Small Business Advertising and Promotion

ADVERTISING & PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES

Promotional Strategies: Promotional strategies, most often, incur costs. They are different from advertising in that you are not conducting advertising campaigns, promoting products and services in the media that are directed to the targeted clients. To the contrary, you are taking actions that enhance your image, create awareness and can provide a "jumpstart" preceding any advertising campaigns. For example, a personal organizer wants to consider membership in the National Association of Personal Organizers (NAPO). Targeting a more localized market may encourage membership in one or more local chambers of commerce. Sponsoring workshops or providing discounts to fellow chamber members can draw more business from outside the organization. More high-profile memberships to county economic councils afford exposure to executives of local corporate firms, banks and government agencies.

Advertising Media: Be careful. Many dollars have been wasted advertising where no one is watching, reading or listening. A good clue to defining your media is to examine the advertising habits and media of your successful competitors. You need to budget each media outlet. This requires the leg work of getting cost quotations. Remember you are the potential client to the media outlet. Many start-ups have been overwhelmed by account executives claiming their media outlet is the best way to go. Demand some form of research data from the salesperson that confirms the claims to success for your type of business.

Web Site Design & Content: The level of reliance you place on a web site is directly proportional to the budget applied. If you are an Internet company (B2B or B2C) then place a lot of emphasis on the budget for this category. The web site is your business card and brochure. Unlike the print format, web sites are subject to constant change, adapting to the rapidly evolving technology and design etiquette so often associated with this media. If you rely on the web site as your primary "first line of contact" with customers then pay very critical attention to customer service, e-commerce shopping cart software, graphics, response times and ease of navigation.

Sales Projections: For most, this subsection represents the most challenging task in the business plan. If you have no sales track record where do you begin? It requires a combination of tangible and intangible sources. On the intangible side you have a vision of what can be accomplished. That vision is more easily quantified for local markets. Regional, national and international markets will force you to take the more tangible route of learning as much as possible about the sales performance of the competition. That becomes extremely difficult when competitors are privately held companies, with no obligation to post financial performance. There are no public shareholders.

As graphically displayed above, the delicate process for arriving at legitimate sales projections requires a review and revision of market research and operational needs. You need to be certain the level of operations is sufficient to meet the needs of your customers. A top-heavy organization means sales will not meet expenses and generate a profit. An attempt to minimize operations to save expenses can mean customer service and follow-up are insufficient to insure return business.

Begin the process of projecting sales. Consider the level of expenses required to meet the sales goals. Be certain your market research supports your vision. The development of financial projections will eventually force you to adjust the sales projections up or down. There is more discussion about sales in the section on Financial Analysis.

Summary: Summarize the promotional strategies and advertising media. Insert a graphic chart showing the sales projections for the next three to five years, depending on the number of years of financial projections to be included in your plan.

Note: Do not be intimidated when developing that first set of sales projections. Yes, it's like "walking off the cliff", but you have to begin somewhere. The vision, operational capacity to deliver to your customer, and the financial limitations evolving from the financial projections will temper the final projections is you are cautious and conservative.