Promotions with marketing

All companies need to market their products and services. The best marketing employs unique ways to garner public interest in your company and its products. Promotions are a great way to do this.

Promotions give people a reason to keep coming back for your products and services and are a great way to spread the word about your company. Both small and large companies use promotions on a daily basis, whether it's free shipping or 20%, just to name a couple.

The following are some of the various types of promotions you can use with marketing:

Grand opening
One type of promotion you can use is the grand opening of your store or business. This can be a big event, with food, prizes, free samples of products, and coupons for money off your products and services.

Even if you don't have a store, you can still do a grand opening. For example, if you have a lawn care business, advertise a Grand Opening Week or Month, where all services are discounted. Or, you provide a free service with the purchase of a full lawn care treatment. This is a great way to entice people to try out your service.

Advertising your Grand Opening is important. Send flyers or mailers to your target market, place an ad in the paper, or send a press release to your local news outlet.

Take advantage of holidays.
Mother's Day, Father's Day, Fourth of July, Halloween-any holiday is a great excuse to have a promotion within your store or for your services. For example, if youhave a garden store, offer a free plant with any purchase over a certain amount in honor of Mother's Day. Or, if you do manicures and pedicures, offer 20% off any mani or pedi done in red, white, or blue in honor of the Fourth of July. Or, have a back-to-school special on the tutoring services you offer. Holidays are a great time to promote your business and products.

Referral promotions
Many companies and small businesses get the majority of their business by word of mouth or referrals. You can increase your own business and get the word out by offering promotions to current customers for referring business to you. For example, if you teach piano lessons, offer 2 free lessons for each student they refer to you. This can be a great way to drum up more business.

Cross promotion
Cross promotion is a form of marketing that can increase your customer base dramatically. It involves two or more businesses, and together you work to promote each other's products or services. A number of companies cross-promote by offering bundled services (for example, a landscaping company and a floral company can cross-promote by offering the plants and the design together), joint media appearances or joint events they both sponsor, or sharing offices. When it comes to cross-promotion, there are dozens of ways you can get the attention of more customers. These include printing information about the other company on a receipt, putting flyers or business cards in each other's store windows and businesses, or hold a contest with prizes provided by the other company, just to name a few.

Product promotions
This type of promotion is very common and involves a percentage or fixed amount off each item, buy one get one free, free gift with purchase, free shipping when you spend more than $50, and so forth.

Promotions with marketing are a great way to get the word out about your business.