Learn how to hit the goals of your sales promotion and practice better process with our template.

6 Tips to Make Your Sales Promotion Work

What is a sales promotion?

A sales promotion is an activity that runs for a limited time, aiming to increase sales volume and consumer demand.

Research shows that 48% of customers admit that discounts influence their purchase decision speed. Accordingly, offering a discount is a tried-and-true way to win over customers and move stock.

A sales promotion is an excellent way for your organization to encourage potential customers to buy your product or sign up for your service. It boosts short-term sales revenue and attracts new customers, often leading to more positive customer feedback.

Today's customers are overwhelmed with sales promotions – they complain about their mailboxes spammed with tons of promo messages. And you can indeed find all types of sales promotions in your inbox: discounts, special offers, buy-one-get-one, flash sales, final sales, free shipping, and more.

Because of such an excess of information, customers value more being understood as individuals and treated accordingly. They want to get an overall product experience that matches their standards and expectations for product quality. As a result, today's customers are looking only for offers that are personally relevant to them.

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The fundamental strategies for sales promotions

The choice of strategies to use for your sales promotion is unlimited. Let's take a closer look at a few of them.

One of the sales promotion techniques popping up across various websites is the 'wheel of savings' or 'spin to win' tactic. By entering your email address in the field near such a wheel, you automatically become a subscriber of this product provider, even if you didn't want to. Such a tactic is more oriented towards the new client attraction.

If you prefer customer retention over a short-term sales boost, you should try offering reward points, or a customer loyalty program. The focus of this promotion strategy is to provide more friendly prices and opportunities for those who shop with you regularly. There are plenty of possibilities to participate in a customer loyalty program – by collecting the points directly in-store or in an app, or a digital wallet on smartphone, or a website.

A coupon is a promotional tool that has been invented and transformed with technology. Coupons can be sent directly to customers as a text message or an email, either personalized (based on customer's purchase history), or non-personalized. According to statistics, 25% of people redeem their coupons within the first three days, and 60% do this within a week. Coupons are proven to be effective promotional tools and lead to more purchases.

What makes a sales promotion work?

When creating your sales promotion strategy, it is highly recommended to take into consideration the six essential elements.

1. Select the right target audience

To understand what is the target audience for your sales promotion, you need to find out more details about the existing customers. Simply ask them to tell about themselves – send a simple survey and offer some incentives to encourage their participation.

After you've collected this information, think about what kind of problems does your product or service aims to solve. Based on this, focus your sales promotion on the customer group, which tends to have a more genuine interest in it.

2. Set measurable goals

It is known that people who formulate their goals tend to be more successful in achieving them.

Before planning any promotion, define the direct objective. Are you willing to target new customers or retain the existing customer group? Is your goal to increase the purchase frequency, or you are interested in the new product advertising?

Determine what exactly you want to accomplish with your sales promotion, then add an exact number that you want to achieve – it will make your goal measurable. Always concentrate on specific, measurable, and precisely defined goals. Thus, you will be able to analyze your success or failure and identify the aspects that need to be changed in your future promotions.

3. Set the time limits

A "fear of missing out", also known as FOMO, is an anxiety about missing out on an event or experience that other people know about. Because of these psychological triggers, lots of people will choose a product, promoted within a limited time or that is in limited quantity, rather than a gift with purchase. Customers are worried about being late, so they hurry up to purchase before the promotion is finished. Marketers take advantage of this consumer behavior and opt for limited-time deals.

4. Promote widely, but wisely

Rule number one for a successful promotion is that your target audience needs to see and understand it. Be visible – that is the key. You can promote your product everywhere: on your company's website, on social media, in blog posts, brochures, newsletters, email campaigns, etc. If you choose the wrong channel, you might spend more money on advertising than you'll make from sales. It would be beneficial to pay attention to promotional strategies that have demonstrated return on investment (ROI). As an example, email marketing has a very high average ROI, and that is exactly the reason why it's still so popular, and why your Inbox is always full with promotions.

5. Make only real value offers

A very obvious but important fact about your customers – they are interested only in real value offers. If it's not the actual value, no strategy can help you to achieve your goals.

Put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Think about their experience, needs, and expectations. Ask yourself what kind of offers your customers might find the most interesting, then determine whether you can afford it. If you can, it should be a perfect sales promotion. If not, try to find a compromise that will appeal to your target audience while remaining cost-effective.

6. Review your results

Don't forget to measure the results before planning your next sales promotion. Compare the set objectives with the results. The regular post-sales analysis will help you to develop your perfect-fitting promotion sales strategy that works best for your product.

The key to successful sales promotion is that it should be customer-centered. Focus on your target audience, research it carefully. Try to strike a balance between your customers and your financial capabilities, and you will definitely find the solutions that work for you! Implement the most creative ideas that go beyond the marketing standards and make your product stand out. And of course, don't neglect the helpful tools and software for your work, to be on your toes anytime.

If you are looking forward to increasing the consumer demand for your product and boosting the sales volume,

you might find our Promotional sale schedule template useful.

It shows the way you could plan and manage your promotions, store past, and upcoming promotional details.

How to use this template?

Create a new project and choose the Promotional sale schedule template to start. All Infolio templates include some demo content. Feel free to remove it once you've familiarized yourself with the main idea.

Create a task for each promotion and group by Lists – the offer types, e.g., "Coupons", "Premium offers", "Discounts". Don't hesitate to remove the examples and add your lists with just a few clicks..

Switch to the Status view to track the discount preparation process from start to completion, e.g., "Promotional letter in progress", "Promotional letter sent", "Promotion in progress", "Complete". In this view, you can easily add new statuses to your workflow or rearrange existing ones. Update the status of any task by dragging and dropping it to the corresponding column.

Switch to the Table view, to add any additional information, such as promocode, promotion duration, deal type, and more. Add custom fields if needed to tailor the workflow to meet your team’s needs.

To see how responsibilities are distributed within your sales team, group the project by Assignee. In this view, you can reassign tasks quickly by dragging and dropping them between columns.