Everyone gets excited about good promos, but that doesn’t mean you can relax when it comes to your sales promotion strategy. A promotional plan will determine how big your profits are by the end of the sale. 

It’s common sense that everyone loves cheaper items, but the various methods used for executing your promotions could determine how consumers perceive your business. So it’s important to think critically about how you want to tackle your promotional sales strategies.

Why Have a Sales Promotion Strategy in Place?

The first thing you need to establish is what you want your promotion to achieve. There are multiple benefits to having promotion strategies in place. By aligning your goals with these benefits, it will help you carve out a plan for your strategy.

1. Increase brand awareness

Promotional activities aren’t always intended for discounts or sales. They could be used to keep your business, product or service in front of your consumers’ minds. This ensures that when they are ready to buy, they think of your brand first. 

For example, if you sell clothing to dancers, as a promotion, you could lend them dance costumes for a competition. Or if you have a bakery, you could offer free samples so people can try your new donuts. You could also use social media influencers to talk about your promotion on their page to get people excited about it. These are all situations where promotions can be used to bring brand awareness to potential customers.

2. Keep audiences engaged on social media

Try to think of fun social media marketing strategies that will intrigue your audience through your promotion. Having a sale is something that everyone does, how will you stand out and engage your target audiences with a new kind of campaign? One way to do this is through social media platforms and your business’ online presence. 

A video game shop can have an online contest where players who win a game get a discounted or free item. Or maybe a coffee shop can have a promotion where they ask their social media followers to post how coffee helps them get through their morning routine for a chance to win free coffee for a week.

In these cases, contests and giveaways are used in a fun way to keep your brand in front of your target audiences while benefiting from social media marketing.

3. Better brand reputation

Sometimes sales promotions are known for hindering a brand’s reputation. They can potentially make a brand look less high-end if they run sales too often or if their prices are marked down too much. Therefore, if you are trying to use a sales promotion to better your brand reputation, you need to be careful.

Let’s say there is a make-up company that is considering a sale to better its brand reputation. A way they could do this is to introduce a sale on Woman’s Day and position it as them celebrating strong independent women. This would improve the brand reputation in the consumer’s mind because it would align the brand with having good morals and ideals. 

Or, a retail brand might consider influencer marketing by partnering with a trusted fashion influencer to promote their look. Aligning your business brand with a positive message can help build your reputation as one that is trustworthy and authoritative in your industry. This in turn can gain new customers and boost sales.

4. Stand out from competitors

You can stand out from your competitors by offering promotions that are more tailored to the consumer. Do research on the competition, see if your target market is leaving any negative reviews about them. Then take the information you collected and apply it to your marketing strategy. 

For example, let’s say you own a gym, and there is another gym in the same area. Some online reviews say that your competitor’s gym doesn’t have any Zumba classes. A great promotion for you would be to host Zumba classes at a discounted price for new members. 

How to Build a Strategy

Once you’ve identified what your end goal is for the sales promotion, you need to start building your sales strategy. You want to ensure your strategy makes sense for your target audience.

Who is your target customer?

In order for your sales promotion strategy to be successful, you need to make sure you are catering to the exact needs of your target audience . Ask questions like:

• What are their daily routines, so you know what time of the day they are more susceptible to ads?
• What are their interests? 
• How will this promotion benefit them? 
• How will this promotion benefit a friend of theirs or a loved one? 
• What else is going on in their lives, and the local area, simultaneously to the promotion? 

Questions like these will help you better understand what your consumers’ needs are and how the promotion will cater to those needs. 

How will you advertise?

After establishing who your target audience is, next you can start thinking about the best methods to reach and intrigue them. Based on your research, you can decide if a push or pull method of advertising will be better for your target. Choosing either the push or pull method will determine the smaller details of your marketing campaign; like various types of sales promotions. 

Take a look at this list of sales promotions to consider which ones would best suit you. For a deeper look into each of these check out this article on  pricing customer  discounts.

• Bogo: Bogo stands for “buy one get one”, basically meaning buy 2 items for the price of one. It’s great for clearing inventory because you’re getting rid of twice as many products per sale. 
• Percentage: If an item originally costs $100, you could give it a 20% off discount, and would now be selling it for $80. Offer these for a limited time only to encourage larger purchases.
• Vouchers: A voucher is a discount that is meant to be used at a later date. So if a customer makes a purchase you could give them a voucher that they could use next time they shop with you. This would entice them to come back. 
• Coupons: A coupon can be any sort of discount that you offer your customer, such as a certificate to take $15 off your order. They can use the coupon at the same time as the original purchase or you can give it a specific time frame. 
• Promo Codes: A promo code is a set of letters and/or numbers that are normally applied online to get a discount on a product or service. Many e-commerce companies offer the code on their homepage, such as ‘Put in SALE321 to get 15% off your order.’ 
• Bundle Prices: A bundle price is when you package 2 or more products or services together at a discounted price. So let’s say you have a spa, normally you sell massages, sauna access and hot tub access separately at $50 each. A bundle discount would mean you could offer a massage, access to your sauna and hot tubs as a package for $100 total. 
• Email Marketing: Email marketing is when you collect a list of emails of potential or existing customers and send them marketing content relating to your small business. 
• Member Discounts: A member discount is a great way to build customer loyalty. If you give special offers to individuals who join your loyalty program (membership could come at a fee or for free) this will ensure loyal customers keep coming back to shop with you instead of a competitor. 

Keeping track of your inventory, as well as tracking current and forecasted sales is essential when deciding on which marketing campaigns and sales promotions to use. It’s difficult to determine if/how much profit you stand to make from your promotional strategy but QuickBooks makes it easy. 

QuickBooks cash flow planner and inventory tracker can help you plan for your sales and promotions according to your business needs. It allows you to organize all your cash flow in one space making it clear which areas of your business you need to focus on when it comes to creating your sales strategy. Try QuickBooks Online for free today!