Promotions is a valuable tactic for any business; they can be used to boost sales or simply to give something back to a loyal customer base.
However, running a successful promotion isn't as simple as providing something for free, or close to it. They need to be carefully planned and executed at the right times of the year.
You may find yourself struggling to identify a strong concept or are looking to change one that hasn't generated the results you had hoped for. This blog looks to give you the help you need to run a successful promotion!
Elements of a Successful Promotion
Let's look at some of the key elements to make a successful promotion:
1. Has to be Valuable
There is no point running an offer that your target audience doesn't see the value in! Think about what they really want - that creates excitement - before jumping at the first offer that comes to mind.
2. Has to Be Easy to Receive
One of the easiest ways to put people off your promotion is making them jump through hoops to receive your offer. Make it as simple as possible to obtain and ensure that they can receive their offer immediately.
3. Create Urgency
Now, this is really important! You need to give your target audience a reason to act now, not later.
When talking about this, I tend to come back to the example of a protein company that I have used in the past. I quickly worked out through the emails that I received from them that they would almost always run a 50% off offer in any given month. This undermined any other offers (which otherwise would have been good) that they ran - I would just wait until the 50% offer was given to me!
Make sure you set time limits to your offer and ensure that you highlight this clearly in any promotional content.
Set a clear date that they have to qualify for the promotion and try to avoid extending the date if possible as this can discredit your value altogether. You can go a step further in enhancing this urgency but explicitly stating how many days or hours they have to cash in on the offer.
4. Use Simple and Direct Language
Use simple and direct language in your headline to reduce any confusion and showcase the value of the deal that your audience will get, rather than just using a slogan.
Coming Up with Your Promotion Ideas
There are a couple of simple things you can do to start the ideas flowing:
1. Look at What Your Competitors Are Doing
On first thought, you may think this is cheating - far from it! The insights that you can uncover from looking at your competitor can be invaluable!
First of all, this research will help you avoid offering the same thing or something very similar to them. Again, using the example of a sports club, this is very important if you are competing with another club in the close proximity to convert new members. In this case, the offer wouldn't do much or anything at all to persuade them to be interested in you over them.
See what you can learn from the offers they have on and certain times. Is it working? Can you improve on it? It doesn't have to be just in terms of price value. Is there a concept that you can adopt? For example, if they are offering free tickets to see a match, you could do something similar but perhaps provide the opportunity for a 'better' seat?
2. Look at Everything That You Currently Offer
Some of the best promotions provide your target audience with a 'smaller version' of what you're selling - it gives them a taste of what they could get from you if they were to fully commit. For example, if you are a sports club, you could offer a free ticket to a game. This would be particularly good for someone who hadn't been before who may, after enjoying the experience, be converted into a full member.
It's important to make sure that you aren't running something that is too taxing on the business. Keep it simple. It should help to make a list of all of the products/services that your company actively sells and rank them on a graph of their perceived value to your customers (Y-axis) and the perceived level of effort for you to provide it (X-axis). This will help you quickly identify what will be worth adding to your promotion or not and perhaps give you ideas of how you can combine certain products/services.
Final Considerations
Finally, think about who you want to target your promotion to. This is particularly important if you are a business with multiple target audiences (ages, gender, geographical area, interests etc.); something that will appeal to one target audience might not to others.
For example, if you are a sports club, an offer of a £30 voucher to spend in the club shop after referring a new member might not be used if they are an older adult with no children. However, this is likely to be much more appealing to a parent who wants to get their child into their club. With the likelihood that they will feel obliged to spend the £30 voucher on their child, they are likely to want to buy more from you when they are in the shop - and BOOM! They are coming away having paid for £100+ worth of merch!
I hope that you found this useful and helps you run a successful promotion of your own!
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