Promotion is the most frequently overlooked aspect of a marketing plan. A strong promotion plan outlines the promotional tools or tactics used to achieve your marketing goals. Your promotion plan should also include the projected costs for the year, and an explanation of how your promotion tactics will support your marketing objectives.

Before You Start

Before you can determine which promotional strategy will help you reach your target market, you need to do some competitive research and learn about your target customer. Your research should consist of studying your industry and discovering what other companies are up to. To learn how your competitors get marketing messages across, consult trade journals. Their advertising will show you which features they are focusing on. Learning about your target customer will help prevent wasting your money and time on unproductive promotional activities.

It's crucial that you estimate your costs as accurately as possible. You should be able to obtain a rate schedule from any media outlet and the sales departments of fairs and trade shows.Finally, in order to measure your success or failure in various promotional activities, you need a specific objective stating what you want to accomplish by what date and a way to measure your success. A poor example of measurable objective would be "send out brochures." A better example is "send out 1,000 brochures by May 1."