The key components of a promotional strategy that marketing managers need to consider are engagement, discounting, and sales and marketing integrations. First, marketing managers must engage their audience by actively listening to consumer feedback and using that information to create impactful storytelling. Through engagement, a marketing manager needs to better understand its target audience by monitoring its social media platforms and conducting surveys and focus groups to gain consumer feedback. Then, they need to engage the consumer through impactful storytelling by placing the consumer at the center of the story and utilizing statistics and photography to drive the message home (Anderson, 2017). Next, marketing managers should be strategic when determining discounting options to build an effective promotional strategy. Many firms use cash discounts, volume discounts, and freebies to bring consumers through the doors (Chong et al., 2016). However, a marketing manager should determine how discounting will impact the company and consumers. While redeeming coupons can make individuals feel good about themselves, some discounts may be insignificant. For example, 15% off a product should be enough to encourage purchases, and 30% off will only sometimes translate to more sales. Furthermore, based on the attribution theory, consumers rely on price and product information to make conclusions about product quality (Chong et al., 2016). So, marketing managers need to be strategic when applying different types of discounts to ensure their promotional strategy is effective and does not degrade the product or service they are trying to promote. Last, marketing managers should heavily integrate their marketing department with the company's salesforce to build an effective promotional strategy. They should do this because a salesforce has first-hand experience with the industry, its competitors, and its new developments (Lyus et al., 2011). A marketing team can build effective strategies by having the salesforce debrief the marketing team on industry intelligence. The salesforce can then implement those strategies, maintaining a continuous loop. Firms with highly integrated marketing and sales teams are better at responding to market dynamics, giving them a competitive advantage (Lyus et al., 2011).

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