Self-Marketing Part 4 - Promotion

I will talk about the Promotion Part on Marketing. If you missed out on Self-Marketing - Product and Self-Marketing - Place, read them first! It will help you a lot :D

Promotion in marketing, we usually mention about the ways to bring the product to the market. It can be done in many ways.

We can do it through advertising through the mass media, the radio, the TVs, newspaper ads.
Or it can be done through online advertisement, which we can see on Yahoo's Frontpage everyday.
Companies buy the online space of Yahoo.com, and ads will show up when people visit the site.

There are other methods like public relations, and direct marketing, which Dell and other companies have made good use of it to market their products. There is also IMC, Integrated Marketing Communication, a holistic approach to marketing communications. A combination of all or some marketing methods that company can use.

No matter what, companies are always looking for the best IMC, the best way of promotion mix to bring their products into the market.

When promotion is discussed, the amount of money required to promote the products is an issue to. Companies would like to have the highest Return On Investment on the money spent on promotion.

If a company spend $100,000 on marketing, they would like to have at least a sales volume of $100,000 , which means to cover the cost. But of course, companies would like to see higher returns! For example, $300,000, or $500,000. If not company will not be earning any money.

If ROI is lower than expectations, companies will review their IMC, and design another one, which may probably include one or more additional marketing methods. One example is Social Media.

Social Media wave is sweeping by, and many companies see the strength brought about by this wave. Many companies have used Social Media Platforms like Facebook and Twitter to reach out to their customers, to keep them with updates of their latest promotion and updates. This platform has proven its effectiveness, and does not cost much as compared to traditional advertising.

Overall, a company will implement IMC, and review its promotion mix to improve it further so that they reach their customers better, and in other words, increase the sales of the company.

So on to Self-Marketing part on Promotion.

We mention the product- We, Ourselves. Products need to be promoted, to make it known to others. For us, We must also promote ourselves, to make us known to others!

Coming to promoting ourselves, what should we promote? Of course, we will want to promote our Strengths, and hide our weaknesses from others. In your Resume, we will write our Best Achievements, our Best Records in schools, Best results, Best Experience...etc

When we are meeting new people, we are promoting ourselves. When we met up with old friends, we are promoting ourselves too. Our friends want to see how different are we, how much we have changed, are we becoming better persons after so many years?

When we have friends around us, do we help our friends by bringing out their strengths, and inform them about their weaknesses, so they can minimize them?

When we have a friend who get frustrated easily over little things, do we help them to think of bigger things, and ask them not to take it personally? or harm them by calling them 'petty' ?

When our friends met with difficulties, do we encourage them by giving our hands, or we just simply let them struggle themselves?

There are many more instances where we can always lend a hand and help our friends.

Helps others so people will help you.

See that again.

"Help others" comes first. "People will help you" comes second. Not vice-versa.

That's about the Promotion part of Self-Marketing!

Next up, the last P...