Promotion is one of the four points of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Main Street approach which work together to build a sustainable and complete community revitalization effort.

Promotion sells a positive image of the commercial district and encourages consumers and investors to live, work, shop, play and invest in the Main Street district.  By marketing a district's unique characteristics to residents, investors, business owners, and visitors, an effective promotional strategy forges a positive image through advertising, retail promotional activity, special events, and marketing campaigns carried out by local volunteers.  These activities improve consumer and investor confidence in the district and encourage commercial activity and investment in the area.

Promotion involves marketing the downtown's unique characteristics to shoppers, investors, new businesses, tourists, and others.  Effective promotion creates a positive image of the downtown through retail promotional activity and special events utilizing the downtown as a stage area of community activities.

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The Promotion Committee's primary responsibility is to market a unified, quality image of the business district as the center of activities, goods and services to retailers, residents, shoppers, investors and tourists.  The responsibilities of this committee are broad and typically include coordinating advertising, reversing negative images of the community, implementing special events, and establishing and maintaining good media relations.

The first job of the Promotion Committee should be to conduct a thorough inventory of all current community and downtown promotional activities by checking with the Chamber of Commerce, local art groups, the merchants' association and all service clubs.  After this, the Committee and the Board should make some basic organizational decisions about the role and activities of the Promotion Committee.  Most local Main Street programs have found that a combination of assisting existing programs and developing a limited number of new promotional activities is the best way to implement a comprehensive, balanced promotion calendar.

Members of the Promotion Committee might include representatives of the downtown merchants' association, Chamber of Commerce, local art association, school Board, library, civic associations, special interest clubs, YMCA/YWCA, an ad agency or even a bank marketing department.  Beware of the conflict of interest local radio stations, TV stations and newspapers may experience by having advertising sales representatives participate in the Promotion Committee.

• Directs retail promotional activity, traffic-building activity and image improvement activity for the business district or establishes liaisons and develops joint promotional strategies with existing organizations active in one or more of these areas.
• Assumes primary responsibility for defining the marketable image of the downtown and ensuring continuity of that marketable image in all downtown promotional programs.
• Monitors community and consumer perceptions of the downtown and seeks to reverse negative attitudes and build on positive ones.
• Allocates funds for promotional activities in accordance with the Main Street program’s overall annual work plan and budget.
• Works toward building new sources of promotional funding for a portion of the proram's total annual promotional budget.
• Builds a strong network of volunteers to participate in implementation of promotional programs and establishes good working relationships with community organizations, charities, school clubs and other groups who might participate in promotional programs.
• Works with the Economic Restructuring Committee to monitor changes in the community's market and adjusts the promotional plan accordingly, always building on local assets, to increase the downtown's market share.
• Works with the Design Committee to ensure a consistent, high-quality graphic image in signs, advertisements and other graphic material associated with the Main Street program.
• Establishes a sound working relationship with local and regional media.
• Monitors the effectiveness of promotional programs on an ongoing basis.