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Sales promotions are key components of a brand activation strategy. Equally effective in driving short-term sales and nurturing long-term loyalty, promotions have evergreen appeal.

 

Customers love the rewards and discounts. Sponsors love the sales lift. And everybody loves the experience. Here’s how to make it happen and harness all that love.

1. Define your objectives

What do you want to achieve with your promotion?
Defining your objectives will ensure you establish clear performance goals upfront and select the best promotion to get the job done.

  • Clear old stock. Whether you’re moving metal or consumer electronics, 48% of shoppers say that a discount offer speeds up their purchasing decisions. Surely, this is no surprise. Everybody loves a sale. And it’s pretty much expected by the brand faithful as a year-end highlight.
  • Keep existing customers. It’s cheaper and easier than winning new ones. So how about a sales promotion for your special, loyal customers? Here’s an interesting stat from HubSpot: 81% of loyalty program members say loyalty programs make them more likely to continue to do business with brands. You need to work that angle.
  • Launch new products or services. Always cause for making a little noise in the market. Obvious, wouldn’t you think? But try this on, 80% of new product launches fail due to poor promotion activity. Get your product lifecycle off to a good start with strong promotions.
  • Increase brand awareness. There is no such thing as too much brand awareness. It’s a fundamental way to attract new customers. And here’s an aspirational fact to inspire your climb to the top of the brand pile: 94% of the world’s population recognises the Coca-Cola logo. Staggering, isn’t it?

2. Set measurable targets

Measure key promotional activities and analyse the data to determine your success. The results will inform your marketing strategy and future promotional planning decisions. These are a few fundamental marketing metrics:

  • Total sales. It’s pretty simple, really. The ultimate goal of any sales promotion is to increase sales. Volume and value are the two most obvious, but often overlooked metrics.
  • Customer traffic. This isn’t the easiest metric to get precise in the traditional retail space, but video footage and your basic low-tech doorway foot counters work. Customer traffic is easier to track if you have an online component to your promotion.
  • Total purchases. This figure reflects the effectiveness of your conversion methods. It will give you insights on how well your sales staff performed and if, perhaps, some additional training is in order. You can crunch the numbers to see if you got your product mix right and if your price points were on target. Total purchases will give you a good read on all of your in-store promotional activity.
  • Average basket value. Examine the average value of customer purchases to assess if you’ve hit your primary target market. You want to get maximum value from your promotion investment and that doesn’t include attracting bargain shoppers or other low-value customers.
  • Return on investment. Total profits less investment is the final test of success. Remember to include all associated costs including promotional displays and materials, sales staff training, demo stock, advertising, email marketing data costs (if relevant), transportation. Be thorough.

 

3. Know your audience

Relevance is the name of the game in any customer touchpoint and promotions are no different. Research from Salesforce reports 73% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations. So what does your ideal customer want?

  • Know who you’re targeting. Consider demographics, psychographics, lifestage, lifecycle and all the other nuances you can glean from data sources. That way you can make sure you speak directly to their needs, wants and motivations.  And don’t forget, people’s preferences and needs change over time. The university student of today could become the young, working mother of tomorrow, which is a completely different customer profile. If you want to stay relevant, stay close as time moves on.
  • Figure out who your ideal customers are. These are the people who will happily pay for what you’re offering. They appreciate what you do, are easy to communicate with, and will happily recommend you to others.
  • Basically, you need to understand the what, why, how and who.
    • What. This is about demographics. Define the common circumstance of your customers’ lives like where they live, income levels, industry and occupation.
    • Why. Look at their concerns, preferences, fears, aspirations and personality types to understand what drives their purchase decisions. Also consider the day-to-day realities of their lives.
    • How. Develop a plan around the best way to communicate with your target audience. Is it social media, traditional media, online promotions, emails, all of the above? The world is connected across multiple channels these days and your message needs to be too.
    • Who. It can take some time to put all that information together. But once you do, you’ll have a very clear picture that allows you to target the right audience to achieve the goals of your promotion.

4. Set a creative strategy

  • Set cost parameters up front. The thrill of increased sales will fall flat if you overspend on marketing the promotion. Analyse your target market, consider your budget and then get creative with designing the most effective promotion for your goals. There are countless old-school standard and new-school digital promotion mechanics you can use.
  • What kind of sales promotion do you need? Decide what type of promotion you want to run and what will add the greatest value for your particular audience. In doing so, you’re fueling the fire for future purchases (way beyond the promotional activity).
    • Free gifts
    • Free samples
    • Free shipping
    • Price discounts
    • Joint promotions
    • Limited time offers
    • Vouchers and coupons
    • Social media contests and giveaways
    • Locally made, fair-trade and cause-related products
    • Buy-one-get-one-free
  • Calculate the cost benefit. A 5% increase in sales sounds good, right? What about 1% increase in sales, but you earn yourself some brand fans who ensure your company’s longevity? Not all costs and benefits look the same. Don’t forget to factor in the value of your brand.
  • Get creative with the rewards on offer. Once you’ve established a solid strategic framework, have some fun with customer rewards. Fun, that is, within the bounds of your brand identity. If you’ve been steadily building a strong brand personality over years, don’t lose traction now with odd, or just plain wrong rewards that don’t reflect the brand your fans have come to know and love.
  • Develop personalised communications. Aim to surprise and delight your audience with personalised, perfectly timed communications. Be sincere, be interested and most importantly, listen to what people want and need from you. You’ll earn a place in their hearts. Which, as you know, is a direct line to long-term, loyal customer relationships.

5. Promote your promotion

Competition is hot and it’s a noisy market out there. Research from ThinkWithGoogle reports that 9 out of 10 shoppers are not absolutely certain of the brand they want to buy when they browse online via their smartphones. So, hit all the right channels and make sure people hear about your promotion via web, social media, mobile, radio, TV, print – wherever your customer insights lead you.

6. Find the right rewards partner

It’s time to up your game and deliver smart, strategic sales promotions. To do that you need the right mix of pricing, rewards, communications, timing and efficient delivery. Find a partner that can do all the legwork. Like GET Rewards:

  • Serious experience with large-scale rewards (digital and merchandise)
  • Access to top brands at competitive prices
  • Detailed reporting

Get in touch with us today. Let’s make your next sales promotion fly.

 

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