Advertising & Marketing of Jewelry

Jewelry is the temptation that no woman can resist in the world. Every woman is crazy about the ornaments. Jewelry can be defined as the ornaments that are worn by men and women to accessorize or for personal adornment. Basically jewelry is used to intensify the beauty; jewelry items basically include bracelets, necklaces, rings, anklets, earrings etc. When it comes to running jewelry business, it needs thorough planning at every step. Jewelry business seems very profitable but to reach at that stage you should establish itself in the jewelry business sector as a brand. There is so much variety and so much competition in this business that marketing of the business has becomes very crucial. When you are starting a new jewelry business, at the initial stage you have to make marketing plans to promote the business.

Strategies for marketing and advertising jewelry business

In jewelry business presentation matters a lot and it is a critical aspect for attracting more and more customers. Marketing is that area where you can use your own creative abilities to derive new and innovative ways to capture target customers. Skipping this step can lead to wastage of time, money and efforts. Marketing is basically a collection of tools to search for potential customers and to persuade them to turn into actual buyers and advertising is a part of marketing and other parts are sale promotion, publicity, personal selling and public relations which can be used as a way to increase sales either collectively or individually depends on the company's needs and financial strength.

But firstly in the starting you have to do market research to know about your potential consumers and gain all the information regarding them. You should try to get data about their age, sex, profession they are in, lifestyle, tastes and preferences. Only then you can decide about the marketing strategy that is best suited to your target consumers. Once you are done with market research, then the planning department will be able to make marketing plans to achieve the desired results. Planning department can derive many kinds of strategies at the same time to boost the sales. There are some strategies that are used to market and advertise jewelry business to get the desired sales. Strategies can be online and it can be offline also depending upon the target customers and the area you want to capture, online marketing is affordable and easy to do whereas offline marketing is quite expensive. Strategies can be divided in two broad areas.

Online marketing

• Website creation: Create a website for your company and display all your products and their price range. You can take help of some web design company to do it for you. You can also implement an e-cart application for customers to place an order online with the help of the web design company.

• Online advertising: You can publish banner advertisements, pop-up advertisements showing the name of your company and current products on social networking and other sites related to jewelry business.

• Newsletters you should start your company's newsletter in which potential consumers can sign up and get updates of new products and news about latest jewelry collections, special offers and discounts.

• Auction: Put your jewelry on auction on eBay. E Bay provides you with a secure platform to sell you jewelry products online.

• Email your friends and family the online link of your websites and other shopping sites non which you have put the products for sale. They can also be the potential customers.

• Talking on message boards and building links with other jewelry owners can also help in marketing.

Offline marketing

• Hold an inauguration party: Holding an inauguration party for your new business enterprise is the effective way to make the people aware about your company. You should also place a notice in the newspaper inviting all.

• Offering discounts and promotion offers: Giving promotional offers and promotional products as gifts and discounts is also a good way of promoting your brand. Some of the promotional products you can use for this are engraved pen, office flap bags, coffee mugs, mouse pads, T-shirts, office accessories, calendars, travel pouches etc

• Organizing promotional event: Hold a special event for your company’s brand promotion. Put a notice in the newspaper inviting all. Offer discounts to selected customers or you organize a lucky draw. Give a trendy name to the event.

• Press release: Place an advertisement in the newspapers; you can also publish your company’s website with it so people can check your products and services online. You can also give a advertisement in classified column of the newspaper for local customers or if you want to cater the customers all over India it should be on the page that is most read by the newspaper readers.

• Business cards: Have your business cards printed, by the help of some printing company, that should have your company’s name along with the contact number and website address. In addition it should also have your company’s logo. Hand it out to people you met at social events, parties to give a word out about your business.

• Yellow pages: Placing advertisements in the yellow pages whether online or offline gives your company an exposure, so that an interested customer can find out about your company and can avail your services.

• TV commercials: Giving advertisements on TV can make your brand popular through out the country.

Scope of Jewellery Market

Jewelery is something that always rules the hearts of women around the world. From economic point of view also it holds a major significance and is considered as the best source of investment. Women have always had an inclination towards jewelery and especially Indian women are crazy about it whether it is gold jewelery, diamond or platinum. You can guess it from the fact that India is the largest consumer of the gold with 25% share in total consumption of gold.

Jewelery as a business

From economic point of view, jewelery business is considered a business which has lots of profit yielding potential on account of its great demand. That business is having least risk quotient because the price of the metal used in making jewellery has the tendency of getting increased only. So even if there is no demand still business can earn huge profits by selling the metal only.

Scope of jewelery business

There is so much scope in jewelery business to earn fortunes. Jewelery business is divided in various sectors. You should have to make a decision on the basis of your likings and interest that what area of jewelery business suits you more. Following are the areas in which you can enter and earn huge amounts of profits.

* Processing gems and metals
* Jewelery designing
* Manufacturing jewelery
* Retailing of finished jewelery
* Jewelery supply chain

Extraction of jewelery material

Jewelery material can be categorized in two areas

Gemstone mining: gemstone mining is further categorized in diamond and non diamond mining.

Non diamond mining: the vast majority of non diamond material is mined at low cost. So it is a great source of income of developing countries people who does mining at small scale. Countries which are majorly included in non-diamond extraction are India, Brazil Tanzania, Mali, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Thailand and Mali. That is basically popular in rural areas.

Whereas diamond mining includes huge costs so it can’t be done at small level. You need to have a large investment if you want to enter in those areas.

Metal mining: in metal mining we take gold, silver, platinum, titanium, stainless steel, tungsten, rhodium mining. These all metals are used in jewelery manufacturing. They all vary greatly in price, strength and other attributes.

Processing gems and metals: jewelery industry is very complex and involves many businesses at every stage. So processing and manufacturing has been divided. In processing stage there are basically two areas.

Cutting and polishing of gems

Finishing metals

It is advisable for companies to focus on one core area and achieve specialization in that area to earn huge profits.

Jewelery designing:

After the processing of gems and metal the next stage comes in which design of the final layout of the jewelery is made. The companies involved in this area hire services of professional jewelery designers to make the exclusive designs because the jewelery sells on its design only.

Jewelery manufacturing:

Jewelery manufacturing is giving real shape to the blueprint prepared in the jewelery designing phase. It is the stage where final product of the jewellery business is prepared.

Jewelery retail and consumer markets:

After the preparation of final product the next question arises to make them reach to the target consumers. So we need proper distribution channels for this. At the distribution end basically small and unbranded retailers dominate. There are branded retailers also but they are very few in numbers.

Supply chain:

In between there are many small traders whose trading relations are confidential and hardly visible too general public basically to hide the information of supply source and destination source from competitors as well as general public. So these are the basic areas in which one can enter anyone wants to enter in jewelery business depending on the personal interests and skills required for the particular field.

Limitations of jewelery business:

Despite seeming an easy source of making huge money there are some limitations also in this business that one has to consider while making entry in to this business.

The high risk quotient:

Only the persons who are daring enough to bear larger risks should enter this business. The jewelery business is not considered a good idea for conscious natured persons.

Strict licensing:

The large companies who tends to be in mining industry in jewelery business require a ‘license to operate‘. And they have to abide by stringent international standards.

Limitations of perfect completion:

Retail sale of jewelery is close to the perfect competition. In perfect completion as you know there is large number of buyers and sellers leading to huge competition resulting in uniform pricing and low margins.

The small scale mining impacts:

The small scale mining despite having positive impacts like providing employment in rural areas having many social and environmental drawbacks like child labour, poor health safety hazards. And large scale mining also leads to many negative impacts like waste management, groundwater-contamination, acid rock drainage, and pollution, low labor cost.

How to run a Jewelry Business

Jewelry has been an integral part of human civilization. Some people wear jewelry because they adore it and some wear it as a necessity, you won’t find any woman who is not wearing any sort of jewelry. Jewelry is also used at auspicious occasions like marriages, engagements, etc. Jewelry is a symbols power and prestige. Jewelry is also worn to deliver style statement and be fashionable. Jewelry retail stores are one of the most profitable businesses now days. These stores are primarily engaged in the retail sale of jewelry, such as diamonds and other precious stones mounted in precious metals and sold as rings, earrings, necklaces, nose pins, bracelets, sterling, plated silverware, watches, etc. Running a jewelry business is quite simple if you are an expert jeweler. Jewelry is something which attracts both men and women. For some of the people jewelry is a fashionable entity at the same some of them considered jewelry as an asset. Jewelry is something which is always in demand. Your Jewelry business will never run short of customers. However if you are new at jewelry business it may be a little bit difficult task in the starting but after some time you will find unlimited opportunities in front of you. It’s a highly profitable business. A retail jewelry business buys and sells old and new jewelry item to or from public. In jewelry retail industry, good merchandising and effective marketing are the only sources of profitability. If you think that the big jewelry store can affect your profitability then you are wrong, smaller retailers can flourish and have prosperous future. The main thing which will decide the success of your retail jewelry store is the retailer's strategy.

You will have to take care of few things while running a jewelry retail store:

Location for jewelry retail store:

The place where your jewelry store is situated matters a lot for the success of your business. Look for an easily approachable location. A store needs traffic passing by it every time. So you must open your jewelry retail store at malls or at city shopping centers. It is easy to attract customers at a crowded market.

Staff for jewelry retail store:

Jewelry retail stores should hire staff having knowledge about jewelry. Experienced and dedicated staff is a major factor behind the success of any business. A jewelry retail store may require staff like salesmen, jewelry designer, goldsmith, gemologist, etc. You need to have skilled marketers for your jewelry retail store, who are capable enough of converting the leads into the sales. Your staff must possess great convincing skills. Main task of sales person is to showcase jewelry items in their stores and sell them to customers. Make sure staff you chose is reliable. On the other hand you can hire a designer to create unique jewelry items for your jewelry retail store. A jewelry designer should be an experienced goldsmith who can design jewelry items using various precious metals and gems like gold, silver, platinum, diamonds etc.

Offer various payment methods:

Your retail store should provide all the available payment methods to their customers, like you can accept payment through credit cards, debit cards etc. It will increase the goodwill of your retail store and can increase customer’s satisfaction for you.

Specializing in specific types of jewelry items:

You can make your retail jewelry store unique from other by specializing in specific types of jewelry products such as weeding rings or diamond jewelry etc. You can go for any of the specialized field it will help your retail store to get success easily.

Consider customer’s needs and demands:

You should take care of customer’s choice and requirement, what exactly they want to buy. You should offer right jewelry to them. Design the jewelry with fresh outlook for them; offer something different to your customers.

Observe competitor for your jewelry retail store:

Learn from other jewelry business as they are mostly run by experienced persons. Figure out at their market strategy and what types of jewelry do they specialize in. Look for the jewelry line which is not available by your competitors. Make an identity for your retail jewelry store by displaying unique jewelry line which is not available by any other retail jewelry business.

Promotion of jewelry retail store:

Every business nowadays requires networking to survive and find prospective clients. A jewelry retail store is no different from others. A jewelry retail store would always require some sort of promotion to stay in the business and compete in the market. A jewelry retail store needs to promote its jewelry collection in a right manner to find potential clients. Word to mouth is the best type a promotion a jewelry business can get, it always has a positive impact on a person as it is done by a third party and is a non paid source of promotion. It adds to the goodwill and reputation of a jewelry business. A jewelry retail store can also chose paid method of promotions such as Radio, News Paper, and T.V. A properly marketed jewelry retail store never has shortage of business and clients.

Business Planning

Strategic Business Planning

The ability to set and implement a strategic business plan is a key skill of good leadership. A strategic business plan determines EVERYTHING that happens to and in a business. To a large extent it determines the level of excellence that can be reached.

Operating Strategies

To be successful, written operating strategies are a must for any business, from start-up to large, from a tiny one-person business to large corporations with hundreds of employees.

Marketing & Sales Strategies

Consumer Reports show that the average person is exposed to anywhere from 247 to 3000 sales messages a day. That’s a lot! In the face of that, you may be thinking, "How do I get my message seen, read and converted to money in the bank?"

SWOT Analysis

The SWOT analysis is the foundation for developing your strategies and tactics that then become the road map for writing your business operating plan.
Funding Strategies

Start ups and growing businesses always need money, sometimes even when they don’t think they do. The questions are: How does my business get money? When, where and how do I start looking for it?

Corruption & Marketing

You are corrupted. I am corrupted. Everybody is corrupted.

The moment you born you become corrupted.

That’s may be sad but it’s the truth.

Demosthenes was a great politician of ancient Greece. He said it already around the IV century BC in Athens.

You could say it all comes from the power, money, hypocrisy.

But anthropology believes it comes from the language.

The moment the primitives began to talk, they began to be corrupted.

How?

If we would all agree, we would not need to talk.

We would walk on the streets with a big smile. Maybe because we would be trying to bite the flies for lunch.

Evolution went into another direction.

We use the language to achieve an agreement.

This means that we first are corrupted and we talk to try to set a shared knowledge.

Marketing is way full of corruption because every brand says that its product is the best one on the planet.

We don’t agree, usually.

Marketing has to create a shared knowledge between the brand and the clients.

In order to achieve it, you need to create a common language through a clear brand identity.

To avoid corruption, you need to be able to talk to your clients.

Digital Marketing Trends - 2011

As 2011 fast approaches, digital marketers are gearing up for yet another year of changes that will incorporate both the transformational and the incremental.
From the economy's influence on the burgeoning "do-it-yourself" culture to an increasing reliance on collective wisdom, information-based art, and remote computing, digital experts at Last Exit (via Marketing Charts) have put together the following list of top digital marketing trends they believe will play out in the year ahead.

1. Facebook Replaces Personal Email: As Face book becomes increasingly used as a verb (e.g."I Face booked you today") in ways that Hotmail and Gmail never were, it will be interesting to see the extent to which it will displace personal email as a communication tool. It’s already completely permission based, there is no spam (yet), and no address book required - your friends are already there.

2. The Cloud Helps Open-Source Software Make Proper Money: Open-source software projects that were typically the purview of programmers and technophiles are now available to the masses. In one example, Beanstalk, a fully hosted, version-controlled code repository that uses the Subversion open-source project has created a subscription based service that - for a small fee - removes the hassle of setting up Subversions and maintaining servers. Services like this can really only be financially viable with cloud computing infrastructure - so companies such as Beanstalk don't have the huge upfront capital outlay for servers. With the right skills any open-source project can be commercialized this way.

3. Mobile Commerce - The Promise That Has Never Delivered, Yet: Though mobile phones have, for a while now, delivered real benefits to global societies by facilitating the transfer of money, only recently has mobile device use extended to payment for goods and services. The game changer has - and will continue to be - the iPhone/iTunes platform. In-app purchases on the iPhone can tempt users to buy small items, upgrades, updates, etc, while iTunes holds their precious credit card information. All, of course, is done in seamless fashion, enough to promote impulse purchases. It would seem like an easy task for this to be extended to other platforms with PayPal or Google Checkout, but so far it has not been done.

4. Fewer Registrations - One Sign-in Fits All: As consumers grow increasingly frustrated and resentful about registering yet again on another website, juggling different IDs and remembering a dizzying array of passwords, information-managing services such as Face book Connect and Open ID will becoming even more useful and will continue to be adopted at great speed through 2010.

5. Disruption vs. Continuity - Alternatives to the "Big Idea": As the significance of social networks continues to grow, businesses are investing more in community building as a marketing driver. According to the recent Tribalization of Business study released by Deloitte, 94% of businesses will continue or increase their investment in online communities and social media and, for the majority of these companies, their marketing function will drive this investment. At the same time, as evidenced by Google's recent release of "free floating" social tools, such as Google Waves and Side wiki, there is an increasing shift toward online identity and social activity being an integrated part of the network as a whole, rather than concentrated within discrete platforms such as Face book.
With the increasing emphasis on marketing and advertising through social networks and the increasing pervasiveness of social tools, marketing objectives come into conflict with advertising techniques. While advertising has often sought to distinguish itself and stop the consumer in their tracks with a disruptive "big idea," the emphasis is now shifting toward persuasion through fitting organically into the consumer's social sphere. It will always be the objective of marketing to provide creativity and novelty, but the way in will increasingly be one of persistence and continuity.

6. Self-Sufficiency: The Continuing Evolution of Web-Driven, Open-Source DIY Culture: Much has been said about the power and potential of collective intelligence, and many of the breakthrough solutions of tomorrow appear to lie in more effectively pooling the resources and intelligence of our increasingly networked world. On the other side of the equation, the power of pooled intelligence and networked resources have empowered individuals to take on more and more complex undertakings themselves.
From drawing on the collective intelligence of blogs and university open courseware to educate themselves, to services like spoon flower and cafe press that facilitate small-scale production, to offline resource pooling like pop- up retail and collective office spaces, individuals are discovering that it has never been easier to try doing it themselves.

7. Info-Art: Where we once had pop-psychologists and pop-philosophers, we now appear to have pop-statisticians and pop-economists. The growing wealth of data and the access to rich and diverse data sources that are significant by-products of information networks have made the art of data analysis a defining skill of our time.
At the same time, the skill of elegantly visualizing that data has become a defining art of our time. The art of the info graphic is becoming increasingly pervasive as people look more and more to the growing amount of data at our disposal for insight, and more refined as the interactions of that data becomes more complex. Expect to see greater innovation spurred by more elegant ways of capturing and visualizing information by a growing number of info-artists.

8. Crowd Sourcing: Across many industries and organizations, crowd sourcing will become a growing tool as part of various outsourcing strategies. Organizations will mobilize the passionate special-interest groups to not only carry a message but also to lead and take part in activities on their behalf. From political canvassing to software development, from people journalism to environmental activism, expect to see huge growth in crowd sourcing models provoked and led, in large part, by digital social media strategies.

9. More Flash, Not Less: Outside of the obvious brand sites, micro-sites and media sites (video, games, etc.) where it appears absolutely necessary, flash has often been looked down upon if not completely discounted by both techies and search engine optimizers. It seemed to face an uncertain future as a viable tool for serious websites and applications such as ecommerce tools and corporate websites. However, Adobe's rich media tool has enjoyed the grit and determination of its advocates and external development community. Now, several tricks, authoring tools and server side scripting workarounds have meant that Flash-built websites no longer serve up a single, impenetrable page. They offer deep, searchable, index able sites that will allow acute, detailed traffic and behavioral analytics and search engine optimization.
As websites continue to increase in their importance as a company's storefront, the demand for rich, brand-extending experiences will also increase. Further proliferation of fast broadband will reduce download issues while the adoption of Flash on mobile devices will dramatically increase and fuel reach and the desire/need for highly usable, brand transporting, conversion oriented experiences

PROMOTION STRATEGY

PROMOTION STRATEGY

Day in and day out, people are bombarded with messages.
There is no way to evaluate and act on all these messages
so we pick and choose between them. This makes the choice
of promotional tools extremely important.

There are four main promotional tools: advertising,
personal selling, sales promotion, and publicity. The
following table gives examples of each tool along with
advantages and disadvantages of each.



Development of Promotional Strategy:

Developing an effective promotional strategy demands more
than just being aware of the tools of promotion. Promotion
is an ongoing process that requires much planning. A
strategy is simply a careful plan. The effectiveness of
your strategy depends on more than how much money you put
into it. Effectiveness results from the thoroughness of
your planning and the consistency with which you carry it
out. The following nine steps outline an easy to follow
procedure for developing an effective promotional
strategy.

STEP 1-FIGURING OUT WHO YOU ARE

Establishing Your Identity

When people talk about developing a promotional image,
they often forget about first developing their identity.
Identity and image are not synonymous. Identity is what
you really are. Image is how others see you. This is an
important distinction because how you see yourself may not
be how you are seen by the public.

To manage how others see you, first clarify your identity.
You can then project it in such a strong way that identity
and image are the same. To accomplish this step, make a
list of all your characteristics including such things as
facilities, location, price, and attractions (see
Extension bulletin E-1957 to learn how to do this).

STEP 2-DECIDING ON YOUR PRODUCT

Developing a Theme

the list of characteristics that make up your identity
will be a long one. You cannot and should not promote all
of these characteristics. You need to decide on what part
of your identity you want to promote. This will be the
theme for your promotional strategy.

A theme is the one main idea, or message you want to
communicate with your promotional efforts. The theme must
be intimately tied to your identity. To determine a theme,
ask yourself the following questions. "What is there about
my facility that would be appealing to visitors?" 'What
can I tell them that would make them want to come and
visit us?" "What makes my facility unique?"

STEP 3-DECIDING WHO YOU WANT TO ATTRACT

Identifying Your Target Audience

Deciding on your identity and theme is the foundation for
your strategy. Build on this foundation by deciding on who
you want to reach. You must decide on and contact your
target audience, those people you want to reach with your
information. Do you want to attract local or non-local
visitors? Repeat or first-time visitors? Families or
singles? Young or old?

Deciding on who you want to attract is important. To reach
your target audience, you must identify their needs and
how they obtain information about recreation and tourism
opportunities. (See Extension bulletin E-1940 for more on
this topic).

Different groups have different needs. Senior citizens
have different needs than do young adults. Handicappers
have different needs than do non-handicappers. When you
are developing your message you should address some of
these needs.

Different groups also get information from different
sources. Some groups get information through informal
sources, such as past visitors or local people. Others go
through formal sources such as travel agencies. Some
choose personal sources, such as friends or neighbors,
while others will go through non-personal sources, such as
reading every brochure they see. Identifying these sources
of information is important so that you can find your
target audience and distribute your information directly
to them.

STEP 4-WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH WITH YOUR STRATEGY

Establishing Your Objectives

Before going any further, decide what you want to
accomplish with your promotional strategy. This means
establishing objectives that are very specific based on
what you want the outcome of your strategy to be.
Objectives should have the following characteristics:

1. They should identify who you are trying to reach.

2. They should state how much change you want to
accomplish through your promotion.

3. They should state how much time it will take to
accomplish your objectives.

4. They should state what you want people to do because of
your promotion.

Some examples of objectives:

* Increase visitation of tent campers by 10% over the next
three years.

* Increase Detroit residents' awareness of the
charter-boat industry by 10% this year.

* Increase total sales to out-of-state travelers by 25%
this year.

* Increase total roadside farm produce sales by 15% over
the growing season.

STEP 5-ACTUALLY GETTING YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS

Developing Your Message Content

An important part of your content is your theme. Do not
try to get across two or more ideas in the same message.
This does not work, and will hinder your message. All
information in your message must center on your theme.
Your theme has to bind your message together. Keeping the
content centered on your theme will also help limit the
amount of information you present. This will help keep
your message short and to the point.

There are two types of information that you can use:
informative and persuasive. Informative messages tell
people something without regard to their response.
Persuasive information tries to convince people to do
something.

There are also two types of persuasive information. The
first type, rational persuasive information, uses logical
arguments based on supportive evidence. The second type,
motivational persuasive information, appeals to people's
needs and desires.

STEP 6-DECIDING HOW TO SAY IT

Developing Your Message Structure

Putting your message together is called message structure.
How it is put together depends on what type of information
you are using. For persuasive messages, it will depend on
whether you are using rational or motivational
information.

A rational message has three parts. The first part is the
claim of the message. This is what you want people to
believe is true of you. The second part is the evidence,
or facts, that you use to support your claim. The third
part is the warrant. The warrant is a general hypothetical
statement that ties the evidence and the claim together.
It is the "glue" that holds the message together and helps
it makes sense.

With rational messages, you need to decide if you want to
use a one-sided argument or a two-sided argument. A
one-sided argument only presents the pro side of the
argument, while a two-sided argument presents both sides.
Which one you use will depend on which one meets your
needs and the type of audience. Generally, one-sided
arguments are better with audiences already favorable to
your message. Two-sided arguments are best with audiences
who are opposed to your argument, are better educated or
have already been exposed to counter arguments.

For motivational messages, there are two parts: the claim
and the appeal. Again, the claim is what you want people
to believe is true of you. The appeal is a statement aimed
at your audience's particular needs or desires to motivate
them to do what you want.

When using rational or motivational messages, make sure
the promotional tool you are using is credible with your
audience. This is especially true if you are using a
spokesperson. Your spokesperson must be competent and
trustworthy in the eyes of your audience. He/she should be
likeable and appear to fit in with your message.

Informational messages are different from persuasive
messages. For them, organization is the key. Since this is
an informative message, all your information needs to be
presented in a logical and orderly manner.

Finally, whether using informative or persuasive messages,
there is one problem that always arises where to place
your punch line, the key to your message. This will depend
on the type of audience you have. If you have a captive
audience and a lot of time, place it at the end of your
message as a climax. If your audience is non-captive,
place the punch line at the beginning of your message to
get and keep their attention.

STEP 7-DECIDING HOW TO PRESENT IT

Developing Your Message Format

Formatting your message is the next step. Format refers to
how your message will appear to people when you distribute
it. The media or the method used to convey your message
will determine your format.


The number of types and combinations of media available to
use are almost endless. You are only limited by your
imagination. Examples include television, radio,
employees, community calendars, and newspaper feature or
human interest stories. A good way to decide what you want
to use is to look at what others are already using. Take
any ideas that you like and adapt them to your format, but
do not directly copy them and make sure that you are
adapting the ideas to your needs.

Second, learn the good and bad points of various media,
including their limitations. Find out what best suits your
needs and what will allow you to meet your audience's
needs. Finally, check to see what will be most
cost-effective (see Extension bulletin E-2005).

Once you select the media you want to use, the actual
message must be put together. Pay close attention to the
nonverbal aspects of the message. Things such as graphics,
color selection, type style and size will have a big
effect on how people perceive your message. It is
important that these things relate to your theme, message,
and audience for the maximum effect.

Finally, your message must be united. Each part of your
message must relate directly to your theme.

STEP 8-TAKING YOUR MESSAGE TO YOUR AUDIENCE

Choosing Your Delivery System

Most businesspeople in the tourism industry would agree
that coming up with a good promotional message is only
half the battle. The other half is getting your message to
your target audience. Thus, the delivery system you choose
is very important.

A delivery system is how you distribute your message and
your media. There are two types of delivery systems. The
first type is the formal delivery system, one that you
plan to use or in which you have control over the content
of the message, such as television, radio, newspapers,
newsletters, and catalogs. The second type is the informal
delivery system. An informal delivery system is one that
you do not have control over, such as word-of-mouth,
friends, family members, and repeat visitors.

Whether formal or informal, each system is composed of a
message and the media that is used to present it. Many
times your choice of media goes with your delivery system
(promotional ads in newspapers, for instance). With some
forms of media, such as brochures and exhibits, this is
not always the case.

Many times people overlook how they intend to distribute
their brochure or display their exhibit. Know in advance
how you will use these items. Overlooking how you intend
to distribute any kind of media can cause it to become
ineffective.

Finally, different audiences obtain information from
different media. A thorough understanding of what media
your target audience uses is essential to distribute your
message effectively.

STEP 9-HOW IS IT GOING?

Evaluation

Creating and implementing a promotional strategy can drain
your resources if you do not regularly evaluate the
strategy to see how effectively it is working. This is
where your objectives come in handy. To evaluate your
strategy you need only to determine whether you have made
progress in meeting your established objectives.
Generally, it is good to wait one year after implementing
your strategy to see if it works because promotional
effects can be cumulative. Always be ready to make
changes.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

first, remember that promotion is a process. The nine
steps outlined here are guides to develop an effective
promotional strategy. The process is the same whether you
are promoting a business, community, or region.

Second, remember that the only promotional strategy worth
anything is the one that is cost-effective. Know your
budget and understand the resources available so that you
do not create a "monster" that uses resources but does not
return visitor dollars.

Third, this bulletin is to give you an idea of what is
involved in developing an effective promotional strategy.
More detailed information on developing themes, traveler
information networks, tourism information systems, and on
selecting promotional media are found in other bulletins
in this series. If you are serious about developing a
promotional strategy, order or pick these up today. Good luck….