Sales promotion techniques include giving direct or indirect monetary benefits to the customer to attract them towards your products or brands. Successful entrepreneurs understand that sales promotions are one of the most effective ways to improve sales, customer happiness, and brand exposure. Sales promotions have been utilised with great success for decades, and there are sales promotion tactics that may work for every business, regardless of the sector or business size. The most common techniques include giving discounts and free samples, which are still relevant. However, with the changing business environment and advent of the internet and digitisation, sales promotion techniques have gone through several changes and some new ones have also emerged to better suit the needs of the present environment. Let’s discuss them one by one.
Table of Contents
- Online Discount
- Lucky Draws
- Points Promotion
- Coupons And Vouchers
- Free Samples
- Cashbacks
- Referral Discounts
- Contests And Giveaways
- Demographic Specific Offers
- Flash Sales
- Final Words
Online Discount
Discounts are the most commonly used promotion method on the Internet. The prices of online goods are generally kept lower than those of traditional sales to attract people to buy. Because online sales of goods cannot give people a comprehensive and intuitive impression, cannot be tried, touched, etc. With the complexity of distribution costs and payment methods, the enthusiasm for online shopping and ordering has remained lower in comparison to offline shopping. Larger discounts can encourage consumers to try online shopping and make purchasing decisions. At present, most products sold online have various price discounts.
Lucky Draws
Lottery promotion is one of the most widely used forms of online promotion, and it is a promotion method that most websites are willing to use. Lottery promotion promotes goods or services using one or more people getting prizes that exceed the event’s cost. Online lottery activities are mainly attached to surveys, product sales, expansion of user groups, celebrations, and promotion of certain activities. Consumers or visitors get lucky draw opportunities by filling in questionnaires, registering, purchasing products or participating in online activities.
Also read: Factors Determining Competence Of A Salesman
Points Promotion
Giving points to visitors for completing various activities is a popular method of promoting an online business. Customers get to redeem the points collected for various types of monetary benefits. Point promotion generally sets higher-value prizes, and consumers increase their points to obtain prizes through multiple purchases or multiple participation in a certain activity. Point promotion can increase the number of times that Internet users visit the website and participate in a certain activity; it can increase Internet users’ loyalty to the website and increase the activity’s visibility.
Coupons And Vouchers
Coupons and vouchers are a great way to encourage customers for repeat business. You can offer them coupons and vouchers for purchases they make. The customer can redeem them on the next purchase for certain benefits like discounts, cashbacks, free goodies and so on. These coupons and vouchers have a time limit and can be used only within that time, say fifteen days or a month. This time limit also encourages customers to make repeat purchase decisions.
Free Samples
There are not too many applications for the promotion of gifts and free samples on the Internet. Under normal circumstances, the promotion of gifts can achieve better promotional effects when new products are launched for trial, product updates, confronting competing brands, and opening up new markets. Giving free samples and gifts help to enhance the visibility of the brand and website; encourage people to visit the website frequently, and can help summarize and analyze the customer reaction to new products according to the enthusiasm of consumers for those products.
Cashbacks
Cashbacks can be said to just be an innovative form of discount. Cashback on one hand feels better to the customer as he gets some money back, which he has already spent. On the other hand, cashbacks are also beneficial to the business as they can be tied to certain conditions. For example, you can give cashback to customers in the form of money that can only be spent to purchase products on your website.
Referral Discounts
This is a great way to encourage your existing customers to do some word of mouth publicity for you and bring in new customers. The existing customers get some discounts, points, coupons, etc., in return while you get new customers. For giving them a reward in return for bringing new customers, you can try several different techniques. Rewards can be offered as real money, like discounts on some of your products or in the form of exciting offers. You can also put a threshold for getting rewards like a minimum of three referrals, five referrals and so on.
Contests And Giveaways
Several types of contests can be run for your customers or followers on social media and the winners can be offered rewards or giveaways that is free samples or gifts. For example, you can run a contest for your followers to tag people in comments on your post and those who tag most people will get a reward. In this way, your brand gets exposure to new people who are tagged and your followers get an exciting reward.
Demographic Specific Offers
There are offers that are specific to certain groups like people of a particular profession, of a particular age, and so on. You can use them to attract a particular type of customer and make them feel that this is something special just for them. You can also give such offers on particular days like students day, teachers day, doctors day, women’s day, seniors citizens day and so on.
Flash Sales
Flash sales are a good way to clear out your idle stock as they attract customers due to the huge discounts they come with. Since flash sales are time-bound like for 1 day or for 2 days, this also creates a sense of urgency in customers and encourages them to make fast purchase decisions.
Final Words
These are some of the main sales promotion techniques that are generally used in modern businesses. However, the field of sales promotion is a broad one and you can always find more techniques or develop new ones on your own based on your specific needs.