and source of the message. Keep in mind in promotional campaigns appeal and execution always work together.

Step 6: Develop the Promotion Budget
This is the exciting part. You must now determine the total promotion budget. This involves determining cost breakdowns per territory and promotional mix elements. Take some time to break down allocations and determine the affordability, percent of sales, and competitive parity. By breaking down these costs you will get a better idea on gauging the success potential of your campaign.

Step 7: Determine Campaign Effectiveness 
After marketing communications are assigned, the promotional plan must be formal defined in a written document. In this document you should include situation analysis, copy platform, timetables for effective integration of promotional elements with elements in your marketing mix. You will also need to determine how you will measure the effectiveness once it is implement. How did the actual performance measure up to planned objectives. You'll need to gather this information by asking your target market whether they recognized or recall specific advertising messages, what they remember about the message, how they felt about the message, and if their attitudes toward the company was affected by the message.



Market Effectively by Solution-Positioning
The key to keeping your marketing efforts effective is to focus on selling the solution to the problem not selling the features or benefits. Find out how companies are benefiting from listening to their target markets pain points.


Our society is bombarded with advertising and marketing messages. How can you make your marketing stand out and be effective to your target market? The answer is easy it’s by taking the time to listen and relating your message to the pain of your client.

Keep in mind that it is easier to sell a solution to a problem than to sell a positive benefit or substantial features. What problems are your potential clients facing? A great way to find out is to spend some time networking and doing market research by contacting potential clients. Find out what their needs are by spending time asking questions and intently listening to their answers taking mental note of their needs, problems, and pain.

Once you see the presence of a problem that your product or service can solve, study that problem and reposition your marketing so that it is offering a benefit and a solution to that problem. You will notice that by doing this marketing and selling will become a lot easier.

Not sure if this works? Take a few moments and consider the products and services that are currently hot on the market. These products include products that help you quit smoking, lose weight, grow hair, and diminish wrinkles. Why are these products reaching a high level of success in sells? The answer is easy; they offer a benefit and a solution to a negative situation or problem.

Once you’ve identified the problem that your product or service solves, it’s time to get to work by drafting your marketing material. When drafting your marketing plan be sure to mention the problem and the solution. This will assist your marketing efforts from going off in the wrong direction. You will want to spend some time researching, problem-spotting, problem-discussing, and solution-positioning.

The key to keeping your marketing efforts effective is to focus on selling the solution to the problem not selling the features or benefits.