Face to face promotions have become one of the most popular forms of marketing a product – over 60% of male and female consumers will go on to purchase a product having touched, tasted or trialled it.  Once in your consumers hands its up to the quality, service, price to ensure it stays there!

For a good promotional campaign there are many aspects to consider. Think of the four P’s:

Product, Price, Promotion, Place

• What are you promoting, brand / product etc?
• What are you offering the consumer?
• Who is your target audience?
• Where will a large number of your target audience be at one time?
• How will you get their attention?
• Who will relate to your target audience
• Where will they have to go to buy
• What impact the promotion will have on sales
• To coupon or not to coupon

Figuring out your target audience should be your basic starting point and something established at the outset by your company. Break it down and make sure you are hitting everyone who could avail of your produce.

• Age range
• Sex
• Interests – computers / online / history / music / food / sport / games
• Relation of your product to – events / supermarkets / locations
• Workers / college folk / retired / at home parents
• Mothers / fathers – New mums / well established mums
• Grandparents

The list could continue…

Once you know WHO you want to reach, the next question is WHERE.

• Workers commuting / driving / walking / cycling
• Music lovers at a festival / concerts/ music stores
• Film lovers at the cinema / film festivals / film stores

Be smart don’t invade their space but reach them on their turf.

The most important question of all is HOW? This comes down to originality, a focussed and targeted campaign. Be the consumer, step into their shoes for a day, where would you accept a brand promoting to you, what space would you want kept private away from brands and products trying to get you to buy buy buy! You don’t want to annoy but want them to enjoy! Get people’s attention, be quirky, zany, outrageous where your brand caters for it.

Staff – the people you are sending out to represent. Whether you are a promotions / staffing / communications company or a business running your own marketing campaign, know your staff. Bring them in to your offices, train, train and train again.

Meet who’s behind the brand or campaign, where possible they need to know who they are working for and why.

What the campaign means to each brand ambassador (that’s them the face of your product). Thoroughly brief them, give them a written brief then test them on it unexpectedly. Teach the brand let them see / taste / touch / listen / smell depending on your product. Be clear with your aims and expectations – let them know exactly what your business wants to get out of the campaign. Ensure they understand this is not a two hour shift for some extra cash but a much larger scale. They are the ambassadors of your brand.

Other aspects to remember and have on your checklist are:

• Product figures – enough to cater for your expected numbers
• Uniforms – clean, personable, respectable, eye catching.
• Weather forecast – be prepared for the worst

Bring all the aspects together and you have yourself a promotional campaign.

As always DELIVER! Proper preparation leads to a successful campaign.

A small selection of campaigns of very enjoyable and successful campaigns Pivotal have worked on: