What is Sales Promotion

15 Brilliant Sales Promotion Strategies to Drive Your Revenue Up


Abhinav Girdhar
By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on September 22nd, 2023 11:26 am | 5-min read

Have you often wondered how to increase sales for your business that seems to be flatlining? No matter how great your product is, how fabulous your services are, or how dedicated your customer support may be, it is still possible for your growth line to hit a plateau. This is where sales promotion or product marketing comes to play. With sales promotion you can strategically boost the demand and increase the sale of your products. In this post, we are going to cover the following points:

  • Sales promotion
  • Product marketing
  • Sales strategy
  • Sales promotion examples
What is Sales Promotion

What is Sales Promotion?

Sales Promotion is a marketing strategy where the products are promoted with the help of short-term attractive initiatives. It is in fact one of the elements of the promotional mix apart from advertising, personal selling, direct marketing and publicity or public relations.

How it works?

As a strategy, sales promotion makes good use of media and non-media marketing communications for a limited time. This time is usually pre-determined. The clear intent of this strategy is to boost the customer demand or improve the product availability.

What is Product Marketing?

Product Marketing is not an activity, but a process. A process that involves promotion and selling of a product to the customer. The process acts as the link between product development and creating brand awareness.

What is Sales Strategy?

It is a plan created for any business to address the oft visited question – how to increase sales. This plan spells out exactly what to do, when you want to sell your products and services in order to increase profits. A sales strategy is formulated by a combination of different divisions within the company, primarily administration along with sales, marketing and advertising divisions.

What is AIDA?

AIDA – Attention/Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action is a model that is used quite commonly in marketing and advertising for describing the steps or stages that the customer goes through between becoming aware of the brand and taking the action of making the purchase. Top Sales Promotion Examples

  1. Free samples/goodies
  2. This is a simple yet effective gesture that brings about surprising benefits. Research proves that receiving an unexpected gift goes a long way in helping the customers go further towards conversion and make the decision to complete the purchase.

  3. Gift Cards
  4. Offering gift cards to existing or new customers encourages them to try out your product or services. This is a big barrier to break and once they have redeemed it and bought something from you, you have earned their trust already. These customers are more likely to come back and buy more from you.

  5. Free Shipping
  6. In the online shopping world, the shipping charges play a big part in the final decision taken by the customer. Most of the sites offer free shipping beyond a certain threshold price. However, as a sales promotion campaign, you can offer a sitewide free shipping for a limited period to your customers as an added incentive to take quick action.What is Sales Promotion Source: http://www.skinauthority.com/

  7. Flash-Sales
  8. A variety of sales promotion campaigns can be used for a flash sale. Whether it is a happy hour deal or buy one get one free deal, or a deep discount, they can all be offered for a small time as a part of a flash sale. Sales promotions seem more attractive when they are only available for only a limited time frame.What is Sales PromotionSource: https://www.wayfair.com/

  9. Cross-sell
  10. In the current marketing noise, it is tough to get the customers’ attention. Hence, it only makes sense that you leverage it enough to increase the order value. One important thing to remember here is that you mustn’t come off too salesy and end up scaring them off.

  11. Social contests
  12. Everyone is on social media, one platform or the other. Social media campaigns or contests are a great way to get the attention of a highly targeted audience. You can leverage social media and use the high engagement it enjoys to your advantage.

  13. BOGO
  14. Buy One Get One Free or Buy Two Get One Free or some such variation are all too familiar “Sale” signs that we all get attracted to. This is particularly effective when you intend to clear your stocks. Another great time to use this sales promotion strategy is when you are facing an unusually dull period in your sales cycle.What is Sales PromotionSource: https://www.walgreens.com/

  15. Mystery offers
  16. Who doesn’t love intrigue? Apart from the direct sales promotion deals and campaigns, it is good to include an element of mystery sometimes. Mystery offers invite greater engagement with your customers and prospects, keeping them interested all year long, instead of the typical sales promotion calendar.

  17. Subscriber-Only deals
  18. It is a mistake to treat subscribers (registered users) and first-time buyers equally. Their behaviors, intent, and general attitude towards your business are wildly different from each other. Hence, it is a good idea to introduce some deals or offers that are exclusive to subscribers only. Not only does this sales promotion campaign indulge the long-time subscribers, but also can motivate a greater number to subscribe.

  19. Loyalty programs
  20. Loyalty programs play a critical role in the formulation of a strong sales strategy. It has oft been proven that to acquire a new customer is way more expensive (7 times to be exact) than getting an existing customer to go for another purchase. Devise a strong loyalty program with a strong loyalty app to complement it. You won’t regret it.

  21. Tripwire
  22. This is a fairly new, but legit sales promotion strategy. It involves offering a low-priced product to a prospective customer to get their attention. Once they trust you enough, it is time to market your higher priced products to these customers. This increases the likelihood of them converting into potential ones.

  23. Local events
  24. Every geographical location has a set of ethos and peculiar traits and if you are planning to target that particular area, you must be aware of these. In order to achieve global success, you must first make sure that you capture the local markets. So, while you will talk about cheese in Wisconsin, consider talking about potatoes in Idaho!

  25. Birthday Campaigns
  26. Birthdays are special, make it even more special for your customers by reaching out to them. Offer special deals or discounts on birthdays and encourage them to come back and make more purchases.

  27. Abandoned cart offers
  28. Abandoned carts are the bane of any e-store owner and it is critical that you spend some time in your efforts of recovering them. Offers on abandoned carts are known to help you recover somewhere between 3 to 11 percent.

  29. Sign-up deals
  30. This is a tricky mountain to scale. The sign-up sales promotion can seem like shots in the dark to some, because let’s face it – it’s tough to sell, when you don’t know who you are selling to. It is a good idea to test out different discount rates and deals, before zeroing in on the one that would be your standard sign-up deal you plan to offer.

Conclusion

This is in no way an exhaustive list, but it is a great place to get you started on your journey of creating a sales promotion plan for your business. The idea is to think of the value you are planning to offer and weigh out the interest of the targeted audience in your offerings. You can pick a single sales promotion example from here or create a unique combination of your own. The underlying idea is to understand what will work for your customers. Have you tried creating discount coupons for your customers? Appy Pie lets you add coupons to your app, try it out now!

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Abhinav Girdhar

Founder and CEO of Appy Pie