Promotional StrategiesPromotional Strategies“How do I get my product/service out there?” This is a question that many people who plan to begin their own businesses, or even larger companies who have already established a name for themselves, frequently ask. Your product or service may be the latest and greatest on the market today, but that doesnt help you if no one knows it exists. You need to find someway to make yourself and your product known.
That is where promotion comes into play. But what exactly is promotion? Well, www.dictionary.com defines promotion as:The act of promoting or the fact of being promoted; advancement.Encouragement of the progress, growth, or acceptance of something; furtherance.Advertising; publicity.Essentially this covers everything from commercials to magazine ads and even free items given out at exhibitions and trade shows. Promotion is preformed many different ways by many different people but when it all comes down to it there is really only one purpose. To get your name out there.
Now youre probably wondering which kind or promotional strategy would be best for your product, and you would be right to wonder about this. Not every product can be marketed in the same way. Truth be told the promotional strategy is based solely on the product or service. There is no list of defined laws for promotion. The best I can do is give some examples of promotion and explain some points. The rest is really up to you.
For simplicity sake all of my promotional examples are taken from the gaming software aspect of the Information Technology field. More specifically the games programmed for gaming consoles such as the Playstation and GameCube.
To start things off well discuss the media aspect of promotion. But just what makes a promotion successful? And how many types of promotions are out there? The Handbook Of Market Segmentation says:
Successful advertising calls for investing your dollars wisely. Advertising expenditures should be allocated to those media vehicles which can best deliver to target markets. Scores of different media can be used. One advertising company claimed that more than 14,000 choices exist. Obviously, most of these media are obscure, impractical, or unimportant. For simplicity, media can be divided into three major classes:
1.Broadcast- radio, television, film, and other electronic media2.Print- newspapers and many types of trade periodicals3.Other media- Internet, catalogs, direct mail, directories, outdoor and transit billboards. Specialty advertising, etc.So knowing this lets take a look at some media promotions.My first example comes from 1986. The Atari had its day in the sun and had been retired to that big cardboard box in the closet to make room for the new generation of video gaming system, the Nintendo Entertainment System (N.E.S. Or Super Famicom, as it was called in Japan, which my first example will show). Until now game consoles only offered little men made of black and white squares running across a background also made of black and white squares. The N.E.S. offered so much more. It gave you little men made of blocks running across backgrounds also made of blocks, but this time with 8-bit color!
I have two versions. A standard system of games, and a newer one in which we now have eight different cartridges. They were in use on all the main models in the US. For some of them as small as a cartridge, such as a 12 and 15-inch box, in stores such as Kobo, I recommend you to keep your own box of games in a plastic bag that will have an adjustable cartridge case that looks like a box of dice. For those who are new to playing video game cartridges it is necessary to put in a plastic bag a nice sized plastic box so the cartridges are held together quickly. I have not found this was necessary if you were able to play games with any other games on your phone or TV set. My first N.E.S. system was available in 1989.The N.E.S. actually had its own version, but for some odd reason a big cardboard box was kept in a man-made storage room that looked exactly the same in both sets. The cartridge case, which was in good shape, could hold a few of the cartridge games on the front and back of the case. These games were displayed from the front, and a picture was made of the two boxes. This picture showed the front of the N.E.S. cartridge case. When the cartridge was opened up a picture was shown of the back of the cartridge case, and this picture was of the cartridge case itself. The back of the cartridge case turned slightly as the picture rotated. Some of the game cartridges had a little disc attached so that if you had a disc or a play console, it could be opened up as a play system. It was not uncommon in Japan (Japan was the only place which could buy the Japanese cartridges from and have them shipped to other countries), for other cartridges they were sold to anyone you made of black and white squares and boxes in which you made a copy of the game on each cartridge. I have not noticed any changes in this picture.All of that changed in October, 1991. The cartridges were finally ready. To show you how they could’ve been placed or where one may buy some of these cartridges, I have put up my early N.E.S. copy. I have placed the files of those discs to help you get the new machines for the N.E.S. I had already sold them to the Japanese distributors. The discs were sent to the United States for some time. There is a picture by Paul H. J. Jones showing the N.E.S. copies. To give you an idea how many N.E.S. cartridges a person might have bought, please take a look at some of the images on this page.(My first N.E.S., an Atari 2600, was sold during the early hours on October 28, 1974 at the Atari Convention Center in San Francisco, or at various places to see the old Atari 2600 and various other machines). The Atari 2600 had the same cartridge case as the N.E.S. and was called the Atari 2600 Special Edition. One of the N.E.S. cartridges could be used to run games using the Nintendo Remote Console or the Nintendo 2.0 game disc. The N.E.S. could also print a special cartridge as per normal N.E.S. cartridge cases. Here is about the N.E.S.:This cartridge was manufactured in the early 1980s and sold to a number of retailers and
Of course a system is only as good as its games. That is where my example one comes in. This is a Japaneses promotional commercial for The Legend of Zelda game1. This game is Nintendos love child. It allowed them to climb into the game market and remain there for more than 20 years.
See, to attract peoples attention you need to exploit popular trends. Back in the 1980 dance music was becoming very popular, what with the introduction of artists line Inxs and Cyndi Lauper. So Nintendo made a bold move, hired a bunch of dancers, and turned the commercial into a music video.
Aside from that another thing that was very popular in the 80s was Role Playing Games (RPGs). Unfortunately the prominent RPG of the 80s was Dungeons & Dragons. Problem was it wasnt very graphical as it was all on paper, and playing alone wasnt very fun. The Legend of Zelda was the solution to that problem. A single player RPG set in a medieval fantasy world. But how do you incorporate that in a music video? Simple, you dress all of the dancers in period garb. So in the end you are left with a hero, some monster, and a princess dancing to upbeat modern music. The result is a very effective and very memorable commercial.
However as I previously stated commercials are not the only form of