Sales determine the growth rate of every business. However, it’s not an overnight affair but a continuous process involving a well-thought-out marketing and promotional plan. Leveraging proper sales promotion techniques takes you closer to secured deals.
While sales promotions are primarily targeted at creating brand awareness, it further translates into a steady revenue source. Here’s how you can run effective sales promotions and script a success story for your brand.
Sales promotion is several short-term campaigns intended to spark interest and create demand for products and services. However, every promotion is unique with a particular objective and designed around the business needs at that moment. An ideal sales promotional plan triggers customers to make an instant purchase.
These promotional examples will inspire you no matter to which industry you belong.
1. Flash Sales or a Limited-period Price Drop Offers
Price drops are always interesting, but a time cap triggers a sense of urgency, thus nudging a buyer for an instant purchase. Ideally, it’s “moment marketing,” which helps companies reach their sales goals effectively.
Though the buying window remains short in flash sales, it can generate interest much ahead of time.
2.Competitions And Giveaways
Competitions and giveaways make an excellent way to reach out to your customers. Brands run competitions occasionally to reach out to the audience and keep them talking about their products and services. Popular brands across industries nowadays leverage social media to create a buzz around their business by running competitions and giveaways. Besides rewarding winners, such giveaways work as an effective promotional effort. Many interested participants buy or subscribe to your products and services even if they don’t win the competition.
3. Free Trial or Demo
Offering free trials is excellent if you have just launched new products or services. Free trial plans have far-reaching effects on building your brand identity. As they have no risk or commitment to purchase from you immediately, many people will be interested in getting a free trial or demo. No doubt that serves you a great way to build trust. By providing free samples, customers are encouraged to make a purchase. But B2B or B2C services can give their leads a free trial or demo of their services or products. It opens the door for potential buyers who might translate into consumers in the long run.
4. Bundle Products or Services
Can you offer your products or services in bundles? If yes, bundling your products and services can positively impact your brand-building efforts. As bundles come with multiple items, selling them as one package (that too at a discounted rate) can help increase overall sales. Also, it provides your potential customers a value for money.
How can it be beneficial for both you and your customers? Bundling products or services means taking several useful items in one package deal for your customers. This way, your customers have a better way to know about your products & services and make an informed decision.
5. Limited-time Freebies
You can be flexible on pricing for better sales promotion. You can still create a sense of urgency by offering limited-time offers. You can announce freebies (a free product or service added to the order) for a short period. It can be an existing low-budget product or service as an add-on or a free bonus feature with the main purchase. Thus the value of your less popular products will increase without affecting the intent of the primary purchase.
6. Short-term Free Shipping
According to some surveys, most consumers abandon their online shopping cart even after having multiple items in it. Studies reveal that almost 50% of cart abandonments happen due to extra shipping costs, fees, and taxes. Thus, free shipping often works as a lure for such customers. It helps boost your sales while making a lasting impact on your customer. Many such promotional campaigns nowadays have a huge success rate, with people making instant purchase decisions.
7. Buy one, get one free
It is not always “Buy one, get one free.” Sometimes the buy-and-get ratio varies, like “Buy 3 and get the fourth free,” etc. These are insanely popular promotional tactics. Such campaigns instantly make an emotional impact, thus triggering your potential customers to make the purchase without a second thought. These promotional campaigns create brand awareness on a broader level. Keep in mind that when your customer gets something more than what they intended, they are more likely to purchase extra items for their close ones. It will promote your brand, thus making way for more sales eventually.
8. Tripwire (upsell)
Tripwire is basically upselling your products. Through tripwire, you can promote a base-level product or service to your potential customers and try to create their interest in it. When your salesperson goes out and does this, they bring in potential customers to your ecosystem. Then sales reps can start nurturing them at every phase of their buying journey. Continuous nurturing helps build trust while deeply impacting an emotional plane. Through tripwire, you can make them feel interested in your product and inform them why upgrading to higher-priced offers is better.
9. Coupon or Voucher
A traditional yet relevant sales promotion strategy is giving away coupons or voucher codes. You can deliver the coupons in various ways like through push messages, social media, websites, or print materials. Vouchers or coupons are excellent ways to thank your existing customers and encourage new customers to make more purchases.
10. Recurring Sale
Recurring sales are only suitable for some businesses, so before you opt for it, check if it is relevant to your business or not. Many companies use this promotional idea to promote their brands and sale. When your business offers recurring sales, it builds anticipation amongst people. In the recurring sale strategy, people are excited and ready to spend.
11. Donate A Portion of the Purchase To a Charitable Cause
Even though many business owners are skeptical about donating a portion of a purchase to a charitable cause, it is a great strategy to make your brand popular. When your customers are going to make their purchases, they will feel good about it. Your brand image will enhance to the highest degree when you associate it with an important cause. This helps with building customer loyalty with leads that support it. A 2018 Cox Consumer Pulse report reveals that more than 70% of people said they would purchase from small businesses more if they support environmental or social causes.
12. Build Loyalty Program For Exclusive Offers
You can provide exclusive offers to your loyal customers. It will further encourage them to participate in more programs. They feel appreciated for their continuous commitment to the brand as they receive exclusive offers.
You are running promotional campaigns to achieve your business goals. It’s essential to plan those campaigns in such a way so that you can make the most of them. Here are some of the best ways to do so:
Well-defined Sales Promotion Objectives
Your sales promotion requires thorough planning to reach specific objectives. Consider your various business goals, segregate achievable and non-achievable goals, and plan the campaign and budget later. It also helps in achieving your goals without spending your fortune.
Select Your Target Audience
Before creating a sales promotion campaign, you must learn about your target audience. Research a bit on your demographics. Send surveys online and offline to understand your buyers’ needs, preferences, interests, and buying behavior.
Offer Practical Value
Are your sales promotions adding value to your clients? If there’s no value added to your customers, you will fail to reach your goal and damage your brand reputation. While designing your sales promotion, you must place the highest value on customer experience. Also, you must not forget that the sales promotion aligns with your brand’s ethical values and culture.
Referral Programs
Referral programs are a great way to reward those who send businesses to you. Some reports show that most respondents trust their family and friends for recommendations before trusting advertisements. So, a referral program is a beautiful way of taking advantage of word-of-mouth conversations.
Review, test, and improve
After you run your sales promotions, you should take some time to review the results before creating another one. Of course, try scheduling your analysis at a particular time that benefits the sales cycle. After comparing one campaign with a certain objective, decide what you want to improve for the next sales promotion campaign.
Promote Sales During Common Shopping Holidays
When your sales promotion aligns with the common shopping holidays, it is a stunning way to catch the customer’s interest. During holiday times, customers are already looking for gifts. So, when you give special offers or limited-time deals, it instantly reaches the targeted segments of your consumers.
Create a Sense of Urgency or Scarcity
Sales promotions meet with huge success because your audience knows the sales won’t last long. When you highlight that the special offer will cease away soon, it creates the fear of missing out, thus triggering purchase decisions.
Sales promotions are designed to grab your audience’s attention and keep them engaged until they make a purchase. A well-planned campaign thus boosts sales while building a solid brand identity.
