By Lauren Fenthum<---- To view/save infographic
CLICK HEREPromotions, when done, well are an effective way to market your business, as well as your product offerings. This is not the type of promotion, where you drop your prices or create a massive sale to get rid of old inventory. No, this is a well-planned, strategic solution that is aimed at gaining customer interest and attracting first-time prospects. Below are 9 benefits of running a successful sales promotion:
1) Create Differentiation - When you are launching a new product, or engage with customers in a new way, you are setting yourself apart from your competitors. By making use of a well-thought-out and planned strategy within your promotion planning, you are able to come up with ideas that entice your customers with something different that offers potential value to them.
2) Create New Content and Communication - This is a good and easy opportunity to create news for your customer. Promotions are news and news is content. Use your social media platforms to inform your customers in a fun and creative way that gets them excited and eager to carry on investing in your company.
3) Upsell and Cross Sell - Create a theme for your promotion and create a package deal. This will help generate sales on multiple items rather than just one. Now that you are focused on creating added value to your regular products, you can charge premium prices.
4) Customer Decision-Making - Create a timeline for your promotion, this creates the sense of “limited availability” in the customer's mind will get them to act sooner upon the deal. This combined with new content will allow customers to clearly see the benefits of your product and by adding sampling to the promotional mix you will, in turn, create a lot of reasons for the customer to buy.
5) Word-of-Mouth Opportunities - Promotions are a way to get your existing customers excited about your brand and to encourage purchases. This gets customers talking about your business and more likely to tell their friends about you.
6) Training Opportunities - Just like your customers, employees too can fall into a routine and lose enthusiasm when faced with the same tasks every day. Promotions give you the opportunity to bring the excitement back, get your employees re-engaged and prepare them for what’s new in your business.
7) Focus on Marketing - Developing a promotional calendar forces you to plan for more marketing opportunities throughout the year. By incorporating a marketing mentality into the company, with more frequency, you are able to gain more experience for the next promotion.
8) Testing - Do you have ideas that you think the customers will like but are still unsure of the outcome? This is the perfect opportunity to test those ideas for a short time and measure the results, this will help you determine if they warrant additional investment and if they have potential to be permanent solutions.
9) Ka-Ching! - Lastly, but most importantly. Promotions are a good way of ensuring revenue growth over months and years.