Marketing promotions are the lifeblood of any business. According to the Economic Times, a promotion is an entire set of activities, which communicate the product, brand or service to the user.

The better you are at planning and implementing successful marketing promotions, the better you will be at reaching your financial goals.

When starting out, you may have the urge to do what you see other entrepreneurs do. Things like posting on social media using text, images and videos are great but they are not the only activity you should focus on.

Posting is definitely what you want to do, but there is more to promotion that posting.

If you're mimicking what you see others do. I guess it's the best form of flattery, but it does nothing to help you reach your financial goals.

And mimicking others is not how you want to run your business.  Copying others is like flying blind, without a clear understanding of what has been done "behind the scenes" to make your business thrive.

This article is about ten steps you can take to make your promotions effective without making unrealistic promises, hype or fluff.

It Starts with Your Calendar

Use your preference, a printed calendar that you can write on or an online calendar that you can type into.  

Google calendar is a great option for an online calendar that can be shared with your team if needed. It also shows many popular holidays.

You can type into it and block out periods of that you can use for your promotions. Many online calendars will allow you to set pop up reminders and tasks as well. 

A hard copy calendar may list more special occasions, events and holidays. I like both online and hard copy calendars

Use your calendar to mark the starting and end dates for your promotion, along with any posting schedules you identify in your marketing strategy.

Decide Which Events You Want to Promote

You may not want to promote every event or holiday you see on the calendar. But there should be several holidays and observances that align with your business.

Keep in mind that you don't need an exact match between your business and a holiday to create a winning promotion. Really, all you need is a reason to contact your audience with valuable information, an offer, a discount code, a tip or a full fledged promotion. 

Think about the retail stores that promote holidays like "Presidents day" and the 4th of July... They make it a point to contact their audience on those days, not because they have an exact match, but because people are off work. It makes sense to reach out because they know their audience will more than likely use their day off to shop.  This is an opportunity that retailers can't afford to miss!

Video: Plan Your Holiday Promotions

Select a Product or Service to Promote

What product or service will be a good fit for your promotion. If there is a match between the observation, event or holiday, be sure to highlight the connection in your marketing. 

Identify Your Audience

Take a moment to think about your ideal customer for each event, and how your product or service will help them. Think of benefits versus features.

Then think about how you will reach them during your promotion and how your marketing message with strike a chord with them.

You want your promotions to speak directly to your ideal customers.

Create Visuals and Messaging for Your Promotion

Your visuals should have one goal… and that is to grab the attention of your audience (ideal customer) in helping them solve a particular problem or come up with creative ideas.

Use tools like Canva and PhotoShop to create stunning visuals for your promotions and events. If you’re promoting Halloween, we have put together some collections to get you started. 

Create a Promotion Strategy

Decide which marketing platforms will help you reach your ideal customers. Will you use social media, videos (YouTube), email marketing, FB groups, or paid ads?

When using these platforms to promote your campaign, be sure to track your progress to determine which ones give you the best return. 

For example, Google Analytics is a popular tracking tool that integrates with the WordPress blogging platform, email marketing programs and Facebook pages.

Be sure to have Google Analytics (and similar analytics tools provided by your social platform) installed and integrated on your marketing platforms of choice before starting your campaign. 

You might consider including contests, promo codes, coupons, freebies, premiums, prizes, product samples, and rebates to encourage participation in your promotion.

Calculate Your Profits

This is a really important step, whether you're promoting your products or other people's products. In either case you need to know how much you will make minus expenses, per unit for each item you sell. 

How many items or units will you have to sell in order to be profitable with your promotion?

If you combine multiple products into one promotion how much could you can potentially make per package, if everything goes well?

Once you have come up with the amount of money you can make from each promotion, establish goals you can use to ensure that you reach your income goals.

Create Landing Pages to Highlight Your Promotion

pages that you created or pages created by your sponsors? If you send visitors to your sponsor’s landing pages, will that be the best strategy to help you reach your financial goals? Would it be better to create your own pages? The answer to these questions can be found in this section: affiliate marketing linking strategies.

Give Your Promotion Time to Run

This is also important. Each promotion should have at least six weeks or more to run. You would be surprised to know how many people plan their purchases far in advance of an event.

If you start your promotion at least six weeks out, you can expose it to more people. If you're promoting a higher ticket item, you'll give potential customers the opportunity to decide if your product is right for them. 

The reason many promotions are not successful is because they are not given enough time to work.  

If for example, you wait until a week before the day of the event to start promoting, you probably won’t reach your income goals.

You'll also want to find opportunities to promote evergreen content in addition to promotions centered around special events.  

According to Wordstream, evergreen content is content that has no expiration date and ideally will retain its value over the long-term. It's not date or event specific and continues to be relevant long past its publication date.

This kind of content can be promoted on a regular basis to bring money into your business.  

Evaluate What Went Well... and The Things That Didn't Go So Well

After your promotion is over, determine what worked well. If you had things that didn't go so well, be sure to evaluate why it didn't work and create a plan to improve it next time.

Instead of beating yourself over the head, use the issues as a lesson learned and create a solution you can use to improve. 

This process is designed to help you start planning more of your marketing efforts. Using SMART goals for each promotion and evaluating your promotions will help you create better promotions over time.

Implementing regular promotions will help you reach and even exceed your financial goals.