Preparation of Promotional Tactical Plan

Stephanie BonifacioFhey Marie Romero

● Marketing departments in mid-sized businesses face a challenges such as how to target customers more efficiently, and increase one-to-one communications with customers.

● Today’s marketers in a mid-sized business must not only retain current customers, but also aggressively grow market share and add new customers.

● Promotion is the method you use to spread the word about your product or service to customers, stakeholders and the broader public.

● Tactics

are highly practical things you will do every day. Writing blog posts, sending tweets, replying to emails, outreach to bloggers, changing page titles and appointments you make/attend etc.

● Strategy

is a strong vision, intended to fulfill your predetermined goals and objectives. Strategy is the plan that ensures all your day to day activities (tactics) contribute to your monthly, quarterly and annual business goals.

In order for strategy to be effective you should already have outlined your goals (it’s surprising how many companies don’t do this), and know your intended audience. All goals you set should be SMART:

● Specific – Can the detail in the information sufficiently pinpoint problems or opportunities?

● Measurable – Can a quantitative or qualitative attribute be applied to create a metric?

● Actionable – Can the information be used to improve performance?

● Relevant – Can the information be applied to the specific problem faced by the manager?

● Time-related – Can the information be viewed through time to identify trends?

Marketing strategies and tactics are what give your business a competitive edge. Why? Because most companies have the same marketing objectives or goals. They want to achieve the same things:

● Get customers● Keep customers● Get existing customers to buy more● Offload unprofitable customers● Create customer advocates (people who refer others

and spread positive word-of-mouth for free)

●Marketing tactics

● are activities● are all the things you do to achieve a particular

short-term aim (like a coupon inserted in customer invoices for a free trial for a new product, a ¼-page ad in the local paper every week, attending a particular trade show).

● are short-term and tactical.

Finding out what Competitors in the target are doing

What do you need to know about your Competitors?● Monitor the way your competitors do business.

Look at:● The products or services they provide and how they

market them to customers.● The prices they charge.

Learning about your Competitors

● Read about your competitors. Look for article or ads in the trade press or mainstream publications. Read their marketing literature. Check their entries in directories and phone books. If they are an online business, ask a trial their service.

Go online

Look at competitors websites. Find out how they compare to yours. Check any interactive parts of the site to see if you could improve on it for your own website.

Go to exhibitions

At exhibitions and trade fairs check which of your competitors are also exhibiting. Look at their stands and promotional activities. Note how busy they are and who visits them.