10 Steps to Create a Promotion That Boosts Sales

Sales promotion is seen as a tool to attract both existing and new customers, spread brand awareness and drive sales. Beyond raising traffic to a business's sales channels, promotions are also key to building customer loyalty. So how do you promotions that is effective, easy to run, and keeps customers on your side after the promotion ends? Let MONA Media find the answer in the article below.

What is a sales promotion program?

Sales promotion is run to increase appeal and encourage agents, distributors and customers to take part in buying and selling a business's products. These programs usually run for a short time and bring a business sales gains and a competitive edge.

Promotions push customers to buy products they hadn't planned to buy, or persuade existing customers to buy in larger quantities.

Benefits of running promotions

Attract a large customer base

Customers are drawn to vouchers, coupons, free gifts or discounts of 30-50%, big prizes and so on. So the first benefit of running a promotion is that you attract a large number of potential customers for a fairly small cost.

Build a trusted brand and grow revenue

Businesses can easily build credibility and build brand awareness through promotions with meaningful or valuable gifts. Gifts are the best catalyst for building trust and increasing customers' fondness for a business and the products or services it provides.

Investing in these programs is also necessary: they build recognition and brand credibility, and they help a business hit its sales targets in a short time.

→ Read more: What is branding? Learn about branding

10 steps to create an effective promotion

Step 1: Set the right goal for the promotion

Make sure the goal of your promotion is very clear. For example, your goal may be to raise sales of a specific product, to introduce your brand to potential customers, or to strengthen your brand value.

Ask yourself: at this stage of the business, which goal is the most practical and necessary? Which goal fits the resources you have? That will show you which goal deserves your focus.

A common mistake in running promotions is giving one program 2 or 3 main goals. This accidentally splits your focus, so no goal gets enough attention, none is reached, and you spend more than you needed to.

Step 2: Define your target customers and your message

Once your goal is clear, define the target customers the plan is aimed at. Different customer groups need different offers and different messages.

Some customers like a discount when they buy, some want a free gift with their purchase, and some want a voucher for their next purchase.

The right audience and the right message give you a chance to build customer loyalty, raise average order value and stimulate demand. A clear goal and the right message account for about 20% of the success of a promotion.

Step 3: Set the budget

Setting the budget is an important step in shaping the promotion. Decide how to use your business's budget in the most sensible way:

• What percentage goes to preparing the program?
• What percentage goes to promoting it?
• What percentage goes to running it?

Step 4: Choose the right marketing channels to promote it

You should identify the marketing channels that best suit the campaign. Look for the channels where your potential customers are most active. You also need to weigh other factors such as cost, goals and the information you want to deliver.

Step 5: Set metrics to measure results

To know whether the campaign succeeded or failed, and to see its strengths and weaknesses, set performance metrics when you create the promotion. They show how far you got and what percentage of the original plan you achieved.

We suggest you use these 2 methods SMART or OKRs to carry out this step.

→ Read next: How to build effective KPIs

Step 6: Identify the difficulties of the program

Anticipating the difficulties and challenges of running a promotion helps you avoid unnecessary risks later. If a risk can't be avoided, you can still prepare a solution or respond well to it.

Remember that you can't foresee every difficulty that will come up. This step only helps you keep the chance of failure as low as possible.

Step 7: Create a marketing campaign to support the promotion

For the promotion to succeed, you need an effective marketing campaign to support it. A marketing campaign helps you reach more potential customers, reach your original goals faster, and raise the ROI you set. Make sure the marketing campaign runs only during the period of the promotion.

Step 8: Prioritize highly creative programs

To make a promotion creative, build it on 3 key factors:

• Visible: Make sure your main consumers, the target customers you are aiming at, know about the program.
• Appealing: Make sure the promotional value attracts consumers.
• Simple: Focus on making it easy for customers to take part. Don't communicate vaguely or make people spend a lot of time understanding your program.

Consumers usually glance over your product for just a few seconds. A complicated, confusing message is pointless, so focus on the three factors above to run a successful promotion.

Step 9: Run a trial of the promotion

Nothing guarantees you'll succeed the first time you run a program, so a business should test it first before officially announcing and launching it.

The trial is simple to run:

• Create the promotion on a smaller scale
• Test it with a small group of target customers
• Run it for a short period
• Ask customers for feedback

When the trial ends, you can judge how well customers received the program and fix the weak parts before the official launch.

Step 10: Run the program and monitor it

The last step is short: launch the promotion and watch it closely so you can handle any issues as soon as they come up.

If you are looking to run a promotion when starting an online business selling on Shopee, then MONA Media can turn that idea into an effective sales strategy. With experience running stores on e-commerce websites such as Shopee, MONA does more than set up promotions. We also help you analyze which products suit a sale, optimize your listings to the standard SEO Shopee and track campaign results, and more.

Shopee management service at MONA Media brings you these benefits:

•  Standard Shopee store designMONA includes a professional, attractive Shopee store setup service
• Optimized product listingsWriting content, adding tags, categorizing and updating product descriptions to improve visibility in user search
• Managing promotions and sale dealsSetting up promotions, flash salegolden-hour deals and Shopee campaigns
• Performance tracking and reportingReporting and advice: regular reports on real data, with suggested adjustments to improve business results
• Strategic consultingLong-term guidance on Shopee, including ideas for growing your shop's followers, and more

Why wait? Call MONA through HOTLINE 1900 636 648 or get direct advice right below!

Popular promotions you can learn from

Direct product discounts

This is the most basic form of promotion and is very widely used. The discounted products are often ones that sell slowly at agents or stores. Discounting a specific product by a set percentage attracts shoppers and encourages them to buy.

Vouchers and coupons

Vouchers and coupons are promotional slips given when a customer buys or uses a service from the business. The difference is that a coupon gives a percentage discount, while a voucher gives a fixed amount printed on it.

Free gift with purchase

Consumers love getting an extra product with their purchase, so this is one of the fastest promotions to set up. The free items are usually new products that need promoting, products close to their expiry date, or leftover stock at the end of the season (for seasonal goods).

Discounts for buying more

Bundle discounts are used by many stores and shopping centers. For the same product, you get a better price when you buy more. For example, 10% off for one item, 20% off for two, and 30% off for three.

Promotions for golden hours, golden days and golden weeks

Besides major shopping occasions such as Tet, Valentine's Day on 14/2, International Women's Day and Black Friday, plan and run promotions in golden hours, birthday weeks and lucky dates like 1/1, 2/2 and 3/3. They draw potential customers into shopping and help them decide to buy faster.

Offers for VIP customers

Gold cards, loyalty cards, VIP cards and points cards are used by most cinema chains, supermarkets and shopping centers to attract new customers and keep existing ones, building loyalty. Invest in these cards to build a base of customers who are loyal to your brand.

Customer appreciation

Appreciation programs usually target loyal customers who often use your services or buy at your store. They can include offers or discounts on a second purchase, gifts, or a deep discount on the customer's birthday.

Freeship

Every customer is happy with a store that ships free. So create a distinctive promotion such as free shipping for orders over 100k, or free delivery for orders within the city.

Customers who want free shipping are often glad to add more items to reach the minimum order value.

Clearance sales

Clearance sales usually cover items such as electronics, shoes and clothing, and of course come without returns or warranty. These are often seasonal or trend products. When the trend ends, stores clear leftover and defective stock at deep discounts of 40-75% depending on the item.

Free product trials

Free trials are a good promotion strategy. You don't need to spend much on advertising because a large number of consumers try the product, judge its quality, and then recommend it to family and friends by word of mouth.

This works well for new products, perfume and food. Statistics show that more than 30% of people who tried a new coffee brand's sample told their family and friends about it, with a high level of trust and satisfaction.

A well-designed promotion gives a business a clear competitive edge in the market. In this article, MONA Media has shared the whole guide to running a promotion to raise conversion rate and use your budget efficiently. We hope you apply it successfully and get impressive results for your brand.