Designing a successful marketing promotion strategy requires more than just putting together a compelling offer. This article focuses on three important strategies that are guaranteed to increase the effectiveness of your promotions.

Marketing Promotion Strategy #1: Define your VP

VP stands for Value Proposition and it is critical to define what unique value you can bring to your customer. Simply put, if you don't find a way to stand out from the crowd, any marketing promotion strategy you define will be weak at best. You'll be wasting both your time and your money. Take some time to think about what your VP should be and how to effectively communicate it to your target market. I'll give you three items that you should absolutely NOT define as your VP.

1. Low Price - If your only differentiator is price, you're in for a tough time. Price is probably the worst way to attempt to differentiate your company. If your customer sees your company as just a discount shop, you'll lose out to competitors that are able to bring value-added services to the table. In addition, there will always be companies willing to sell at a price lower than yours. Don't get stuck in this trap. Making low pricing your VP is a mistake.

2. Quality Products - Quality products are not a differentiator, they are an expectation.

3. Service - Like point 2 above, good service is an expectation, not a VP. Having good service is simply not a unique way to differentiate your business these days. You must find something else that separates you from your competition.

Your VP needs to focus on a unique way you do business. It can be the way your information is packaged, an incredible guarantee that no one else offers, or the way your product can transform people.

Once you have defined your value proposition, you must ensure that this message comes across clearly to your customers and prospects. An easy way to do this is to develop a business tag line based on your VP and to use this tag in all customer communications.

Marketing Promotion Strategy #2: Match the message to the customer

The more you know and are able to define your various buyer personas, the more you will be able to communicate a tightly focused and powerful message that is relevant to a particular customer.

All too often, I see companies sending out the same promotional material to everyone on their mailing list. What are the chances that every one of your customer types will relate to the exact same promotional message?

The key to promotional success is to not only define your overall target market, but to define the various buyer personas within that target market. Don't underestimate the importance of this marketing promotion strategy.

If you are unfamiliar with the term Buyer Persona, then stop reading now and review this article on defining your buyer personas. Your marketing promotions won't stand a chance if you don't match the right message to the right buyer.

Here's an example of having several buyer personas within an overall target market. In my own case, I run a business that helps small business owners utilize the power of strategic marketing. My target market is small business owners. However, within this target market (which is quite large), I have many niche markets or buyer personas. I have defined a few of them below.

Can you see how each of the above customer types might have different needs and motivations? By understanding my niche markets, or buyer personas, I am in a better position to create a message and promotional offer that speaks to the needs of that particular customer group.

Depending on your budget, you can just focus your marketing promotion on a few customer groups that you deem to have the greatest potential for profit, or you can define and execute specific campaigns for all of your buyer personas.

Marketing Promotion Strategy #3: Give something for nothing

I know the tendency is to go for the sale right away. But if you do, you will most likely fail with your marketing promotion. People don't like to be sold and if all you're doing is pushing your product or service, they'll ignore you. The topic of this marketing promotion strategy is to build trust by giving away something for nothing.

Before you attempt to sell, you must create trust. The best way to do this is to provide something the prospect wants - information. When people surf the Internet, they are looking for information. Your product may seem to solve a particular problem but if you can't create trust, you don't stand a chance of making a sale.

People generally need time to build trust. One promotion isn't going to do it. Neither is a visit or two to your website. Trust can only be created over time by consistently showing the customer you have the knowledge, expertise and values to solve their problem.

Any promotional information you send to a customer or prospect must do the following:

• Demonstrate how your product or service solves a particular problem
• Create trust by giving away something valuable for nothing
• Position you as an expert
• Require a minimal call-to-action

Creating trust will be difficult if you can't quickly demonstrate how your product or service solves a problem for the prospect. This goes back to our discussion on delivering the right message to the right buyer persona.

A great way to start creating trust is to give something valuable to the prospect that helps them solve an issue that is important to them. This could be a downloadable report, a free consultation, or a free service trial. By the way, when I say free, I mean it. No strings attached.

By default, whatever it is that you give away should help position you as an expert in your particular field. In addition, make sure it requires very little effort for the customer to redeem. If it's a complicated multi-step process, you'll get few takers.

A marketing promotion strategy that includes the above tips will transform your business by building trust, ensuring you have targeted the right message to the right customer, and by creating value. Take these three points seriously and you will find your promotions AND your business reaching new levels.