Consumer Sales Promotion: How To Effectively Connect With Customers And Boost Product Sales
Stick the word “free” in front of consumers and it tends to turn heads. Invite them to try a few samples of a delicious new dessert, and, chances are, they’ll bite. Show them the great prizes they can win simply by participating in exciting promotional contests and you’re likely to make a good impression and earn added sales for your brand.
There are a lot of sales promotion techniques that can help your brand boost awareness and generate both immediate and long-term sales. In this article, we’ll touch on a few of the most popular promotion techniques and provide some tips to help you get the most out of them.
The first thing to remember about sales promotion is that the entire endeavor is to entice customers to purchase your product or products. Do it and you’ve created a successful promotion. Fall short and the time and money you’ve invested to connect with that customer and drive sales is not coming back.
How well does your company use sales promotion to reach out to customers? Have you ever considered using digital data and insights to drive more effective sales promotion? Maybe now’s the time?
Which Way Do I Go?
Deciding What Type Of Promotion Works Best
The honest answer is, “it all depends.” There are plenty of effective promotional techniques, but they’re not all right for every product or brand. Factors like price, product category, consumer awareness, and delivery channels all impact promotion strategies and, ultimately, sales.
Additionally, you’ll need to ask yourself questions like, “is this a new product launch or an established brand? How is the product used? Is it an impulse buy or a calculated purchase on the part of the consumer?” These are all key factors to determining which sales promotion techniques are worth exploring.
In fact, many brands and retailers are turning to digital partners to help them gain better understandings of customer behavior, as well as the impacts of price and merchandising in building targeted promotions.
“Our digital solution captures a broad range of internal and external data that lead to insights into customer wants and needs, traffic patterns, price, product merchandising, store conditions, sales channels and a lot more,” says Eduardo Santaella, Chief Operating Officer of Mobile Insight, “leveraging this information helps shape sales promotion techniques and strategies. The more you know about the relationship between customers and a product, the more effectively you can plan a promotion and generate sales.”
Promotion Techniques And How To Use Them
Free Samples
Samples are a great way to promote impulse purchases, such as new food items in a grocery store. The beauty of a free sample is its immediacy. It’s a chance to get consumers to experience something they might not have been considering without asking them to make any effort whatsoever.
The word “free” is always a big attraction, so even mailing or emailing coupons for a free sample valid on a future store visit is certainly a sales technique worth considering.
Free samples are an ideal promotion for consumables and products with lower price points. They are also a great way to generate awareness and boost sales during new product launches.
Free Gift With Purchase
Once again, the power of “free” rears its head. Little explanation is required here, the customer gets an extra bonus when he or she buys a specified promotional item. The gift can be clearly packaged with the product as a visual sales incentive at the point of purchase. Or, it might be mailed out at a later date. Either way, the strategy is to make customers feel extra confident about their purchase decisions by adding something extra to the equation.
Coupons
The coupon is a promotion that guarantees the customer some level of savings or discount with the purchase. It could be a percentage off the list price. It could be a BOGO offer. It could be money in the form of a cash rebate.
Coupons are one of the most common sales promotion techniques when marketing consumer goods. They can be delivered the old-fashioned way – newspapers, magazines and by mail. Or, better yet, go digital and deliver your discount coupons via email, text message, or even social media.
Using the digital tools your consumers use each day is a great way for your company to connect on a personal level, and that goes a long way to generating sales.
Contests
Who doesn’t love a good game? Essentially, that’s what promotional contests are, whether it’s entirely a game of chance or one that requires a bit of knowhow and effort is up to you.
The key to a good contest is to offer a prize worth winning and to make the promotion fun and exciting. In terms of the prize, it could be anything from a wad of money to a free Caribbean vacation. As long as it’s something your customers would appreciate, it’s a good prize.
The more creative you can be with your contest, the better. Challenge customers to make a compelling home video. Ask them to write an essay about how much they love your product or products. The point is, if you have fun with your contest, so will customers.
Contests are ideal promotions for higher end products – electronics, automobiles, home appliances, and the like. However, they certainly work for everyday products, as well. If it’s a good contest, customers will participate.
Price Discount
Sometimes a simple sale price can be the best promotion. As general rule, if possible, offer the customer a rather substantial discount. Something like 50% off is always a draw. You might also discount the purchase of multiple items or related items. Another important rule when offering a discount price is to stick to a clear time period. Make sure customers know that these savings won’t last long. A price promotion is about generating new sales NOW! Not sales next quarter.
If you found this article insightful, learn more about retail sales and promotions in the digital age at mobileinsight.com.
Mobile Insight® is the only retail and merchandise management solution designed to meet the brick and mortar sales challenges of high-value brands and retailers. Unlike hardware and software providers that focus on fast-moving goods, the Mobile Insight® platform delivers assisted sales solutions for more complex, interactive, and customer-centric environments. Combining data from in-store systems, 3PLs, employee and partner activity, Mobile Insight® enables informed, smarter decisions that drive sales and operations excellence. For more information, visit www.mobileinsight.com.