Business Promotion
When Winston Churchill said, “Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is – the strong horse that pulls the whole cart”, he forgot to add that the strong horse also needs occasional shots to keep stronger. Just as a person needs nutrients, a business needs promotion. After all, how is the businesses product or service going to be sold, if there is no promotion? The business may be coming out with the best products or services, but in the absence of any promotion, how is the world going to know about it?
Business promotion is thus an extremely important activity for any business – big or small. However, this promotion need not be of a very expensive sort (but sometimes they are). In fact, the mind's eye plays a much bigger role in this than money.
At one level business promotion can be a very low key affair. In fact, one may start with the existing stationary like the business card, letterhead, envelopes, fax messages and email format. Instead of a single-faced business card, one may go for a folded business card whose outside face will indicate the name of the business person and the business name while the inside face may contain salient features of the business house or the replica of any prize that the business house has acquired recently.
Next comes the letterheads and the envelopes that are the ambassadors working free for the business house when carrying the company slogan and other interesting and relevant information. Some business houses change their slogan every six months to keep in touch with the market changes. Besides the return address, the business envelop may contain the phone and fax number as well as the URL for making it look more business-like.
Promotional Business
There are other tools for business promotion too such as merchandising. This includes embossing the name, slogan or the logo of the business on pens, coffee mugs, shirts and other such things. All this enhance the visibility of the entity and ultimately leads to business promotion as the visibility of these things can be quite high. Many businesses also give these things away free to their employees and associates with business promotion in mind.
Similarly, the electronic documents like the email may be updated with the company’s latest business promotion information as well as special seasonal rebates offered by the company. To make the email look more realistic, one may use signature files of contact person or persons. There are many businesses that capture/ask for email addresses (opt in) of visitors to a website.
And once the person has submitted such data, the business publishes electronic Newsletters and sends them through email to let the person know about the special offers and discounts. All this achieve the same result – that is business promotion.
The same goes true with out going fax messages where all promotional information may be included as a routine matter.