Whoever experiments the most with new ideas usually wins. Does your small business utilize promotions in your marketing? Looking for Oprah Winfrey promotion marketing ideas to experiment with?
16 Marketing Tactics Examples to Improve Marketing Campaigns
If so, pay attention to these best promotion examples, you’ll be surprised with some of the cool suggestions. And remember, if you want to engage and interact with current and prospective leads, promotion marketing is the solution you’ve been looking for.
Oprah Winfrey promotion marketing … sweepstakes
A sweepstake is the best type of promotion to run when you’re just starting out in the promotion world. It involves participants simply entering their information on a form for a chance at winning a prize.
It requires little effort from entrants and builds your fan base easily.
Related post: Digital Storytelling … 4 Ways to Employ for Message Persuasion
This contest from Air France perfectly demonstrated the sweepstakes promotion format. It involved participants entering their information as well as a few paragraphs explaining their ideal romantic Parisian getaway.
The winner was randomly selected using Wishpond’s sweepstakes randomization tool.
We love this promotion because it is targeted directly at AirFrance’s audience, uses a prize relevant to their brand (creating loyalty for the future), and engages participants by involving a creative element (the 1000 word description).
Oprah Winfrey promotion marketing … vote promotion example
A vote promotion requires entrants to vote for an image or idea displayed by your business. It gets leads interacting with your various products and voting for their favorite, giving you insights into what your potential and current customers want or need.
This vote promotion from Mark’s Work Wearhouse is one of our favorite examples. It required participants to vote on which Mark’s product they would want for Christmas this year in order to be entered to win a $400 gift card.
Related post: Adapting to Major Changes in the Social Media Climate
The gift card prize encourages future purchasing, while the product display allows Mark’s to show off their products and get customers thinking about which ones they want.
This type of promotion can lead to participants eventually purchasing the items they selected even when they don’t win the prize. It also gives Mark’s valuable customer insight into which products they may want to stock up on going into the Christmas season.
Promotion marketing mix … photo promotion
A photo promotion involves participants submitting a photo relating to a specific theme. It gives your business the opportunity to gain information from entrants as well as user-generated content which you can use down the line as marketing and social media ammunition.
It’s a great way to get current and potential customers engaging directly with your brand and your industry.
As a snowboard and winter sports fan, I can’t help but love this Sports Chek photo promotion. First off, the prize is something you can’t buy. They’ve given participants the chance at a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that’s also relevant to the brand.
They also have supplied secondary prizes which are a great idea to encourage submission. A photo promotion is more effort than something like sweepstakes, but for a prize of this value, a photo submission is not a ton of effort.
With a photo promotion, you also have the option to activate a voting feature. This allows entrants to upload their photo and have it voted on by their friends and family, expanding the reach of the promotion.
If participants’ own networks are not aware of the promotion or brand, the voting option creates more awareness for your business.
Oprah Winfrey promotion marketing … referral promotion
A referral promotion allows you to grow your brand reach as existing fans sign up to win a reward, but can only be entered once they have referred a certain number of individuals.
When the participant signs up they are given a unique link to share with their friends and family to get them to enter.
That URL is then tracked to see how many referrals that individual makes and automatically enters them once they have met their quota.
This makes entrants motivated to share the promotion with their own networks while allowing new groups of people to see your promotion.
This variation of a referral promotion from Coshell Charcoal gets participants to enter to win a July 4th prize pack, while also referring friends and family in order to get more entries and chances to win. While participants get more entries, the company is able to expand the reach of the promotion to new networks of individuals.
Oprah Winfrey promotion marketing … essay promotion
An essay promotion allows you to request entrants to submit text-entries in relation to a certain topic. It is a great promotion format to engage users and get them communicating and discussing a certain product or idea.
With certain providers like Wishpond, you can also allow others to vote on their favorite essay submission.
The essay promotion below is one of our favorite examples as people love sharing their recipes with others. It revolves around the Panasonic brand sold at London Drugs and is relevant and valuable to their customers.
It also includes a pasta recipe as another motivator for Fans to share the promotion with their own networks. London Drugs actually tested the recipe submission idea with their Facebook Fans first before launching the promotion (something which is a great strategy to socially prove your promotion concept before going live).
Promotion marketing examples … link product photos with product pages
Nordstrom’s Instagram fans are looking for a quick fix of the latest trends and products. When fans find a product they can’t live without, it’s not uncommon for them to leave a comment asking how and where to buy it.
While Nordstrom continues to respond to those comments on Instagram, they’re starting to send people to their new Pinterest-esque site that pulls in their Instagram product photos and links them directly to product pages.
Nordstrom created the site with Like2Buy (by Curalate) to partner e-commerce with their significant Instagram engagement. The result is an easier way for fans to buy the products they love right then and there.
Oprah Winfrey promotion marketing … create a familiar space
Whether you’re working with your website or your social media profiles, as a marketer your question is always going to be “how can we make money here?”
For example, Pinterest is a popular site for sure. The site makes it easy to find new ideas and organize your own. Its feed is filled with attractive pictures and the site is easy to use. In short, people love it. But you may not be making money there.
Social commerce site Wanelo is addressing that problem. They’ve created a “social shopping site that resembles a well-designed window display.” In other words, it provides the familiar feel of Pinterest.
Similar to Pinterest, Wanelo visitors can find items they love, tag them and categorize them into neat little collections. When users browse and eventually buy from a store, that store, in turn, sends a portion of each sale back to Wanelo.
Oprah Winfrey promotion marketing … events
Events and their experiences draw customers for celebrations, product launches, special appearances or presentations, and other activities that combine entertainment with brand and product presentations.
When hosting an event, make sure to go all out. A half-hearted, poorly attended event is worse than no event at all, so plan, decorate, train your staff and publicize accordingly.
Use customers’ feedback
Like the Wanelos out there, Fancy lets users find, collect and buy items from various companies. To set itself apart, it also offers a monthly box subscription (Fancy Boxes) that delivers gourmet food.
So where does the social element come in? Fancy’s 2 million+ members help curate(via voting) the foods that show up in each month’s box.
Encouraging this kind of customer input further reinforces that Fancy truly cares about customers and values their feedback. It’s a great way to build brand loyalty and turn a profit at the same time.
When done correctly, promotions get customers out of a holding pattern by giving them an incentive to take action. Here are some further tips to help execute more successful promotions:
Oprah Winfrey promotion marketing … target your effort
Promotions can spur purchases by established customers, reel in new customers, draw customers from competitors, get current customers to buy differently, and stimulate business during slow periods.
But rarely can one promotion accomplish all of those objectives at once. As a result, you must decide which of the following is most important so that you can target your effort:
Are you trying to lure new customers into your business?
Do you want lapsed customers to give your business another try?
Do you want customers to purchase more frequently, buy in greater volume, or be attracted to new or different offerings?
Do you want to boost business during slow hours, weekdays or particular seasons?
If you offer a time-limited incentive, is it likely that the customers you’ve targeted will respond?
Know what you want to achieve
Promotions work especially well when consumers are in need of a jolt to take buying action. Just be clear about what you want to achieve.
Set the number of sales you want to ring up, dollars you want to bring in, customer names you want to collect, buying patterns you want to change, or any other object you want your promotion to achieve. Then determine what your desired change will mean financially to your business.
Related post: Target Market … How to Target for Best Marketing Campaigns
Oprah Winfrey promotion marketing … plan your incentive
A well-thought-out, properly targeted promotion prompts customers to take action by offering one of these incentives:
Price savings, including discounts, coupons or added value offers
Samples or trial offers to provide a low-risk way to try new products or services
Events or experiences to generate crowds, enthusiasm, sales, publicity
As you decide on your incentive, keep these facts in mind:
Coupons always make a comeback in penny-pincher markets, which means they’re hugely popular these days. Even young consumers and affluent shoppers–groups that traditionally shun coupons–are using them, boosting the typical 1 to 2 percent redemption rate by nearly 20 percent.
Printed coupons are still the most widely circulated, but printable coupons, distributed on websites and via e-mail, provide a terrific way to test price offers with business friends and fans before incurring costs to promote the offer more widely via other media.