Promotional Strategies for Brand Awareness

Promotional strategies are a means of promoting brand awareness or new product awareness among potential customers and the public as a whole. As with any other strategy, begin your promotional plan with the desired end goal in mind, be it brand awareness, engagement with the brand, sales, loyalty / retention, evangelism and so on  ... depending on your target's stage of the sales funnel.

To set the right mindset, I start by discussing tips for any type of promotion before speaking directly about individual types. Be mindful that promotional strategies are best suited to companies that have already resolved operational kinks and therefore capable of consistently providing a good impression beyond the promotion. 

--

--

Top Tips for Any Effective Promotional Strategies

Herald your brand. Every element of your promotional strategy should herald your brand, its values and its unique value proposition. For clarification, this includes participants, the product and everything associated with it (quality, image and so on), form of communication, ethos and so on.

• Whenever possible, leads should represent your target market profile whether you are running a promotional contest or offering promotional gifts. 
• Promotional contests should have some qualification requirements that matches your marketing objectives. Here are some common examples
• target market location (especially if you ship the product being promoted only within a region)
• email address. This ensure you can continue to market to the individual, possibly through a mailing list
• ideas for marketing according to your brand
• Choose items (products, prizes, gifts and so on) that portray your brand values in a meaningful way. 
• Complementary items. Tather than distributing pens (which are very common), a car company may consider windshield visors. Not only do visors meet the other criteria like long term and frequent visibility but are also used with their product. 
• Ethos. In other cases, the promotional gift may represent the company ethos. For instance, promotional gifts of an eco-friendly company may include products from recycled materials.
• Gift, prices and the like should be used by your potential customers in whatever place they are most likely to consider buying your product. For instance, a sun visor with your car company's name will be seen by pedestrians who may consider buying a car while walking.
• Gift cards. If you are finding it hard to find a promotional gift for your niche, offer a gift card for your store or the product being promoted. That way, you know that recipients of the promotional gift will take an interest in your product. 
• Still unsure? Use contests for selecting products. For instance, Mark's Work Wearhouse ran a 'Wish it, win it' contest that encouraged people to wish for their products to earn a chance of winning their choices. This actually helped marketers to determine the best products to stock for Christmas. However, the same can be applied for knowing promotional gifts and prizes.

--

--

• Always include a call to action / CTA. Even gifts can have CTAs like the display of your website URL or telephone number.
• Integrate promotional strategies to achieve your brand awareness goals most efficiently. For instance, when running a contest, consider using the idea of promotional gifts as prizes.

Content 

• Share content that attracts your target market using platforms they use. This helps to establish you as an industry leader. Examples include informational Youtube videos.  

Collaborate

• Whenever possible, partner with complementary, non-competing companies that share your target market with similar values. You will both trade new customers. 
• Examples 'brand partnerships' include Apple and MasterCard. 
• Examples YouTuber video interviews across channels.

Seek out influencers

• Approach your target market's influencers with freebies to try and promote. Alternatively, create a promotional deal with them. 

Contests

• If feasible, consider foregoing any type of purchase requirement. Instead, focus on giving some reward - a prize.

Common elements of an effective promotional contest:

• Reach through target market preferred media: Facebook and Wishpond's Facebook contest app. This contest takes promoting brand awareness to the next level by encouraging contestants to earn more chances to win by sharing with link with friends. In fact, this brand also uses all other social media formats for this weekly contest, including those that are ideal for portraying the highly visual product like Pinterest.
• Relevant image(s) & visual appeal: Banner header with the mascot / logo in the foreground and product images. Eye catching color contrast elements for the call to action / CTA button and key text like 'grand prize'.
• Prominent headline that explains what contestants will get, ie the benefit, 'Win ...'. In cases where the market's dollar value (ie the sale price) is not immediately apparent, companies include it prominently. The market value helps to promote the idea of getting value with relative ease, especially if the value exceeds the amount that contestants spend without careful consideration. Sometimes, to incentivize the participants' friends who participate indirectly by voting, you may even offer some incentive like a discount code.
• Urgency: Example '.... days remaining'
• Qualification: Email address contact form. Other examples include brand- or product-relevant activities. In fact, those activities even promote brand awareness further because friends are asked to vote for a winner. In other cases, they directly involve others. For instance, Dove's 'Real Beauty Should be Shared' contest required participants to select someone else to become the next face of Dove as the prize. Other ideas include filling in blanks.
• Social proof: '.... people have entered. Enter to see which of your friends have entered'. Other methods include encouraging participants to include and tag others in social media, which can be spread quickly. A valued friend sharing the link is essentially voting for your brand and, in so doing, promotes brand awareness.
• Brand-related prize: When the prize is your product and people are expending time to participate, you can rest assured that their interest in the product is most likely intrinsic. Dove's 'Real Beauty Should be Shared' contest takes brand awareness to another level by offering the winner to be the next face of Dove.
• Voting method: Referral contests like 'Share URL' can reduce your workload by counting votes automatically when participants' supporters use the original link.

Branded promotional gifts

• Branded promotional gifts must be as visible as possible, preferably even eye-catching. Consider promotional gifts as off line, human versions of Google product listing ads / PLAs or Facebook ads seeking maximum public impressions (ie views) and free downloadable gifts to motivate awardees down the sales funnel. In fact, they can even be more cost effective. 
• Items should ideally offer frequent and long term use, ie 1 to 3 years
• Items should ideally be useful in the environment in which they are most likely to need and make buying decisions about your core product.

Delightful Customer Experiences

• Customer experience can generate brand awareness through evangelism when you give customers a reason to talk positively. An ideal way of achieving this is by exceeding expectations. In marketing, satisfaction is what happens when you meet expectations precisely. However, exceed them, especially in a very unexpected, even surprising way and you give birth to an evangelist who makes conversation about your brand. 
• The most striking stories appear to be those involving very personal needs that customers would expect a loved one or friend to meet, simply because they know of a situation of distress or some pain point in your life and, through concern-based initiative, reach out with acts of kindness.

Causes & Charities

• Causes and charities give customers the opportunity to become part of something they see as important and good. Naturally, in addition to portraying your brand as fulfilling the role of the good corporate citizen, your target market must perceive the cause favorably.
• You may offer a percentage of the profits to the cause. 
• If your product is expensive, gift cards may be used to reach the goal of buying it. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you also give your market a reason to look forward to updates via your email marketing campaigns?

-- --

CONTENT RELATED TO PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES FOR BRAND AWARENESS

• Brand awareness & brand awareness srategy 101
• Branding for modern consumers
• Using brand storytelling for evangelism
• Facebook advertising
• Google Product Listing Ads / PLAs
• After you get people in your doors, ensure you know how to keep them. Learn to master customer experience. It even surpasses the customer retention potential of customer service.
• How promotional video can further build brand awareness
• Update your website homepage banners and slideshows, Facebook banner, Youtube banner and other social media to further communicate your promotion
• Send Shopify discount codes to entire groups of qualifying customers you wish to target in your promotion. These codes may target custom customer groups
• Gift registries might be a great way of increasing reach in building brand awareness
• See how drip email campaigns can help to develop product and brand awareness.