With the great development of consumer society, advertising of different goods and services takes a leading role in business and everyday life. The article answers the question: “What is sale promotion?” and provides some examples.
What is the purpose of sales promotion?
All businesses need to communicate with potential clients and existing customers, increase the amount of sold products and loyal leads. The goal of sales promotion is to help companies achieve these results in the shortest time. To describe promotional sale meaning, let’s look at its purposes in detail.
There are six of them:
1. Lead generation
It’s an essential activity for scaling your business. By attracting new clients and making them move through your marketing funnel, you’ll increase your profit and get resources for business processes improvement.
2. Win the competition
Sales allow your customers to buy products at the most reasonable prices. So, they give preference to your brand and get used to choosing it regularly.
3. Survive the off-season
If your business depends on holidays, traditions, or other fickle phenomena, you can use sales promotion to generate profit during the calendar year.
4. Start a new business
Using sales promotion definition in marketing, we can describe it as a powerful tool for launching a new product. For example, imagine that you are opening a new shop with branded women's clothes. It would be a good idea to start your promotional campaign with special promo codes on a limited dress collection for your first 100 buyers or visitors. People enjoy feeling unique by choosing exclusive models.
5. Get rid of outdated goods/models
Sales promotion gives you a chance to find space for new collections of clothes, electronic devices, home decor, and other mass-market goods. It’s extremely popular before the beginning of a new fashion season.
6. Increase demand among your clients
Discounts, seasonal sales, personal cards, and other special offers make your audience buy more. If you combine an individual approach to customers’ needs and high-quality service, your brand can become a lovemark in a short time.
As you can see, sales promotion can be used to achieve different business objectives. It’s useful both for startups and enterprises. The effectiveness of such promotional campaigns depends on the type of sale promotion that is relevant for a particular business.
Types of sales promotions
Promotional selling improves the engagement of current customers and helps to increase your market share. Now, let’s consider what types of sales promotions help you achieve these goals. They are:
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prizes and giveaways;
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printed and e-coupons;
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giving product samples;
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individual reward programs;
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price deals;
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bonus-pack deals.
What is the most common type of sales promotion?. — The “price deals” type is.
Sales promotion techniques
We’ll describe techniques and methods of the aforementioned types of sales promotion. We’ll show just a few of them:
1. Prizes and giveaways
A reward program for existing customers means that they can get several points on an individual loyalty card after purchase. These points can be spent on buying new things or getting presents.
2. Price deals
Price reduction for a limited period is called a price deal. So, the dress may cost $70 instead of $100 during 1 week. The most popular period for this type of sales promotion is Black Friday.
3. Coupons
As for coupons, they can be printed or electronic. Many stores give discount coupons for visitors on opening day. It stimulates people to visit them again.
4. Bonus pack-deals
“1+1=3” technique and bonus-pack deal imply that you as a customer receive more than you pay for. For instance, you can buy 2 T-shirts and get 1 more as a gift. Or, you can buy a dress and get an accessory for free.
There are also many other ways of using promotional sales: Contests, limited offers, seasonal promotions, free shipping, discounts, and so on. They are an important part of the promotional mix, which allows businesses to stay competitive and grow.
To consider some sales promotion examples, let’s draw attention to digital tools. Because modern marketing becomes more and more digitized and uses the Internet to find, analyze and engage its target audience.
Sales promotion channels
Let’s take a look at SMS marketing, SMM and Facebook Ads, and email marketing.
SMS marketing
Very fast and helpful promotional channel that works especially well for local companies. SMS marketing can be used for fast communication, informing existing customers about the newest products or special offers.
SMM and Facebook Ads
It is one of the most effective tools for marketing communication with separate brand audiences. Posting useful or entertaining content on Facebook builds relations with the audience, while detailed targeting helps you show offers to people the business is interested in.
Email marketing
Email marketing is another popular way of informing current clients about special prices, gifts, or new stock. Brands also send emails with personal presents or discounts on different holidays, like birthdays or Christmas.
Benefits of promotional selling
Now you understand how to use sales promotion for lead generation or building relations with current customers. Thus, we can focus on all the advantages of these marketing activities.
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Revenue growth
Discounts make people buy more goods, even at a lower price. So, businesses sell more products and receive funds for further development. - Communication with the audience
Clients are happy to receive special offers by their lovemarks because it’s a chance to get something that you like on favorable terms. -
Increase in brand popularity
Not only do great and creative promotional campaigns stimulate sales, but also inform new people about the company, its goods, or its services. So, brand awareness increases. -
The attraction of new customers
Lead generation is “blood” that helps businesses to stay alive. Promotional selling provides new clients for companies and boosts demand for separate products.
To sum up, promotional selling is a strong tool that should be used consciously to achieve your business goals and satisfy clients.
