Promotion Strategies

The Driving Forces Of Sales Promotion

Sales promotion, used by many retail organizarions, is a method that uses various techniques to persuade members of a desired demographic to respond or take part in a certain activity. To reward the consumer, the marketers of a retail business use various tools, usually offering something with a good deal. Some examples of this are "Or your money back", or generally having a lower price than your competition. It is very easy to confuse sales promotion with advertising.

Advertising is basically something that tells a potential customer about your products or services. These are your basic television and radio advertisements as well as the stuff you see in magazines and newspapers.

Sales promotion actually require your customers to engage in some sort of activities. This can be a contest that runs for a short time, a survey that only takes a limited amount of people, or the infamous "Act now due to limited supply!" type. Sales promotion is used by all kinds of different businesses, not just limited to retail. However, consumer products make up the majority and have the highest levels of spending such as all the McDonalds promotions we get bombarded by in the US. Their famous sales promotion is the McRib which is only available a couple times a year - this is an example of a specific promotional tool, namely limited availability.

The driving forces behind sales promotion tools are:

BUILDING PRODUCT AWARENESS This is to showcase a newer product or an expanded product line. The idea is to show it to the customers while offering them some type of deal while giving the product maximum exposure in a fun way. This is also useful to gather information on your customer base that will allow you to generate leads for follow-up marketing techniques.

CREATING INTEREST Sales promotions are wonderful when it comes to generating interest. Radio stations often have contests to win trips or cash if people know a lot about that station. The same applies for almost any business. Even better if you can get a radio station to hold a contest with you being the sponsor.

INCREASE DEMAND Besides building product awareness, the best way to use sales promotion is to get customers to buy your product or service. Special offers are always a great way to generate extra sales and increase demand.

BRAND REINFORCEMENT Once a customer has bought your product or service, you can use different types of sales promotion to keep them as loyal customers (think frequent flyer miles). Many different stores offer "preferred" cards or special savings to repeat customers.