Marketing Series: Optimizing your Brand Promotion
When it comes to promoting your brand, what type of promotion comes to mind first? In this blog, I will go over the different types of promotion and why each could benefit you and your brand.
Once you have your Product and Price, it is time to think about HOW you would like to promote your product. Without promotion, your brand will lack the traffic it needs to make the sales you desire. So what ways can you promote your product? You can promote your product through: Paid Advertising, Community Advocation, Public Relations, Sponsorships, Social Media Engagements, and Customer Service. Each mode of promotion can benefit your brand in different ways.
Paid Advertising:
Paid advertising can be incorporated in many points of your promotion journey. Paid advertising allows you to gain exposure for your brand by leveraging leads from different platforms, ie Facebook. Some other digital platforms include: Google Ads, Bing Ads, Instagram Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Pinterest Ads, and Amazon Ads. Each avenue of paid advertising utilizes knowledge about their users such as emails, phone numbers, age, interests, values, location, etc and by utilizing their platform you can filter certain criteria to get to your ideal client.
Digital platforms will also use metrics on how to charge you, for example some platforms are pay-per-click, pay per amount of exposure, pay per lead, etc. If you have worked through the Branding Series, you will have established an ideal target audience. You will have a sense of the age range, socioeconomic background, interests, values, and what platforms they use the most. Paid advertising can be used in the beginning of building a brand, to gain initial exposure and customers, or later down the line when you have better targeting to expand your brand’s reach. Perhaps customers with the same values but in different locations.
Paid advertising can also include: TV, Radio, print, email, etc. However, paid advertising has a couple of drawbacks. When it comes to paid advertising you may need to create ads using graphics, professional photos, or video. You will also need to pay ad platforms to show your ads, this can also be costly if you don't have a good understanding of your target audience. With little knowledge of your target audience you may spend money on the incorrect targeting, and lower your ROAS, or Return on Ad Spend.
Public Relations and Publicity:
Public relations and publicity are very useful marketing tools that can help communicate your company and brand message to your audience. Public relations is not as direct at selling as paid advertising. It aims to present your message to your audience and create a “good feeling” about your company, brand, and product. This good feeling helps generate a favorable impression of your product which eventually may lead to greater sales. When a women’s athletic line announces their alignment with the Women’s Sports Foundation, that story is considered Public Relations. By supporting a cause, the company and brand appears to be a good citizen of your target community. The best form of public relations often looks like the message is being told by an unbiased, third party like a news reporter. The perception of that unbiased point of view can make the target audience not feel like they are being sold something and the impact can be very persuasive.
Publicity is a tool that is also an important part of an overall public relations strategy. The goal of publicity is to attract attention to your company, brand, and product. If you can get featured in a news story that can be very valuable exposure in building your company reputation, brand awareness, and even your product’s availability. Getting publicity usually consists of informing the news media of something the company, brand, or product is involved in and pitching the urgency of the news value of that story. If the news outlets are interested and generate a feature, this can be seen as real news and not a company sponsored message.
There are many outlets to post free press releases to promote good public relations and generate publicity. Most of these offer the option to also boost or promote the release to a wider audience, more websites, and additional newspapers for an additional fee. Good public relations press releases are often mistaken for actual news stories. Publicity is literally real news reported by independent reporters or news people who write an article or news report about your product, brand, or something your company is involved in. Public Relations is great for building a “good feeling” about your product or brand, and highlighting how you are a good citizen of the community you are targeting.
Sponsorships & Endorsements:
Sponsorships give your brand exposure to a specific crowd or event. When you donate a product for the participants or attendees to use or wear that visibility is a sponsorship. Sponsoring a team, paying for signage placement, and other forms of partnering with another organization or cause are best when you are in the brand expansion stage. This is mainly due to the cost associated with sponsorships. For example, many sports teams have sponsors like Nike, UnderArmour, etc. If you are a new activewear company, it might be tough to compete with big sports team sponsorships; however, you can sponsor local events and teams for a lower cost. Sponsorships can be powerful if the audience and crowd is your target customer, which gives your brand great exposure.
Endorsements are also a way to receive exposure. By working with someone your target market admires, you can gain exposure to their audience. This does not always mean celebrities; however celebrity endorsements can be powerful as well. You want to think about who your audience truly admires. Maybe it is a public figure, or an activist for a cause your audience believes in. By utilizing endorsements or influencer marketing your brand can be seen alongside someone your audiences respects, and values the opinion of. Influencer marketing can be powerful because your audience feels a connection to the influencer.
Social Media:
Social Media can be a great way to grow your brand and connect with your audience organically. While you can use paid ads on social media, you can also utilize non paid content to connect with your customers. This is a great place to give your customers value. It can be easy to only feature your product in your social media, but in order to connect on a deeper level with your audience, providing value such as tips, tricks, suggestions, humor, etc., secures the relationship you have with your customer. By securing this relationship you develop a level of connection and brand loyalty that you would not usually make without providing value.
It is also important to promote your product on social media as well. By providing content that shows what your product is, how it works, and valuable insights this will help your audience know more about your products and see if they need to purchase. The great thing about social media is that it does not require a lot of upfront cost. You will want to have a good camera for creating photos, and some photo and video editing software like Adobe Suite or Canva. Social media is a great low barrier way to promote your brand; however, because of this low barrier to entry you will want to think of creative ways to stand out and connect with your audience.
Community Advocation:
Community Advocation, or Word of Mouth advertising, is extremely powerful. This type of promotion happens when a customer likes and values the product or service you provide so much that they tell others and promote your brand for you through advocating for your brand. A drawback can be that you don't have much control over what people will say about your brand. Fortunately, you do have control over your product and the customer service you provide. Community advocation can be through reviews, testimonials, recommendations, or suggestions. One issue with community advocation is that negative reviews can come just as easily as good ones. Since you have no control of what your customers will say, they can advocate for your brand or advocate against your brand. Another drawback is that this type of promotion will happen regardless of whether you want it to happen. That means it is important to provide a product that performs as promised, fix, replace or refund if it does not perform to expectation, and provide great customer service when any problems arise. You can encourage community advocation by offering promotions for honest reviews to incentivize your customers.
Customer Service:
Customer Service can often be an overlooked form of promotion. Great customer service is what ties your promotion together. By providing amazing customer service not only are you solidifying the customer trust in you, but perhaps gaining lifetime loyalty. Customer service can be utilized by addressing the customers needs, problems, and complaints regarding your product through phone, email, social media, or some other form of communication. By handling Customer Service with great tone, and care, your customer will feel different about your brand. You can also offer loyalty rewards programs. These could include special VIP discounts and promotions. Customer service is a great way to keep loyal customers and gain new loyal customers.
Promotion is a very critical element in your marketing mix for your brand and fashion line. It includes all the ways you focus on selling your product. The more ways you can expose consumers to your brand and product, the better. When you are promoting your fashion line, it is very important to make every type of communication in your promotional mix create a positive impact and a good feeling about your brand and your product.
Need help with pricing your product? Join “The Perfect Price” workshop on May 16th & May 23rd 2022 Where we will go over Costing, and Pricing your product. The Worship will also include Q&A and 1:1 pricing advice from Anna Livermore. For questions please contact: vmorainquiry@vmora.com
Have a Marketing plan already, but need help with producing your line? V.Mora can help you take your brand voice and turn it into products. We will help each step of the way to design, develop patterns, and connect with the right vendors for your project through our Production Development and Management service. Please contact us if you are in need of the Production Development and Management Services below:
Sourcing
Technical sketches
Pattern Making
Prototype making
Sample Making
Fittings
Digitizing and Grading
Marker Making
Manufacturing
Please contact us at: vmorainquiry@vmora.com
