Rural entrepreneurship in Wales
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# 3.4.11 Promotion

Promotion is about communicating with actual or potential customers. This covers the whole area of how customers know what is available and the benefits and value of the product or service.

Promotion includes advertising in the electronic and print media, together with other activities such as customer and sales promotion and public relations.

Many business owners also act as their own sales representatives, developing important network contacts with key stakeholders. The use of social networking sites cannot be ignored.

We highlighted the role of Llyn Beef as a support network but there are looser, even more regionally specific, networks emerging, for example the Taste of Powys network in mid-Wales, or the Wales-wide ‘Fforch-i-Fforc/Fork2Fork’ which has its own Facebook page.

For some service companies, sites such as LinkedIn form a key part of their promotion strategy.

Small companies, particularly at start up, are often unable to finance large promotional budgets, which means that some promotion tools are not available to them. Advertising is usually prohibitively expensive other than on a small and local scale. Therefore, advertising may be through word of mouth, via existing networks, or through local groups and networks.

## Task 20: Identifying promotional activities

List promotional activities that will work well for your product or service. Be mindful of the resource implications.

Share your thoughts with other entrepreneurs in your local networks.

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