Marketing Mix - What Are My Choices When Deciding How to Promote My Product?

In recent years, so many new ways of promoting new products have become available to us. This is great because many of them are inexpensive if perhaps a bit time consuming. Social media, article writing and blogs have become the marketing methods to learn and use. Other more traditional means of promoting new products such as PR, printed advertising and promotional gifts are still there at our disposal as well. The important thing is to get a good mix of all or at least some of these methods of product promotion. Here I would like to list some of the best ways of promoting new products.

Promotional Gifts: Promotional items have long been a favourite means of promoting businesses and new products. Many, such as pens, mouse mats, mugs, keyrings and stress balls can be printed in brilliant full colour for attractive and successful marketing campaigns. With promotional gifts, you can expect both long and short term benefits. Depending on your product, you could find that you earn new customers immediately upon giving away your promotional merchandise. Other products may take longer to see the benefits. It is important to look for gifts that are used regularly as these are the gifts that people will see the most.

Printed Advertising: In some business sectors, printed advertising is still working quite well. In others this is not the case. If you have never done any type of printed magazine or newspaper advertising, it is a good idea to do a little research. Look and see if any of your competitors are advertising and if they do, try to find what works for them. Often business will use a PR for promoting them in printed and for that matter web based publications. This too is a form of printed advertising that could work for you. Again, it is not for everyone as your product may get lost if you are not reaching the right audience.

Writing: This is everything that has to do with written promotion. Press releases can fit into this category as well. Internet article marketing is the new up and coming way of promoting your new products but be careful and ensure you understand all the rules. In most cases, article marketing is not used as a press release. In fact, blatant self or product promotion is not allowed but there are ways of promoting your new product without tooting your own horn so to speak. Blogging and micro blogging as you see on Twitter and Facebook are both very popular and if done correctly are very good ways of promoting your products. Again, it could be seen to be in bad taste if all you do is promote your products with your blogs.

SEO: Search engine optimisation is an area that is too complex to begin to discuss in this article but it is a good idea to get to know a few of the most important aspects of SEO. A lot of it is text based but videos and podcasts are increasingly being used very successfully. If you wish to promote your new products, either you or someone in your organisation needs take this area of promotion very seriously.