Advice for a Successful Sales Promotion Strategy

By Zoe Price:

Sales promotions are a fantastic way to encourage customers to make a purchase from you.  However, unless you are prepared to run the promotion correctly, you may end up doing your business more harm than good.  If you want to increase sales and attract new customers through your promotion, read on for some advice on how to do this successfully.

1. Target Previous Customers

It’s generally a lot cheaper to retarget existing customers with your marketing plans than it is to attract new ones.  There’s a reason why promotions that target previous customers are so successful: these customers have shopped at your store before, they trust you, and they know what to expect.  When creating a sales promotion, make sure to target previous customers for the most benefit.  Once a customer has bought from you three times or more, they may even become a brand advocate, encouraging their friends and family to shop with you as well.

2. Set Measurable Goals

What do you want to achieve from your sales promotion?  This is something that you need to know upfront so that you can tailor your strategy accordingly.  Are you looking to boost customer retention or are you hoping to find 1,000 new customers?  Once you have decided on your goals, you need to find a way to measure them.  If your store is online, you can use analytics software to measure and evaluate the data you a getting from your website, and put it into a form you can interpret.  If you run a brick and mortar store, you may need to compare profits.  Whatever you do, don’t neglect this step as failing to do so could end up costing your business a lot of money.

3. Suggest Limited Availability

Studies have found that sales promotions, which are available for a limited time only, make more sales than those that aren’t pitched as such.  By creating a campaign that will only be active for a short time, customers will feel like they need to act straight away to take advantage of it.  To advertise it, you can use a mixture of content marketing and newsletter marketing, as well as place adverts on your website, or in your store. If you are struggling with marketing, try General Assembly’s guide to content marketing, which provides details for beginners, as well as information about an expert on the topic which you could contact for extra advice, at the bottom of the page.

4. Give Yourself Enough Time to Promote the Campaign

In order for a promotion to really be effective, people need to know about it before it happens.  Consider placing a poster in your shop window announcing the date of the promotion, letting your followers on social media know, and emailing your newsletter subscribers to let them know about it.  You can promote a promotion in the same way you’d promote anything else, though do make sure to account for the costs, as you don’t want to end up operating at a loss.

Running a successful sales promotion strategy often requires trial and error in order to perfect.  However, if you keep the above advice in mind, learn from your mistakes, and analyze which marketing techniques work the best, you will improve in no time.

By Zoe Price

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