Travel and Leisure

Product promotion is supposed to be fun! How are you supposed to get your customers to engage with your brand and create a whole new (and meaningful) experience for them if your humdrum promotional ideas put them to sleep? Here are three fun promotional ideas for you and your customers.

1. Get with the program and invest in social media!

Most of the world's exchanges today happen on the World Wide Web. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ have millions of subscribers visiting their sites every day and generating traffic for them and for the sites that their users find and decide are relevant enough to share with other people.

Blogs are also a new way for people to get their message across. Blogs or Weblogs or V-logs used to be the domain of emo kids wanting to express their innermost angsty thoughts... but today more and more business blogs are cropping up with the corporate world finally taking notice of this often overlooked form of online promotion and advertising.

If you have an opinion or news about your company - share it! If you like another individual's or company's tweet, retweet it and add your own input! Forming relationships with your customers and getting their feedback regarding your company and products is easily a click of your mouse away.

2. Use pop culture

Most people spend at least an hour a day in front of the television watching news and entertainment programs. The popularity of shows like White Collar and Gossip Girl has fueled an almost cult-like following among their fans. From promotional items to fan fiction stories, the avenues that avid fans have traveled in their quest to proclaim their love for Chuck Bass and Neil Caffrey would amaze even the most intrepid marketer.

The market for promotional items and stories that capitalize on the popularity of these shows and the characters in them already exist - why not hitch your own wagon to this never-ending saga of who's sleeping with who and doctors whose complicated love lives seem to be directly linked to the complexity of the medical cases thrown their way.

3. Take advantage of free publicity

OK, so if you have social media badges under your belt, why not step out of your box and try getting the attention of traditional news outlets? Some people would consider traditional media exposure the pinnacle of promotional success for a brand or product.

How do you get yourself out there and noticed? Well first, don't oversell these news agencies in your head and get intimidated. Their goal is to boost their ratings and any story that fulfills that particular requirement will definitely get their attention. Remember that old saying "all publicity is good publicity"? Coming up with a controversial promotional idea can be one way of getting that media attention. Snapple caught a lot of flak for their giant mess of a popsicle but it created a buzz and people still talk about the botched attempt at a Guinness world record and that means they're also still talking about the brand.

Have fun with your advertising budget and come up with promotional ideas that are designed to capture the attention of your customers!