Guide to SP Techniques: Introduction - Down to SP basics

After all, how do you decide which technique makes best use of your budget?

How do you define what you want a particular mechanic to do? Indeed, do you need to bother with competitions, prize draws and CRM pushes when it would be so much simpler to succumb to retailer pressure and use your spend for price promotions?

It all depends on what you're trying to achieve. Which is why this year's Guide to Sales Promotion Techniques doesn't actually begin with techniques or mechanics, but with objectives. All marketing strategy flows from the marketer's brand objectives, and promotional marketing is no different.

To bring it back to the basics, objectives define what the marketer wants the activity to achieve - what desired change in behaviour a particular push should instigate. Setting clear, defineable objectives is important because, at the end of the day, they're the crucial springboard from which agencies and other suppliers determine what techniques and mechanics are best used to provide the most effective solution.

As Chris Bestley, the Institute of Sales Promotion's (ISP) education consultant, points out, promotional objectives need to be precise and measurable, or you can't assess success or failure.

They also define strategy: this includes not only the technique but also the target audience, the means by which the offer is communicated to this audience, the presentation and language, the timing, and the amount of money that is available to achieve the objective.

"Ideally, there should be only one or two objectives per campaign," stresses Bestley.

Finding the right techniques

P&I's guide aims to establish what techniques are best suited for which objectives. It should be a starting point for newcomers, and act as a helpful refresher for more experienced marketers.

With the help of the study notes that accompany the ISP's diploma and certificate, P&I has identified six objectives which we think most commonly face marketers. This is the first of a two-part guide, and the three objectives tackled in this issue are: generating trial, raising awareness and encouraging loyalty.

Each section explains the objective that is the focus of the article and goes on to define the techniques and mechanics that present the most appropriate potential solutions.

The second part, published in January's edition, will cover driving repeat purchase, growing perception and gathering data.

It should be noted that this guide can cover only the basics when it comes to going through the mechanics that make up the foundation of promotional marketing. But it should give you a starting point that provides plenty of useful tips, whether you want to get consumers to try your brand, boost its profile, or ensure that they stay true to it.

BESTLEY'S TOP TIPS

Generating trial This is the time to wheel out the big guns - new products have a limited amount of time to establish a foothold so you want to be using the thermonuclear devices not the small arms fire. The more generous you are, the more people you will attract - price promotions and try-me-free offers cost a lot but make their mark. But beware, no amount of introductory prices or free samples will help a poor product take off. If the product isn't up to it, you just speed up its demise.

Page 5: Raising awareness This usually involves using promotions to make the brand more visible - in FMCG, the promotion is often part of the price for achieving an off-shelf display - somewhat of a Trojan horse. The sales effect will come from increased visibility and not necessarily the promotion itself. Reasonably low cost/low response techniques are therefore ideal and preferably fixed cost. The more the prize or premium can form part of the display or have an impact, the better.

Page 6: Encouraging loyalty Emotional loyalty is for the birds. What you want is behavioural loyalty. And in today's highly competitive market, every purchase is made against a backdrop of other product offers, so loyalty ends up being a kind of trial continuum. Constant price promotions can devalue a brand, so a healthy mix of discount and added-value promotions will ensure that withdrawals from the "brand equity bank account" are matched (and hopefully exceeded) by deposits.

Page 9: Chris Bestley is ISP education consultant, and diploma and certificate course tutor. (See www.isp.org.uk for details of 2005 courses).