3 common promotional mistakes

Promotion sometimes gets a negative connotation in today’s society. People buy DVRs just so they can skip past commercials and subscribe to premium versions of websites so they don’t have to see ads. How’s a marketer to survive in this environment?

The truth of the matter is that promoting your brand or a specific project doesn’t have to be negative. If you are careful to avoid going overboard with your campaign, it’s likely that people will probably be less annoyed with the organization.

In his book “Managing a Nonprofit Organization,” Thomas Wolf listed three common mistakes that nonprofits make when engaging in promotional campaigns. If you avoid these errors, your marketing efforts should pay off in a big way:

• Don’t assume that saying more in a promotional device is better. Short, carefully selected messaging is always more effective.
• Don’t miss easy opportunities to acquire names, addresses, and other pertinent information. Incentivizing people to provide email addresses and other information will be valuable in later sales and fundraising solicitation.
• Finally, don’t oversell your product or service. If customers or constituents have specific expectations about what you are selling and these expectations are not met, they will be disappointed. Promotion based on exaggerated claims will generally lead to unfulfilled expectations.