The goal of marketing is to stand out and be noticed. Good marketing keeps drawing your customers' attention to your products and services. Your clearly defined, well-packaged, competitively-priced products and services are the foundation of your marketing.

The newer you are in your market, the harder you have to work to attract and retain new customers. Many of your marketing activities will focus on communicating to customers the features and benefits of your products (i.e. compared to your competitors). Consider which promotional activities will best meet your marketing needs.

Types of promotional activities

Product and service promotion is the most common form of marketing. Promotional activities can include:

• advertising - you can advertise your product, service or brand in newspapers, radio, television, magazines, outdoor signage and online. Learn more about how to make your advertising successful.
• personal selling or telemarketing - effective personal selling relies on good interpersonal and communication skills, excellent product and service knowledge and the ability to sell product benefits to prospective customers.
• publicity - created by sending media releases to print and broadcasting media, giving interviews to the media and from word-of-mouth. Learn more about public relations.
• short-term sales promotions - market your product or service using coupons, competitions and contests. Find out about the benefits of coupon websites.
• direct marketing - involves sending letters, emails, pamphlets and brochures to individual target clients, often followed by personal selling or telemarketing. Learn more about direct marketing.

You can use any combination of these methods to target your customers. The right promotional mix will help you satisfy your customers' needs, increase sales, improve your results and increase your ability to reach multiple customers within your target market.

Online marketing

Online marketing is often cost-effective and is becoming increasingly important to businesses. Developing a separate online marketing plan to evaluate your options and help implement your strategy is vital in the modern marketplace.

Be aware that your online marketing may require different training to other forms of marketing. Depending on the type of business you run and your own particular marketing strategy, you and your staff may need to prioritise learning how to run or edit a website or effectively use social media, before learning how to communicate over the phone, or face-to-face.

Many online marketing tools of the past - such as pop-up advertising - are no longer acceptable to internet users. Learn more about doing business online.