Promotion is part of an overall marketing plan that focuses on a single event. For example, a holiday sale, a concert, a new product launch – something that is time sensitive. The key is to make sure you are promoting something people want. Do your research so you can be sure it’s not something that you think is great, but something that others think is great too. PepsiCo is currently testing Doritos-flavored Mountain Dew – aka “Dewitos” – on college campuses. The jury is still out on whether or not it’s going to be an actual product, but it’s getting a lot of buzz on social media.
When you’re promoting an event on a small budget you don’t have the luxury of time or money, but you still have to do something to attract the attention of your audience and compete with the other distractions begging to be noticed.
If you want to have an edge above everyone else then you need the right kind of promotion. This is composed of 3 essential parts: frequency, reach, and message quality.
For general advertising, we recommend getting your message out to the masses at a minimum frequency of 3 times a week, 52 weeks a year. When you’re promoting a time-sensitive event you can’t operate on that schedule, so you have to come up with a different way of impacting people.
Let’s say the circus is coming to town and you’re the owner of a successful small business event planning company in charge of ticket sales. You decide on radio as your promotional channel. Since the Big Top has a small budget, your strategy is to create a radio ad and buy one commercial per hour from the time your event starts as far back as you can afford. So, if the circus starts at 7 p.m., you buy an ad the same day for the 6 p.m. hour, 5 p.m. hour, 4 p.m. hour, and so on until your money runs out.
Reach is how many people you can get to hear about your event. You pick the promotional channel based on your budget, then based on how many people you can reach. If the circus tent holds 500 people, you don’t need to reach 5,000. You just need a method to reach 500. Reach as many people as you can, but don’t violate the frequency rule. Keep in mind you will probably be doing other things to coincide with the radio ads, like posting fliers. Frequency and reach are proven to work, but message quality is important too.
Frequency and reach can overcome a mediocre message. But if you can strengthen and sharpen your message, the more effective you’ll be after you’ve achieved frequency and reach. A great message cannot overcome bad frequency. People are foolish if they decide not to invest in frequency and think they can get away with just having a good message. A successful small business has both!
If you want to have a guaranteed successful event, the trick to promoting it well is frequency. Half a Bubble Out is a Passion & Provision Company that offers small business consulting, advertising and marketing. Let us help you with your next promotion to keep you in front of your audience. Contact us today!