Interactive Promotions
Rationale
The business world is undergoing a flurry of significant changes. One major variation has occurred in the way businesses communicate and engage with prospective and existing consumers.
Yester-Year’s Context
Previously, all you had to do as a business person was to create and publicise attractive adverts. The largely passive consumer would be expected to imbibe the content of your advert and proceed to implement your suggestion by buying your merchandise.
The Inherent Disadvantages
This approach had a number of significant downsides, namely:
- A large, imprecise audience base
- Low Returns on Investment (ROI)
- Low message relevance
To the marketer, life was rather easy then. Currently, it isn’t.
A Changing Panorama
Today’s customer is enlightened. Your consumer needs to be an active participant in the development, presentation, and marketing of your brand. This situation brings us to the concept of promotions, specifically, interactive promotions. Via this marketing tool, you consistently and actively bring your consumers into contact with your services and products.
Interactive Promotion Defined
When you employ various offline or online methods with the aim of promoting your brand, services or products, you are engaging in interactive promotion. In the process, you communicate with your customers.
Your interactive promotion could ride on web (internet-based) or mobile platforms.
Concise Definition
The Journal of Interactive Advertising defines interactive communication as unpaid and paid promotion of a business’ ideas, services, or products via mediated methods that involve mutual marketer-consumer actions.
The Merits
Through interactive promotion, you derive significant gains. Key ones include:
- High ROIs
- Smaller, targeted audience base
- Audience attraction and engagement
- Greater message relevance
Marketing Outcomes
You use various interactive promotion strategies so as to achieve a number of important marketing purposes, namely:
- Creating brand awareness
- Stimulating marketing demand
- Increasing consumer demand
- Improving product availability
- Facilitating brand engagement
Useful Interactive Promotion Techniques
You could employ a wide array of techniques in the interactive communication process. Key methods include organising for:
- User-generated contests
- Rebates
- Online contests
- Sweepstakes
- Instant win campaigns
- Social bookmarking initiatives
- Tell-a friend drives
- Advergames
- Videos
Caveats
Interactive promotions can give your business that unique edge within your industry. You should however note that certain key prerequisites usually accompany your success with these initiatives. Key requirements include:
- Appropriate planning
- Conformity to relevant laws
Correct Planning
Proper planning is an integral component of any successful venture. The interactive nature of interactive promotion calls for astute planning so as to avoid potentially catastrophic outcomes.
Legal Validity
Your interactive promotion drives should abide by all relevant laws. Conformity will protect your from criminal penalties that are associated with breach of the law.
Summary
With interactive promotion, you decisively go past the reach of conventional marketing channels, thus creating a ‘living’ ‘buzz’ around your product. This ‘buzz’ attracts and retains customers to your fold. The major techniques you could use include launching: eprize online competitions; rebate initiatives; sweepstakes activities; instant-win drives; tell-friend campaigns, or social bookmarking initiatives. You could use a video to prompt some of these activities.
Simple Alliance will offer cutting-edge interactive promotion strategies for your business. We ensure that your customer is fully engaged in the development, modification, and marketing of your merchandise. Our range of digital promotions tools will give your firm that much needed allure. We will implement proven techniques such as online contests that will definitively place your products above those of your competitors.
