Guide to promoting your business, your products and services

Some methods will work better for your business than others.

Some could be a complete waste of money from the start.

United Kingdom

Here is an outline of this important guide, showing the six steps to choosing the best ways to promote what you sell

How do you publicise your business?

Advertisements, posters and hot-air ballons; direct mailshots, telesales and email; exhibitions, word-of-mouth recommendations, networking; talks and presentations; brochures and leaflets; press releases, the Internet . . . . .
The list is almost endless.

topenterprise provides a top-quality guide for members to find the right ways to market their products and services, understand the main advantages of direct mailshots, advertising, PR and other methods to choose from, and when to use them most successfully.

topenterprise provides practical checklists to help you all the way

1. Identify the overall purpose of this promotion

Why are you doing it?: To attract new customers or clients?; To retain your customers and increasing their loyalty?; To introduce a new or improved product or service?

2. Identify the results you want to achieve

What does the promotion need to deliver?: Sales enquiries or visitors to your shop or your website?; Improvements to the image of your business, changes in people’s perceptions?

What else? topenterprise provides practical checklists to help you.

3. Focus on your target audience

Some sources say that response rates can be five or six times greater if you target likely buyers instead of just using names straight from a list. Promoting your business, products and services becomes easier, less expensive and much more successful when you focus on a target group.

topenterprise gives tips for targeting your promotions in the most profitable ways.

4. Decide the communication goals

Some methods of promotion are better at gaining different levels of response to your marketing communications. What responses do you want from your target audience?

topenterprise takes you through the key responses you are likely to be seeking.

5. Set a budget

topenterprise shows you four basic ways to set a budget, including working out how much your competitors are spending.

6. Choose the methods of promotion

This final stage of the selection process brings together

The results you want to achieve and when
Your target audience and the level of response you want
The form of communication that fits best
And the size of your budget.

topenterprise explains the two main forms of communication and suggests some low-cost promotional methods for marketing on a small budget.

topenterprise guides

As well as the six-steps to selecting the best ways of promotion, topenterprise offers individual guides to some of the most commonly used methods:

Advertising – Newspapers, magazines, directories, radio commercials and cinema adverts. Some of these possibilities can be less expensive than you might think.

Direct mail – When using a mailshot, the cost per reader is a lot more than the equivalent cost of advertising in the press. This guide includes some pointers to business and consumer response rates and special tips about mailing lists.

Press relations – Why editorial coverage in print can gain a strong, positive response; the costs and drawbacks of using press releases; some of the ‘golden rules’ and more tips from topenterprise.

Legal restrictions - These apply to nearly all forms of direct marketing communications, including mail order, mailshots, sending out literature, emails and telesales.

These guides are available exclusively to members of topenterprise.

Find out more about joining as a member

Learn more here - Why should I join topenterprise?