SEE

7 Reasons to Plan Regular Promotions for Your Business

Promotions

There’s a common misconception that promotions are a bad idea, or can be damaging to your business.

However, promotions are just another way to talk to your customers, to keep them engaged and interested.

Don’t wait until sales drop before thinking about engaging with your customers, it is important to keep a consistent dialogue.

Here are 7 reasons why including consistent and relevant promotions in your business is important, and how they help your goals.
 

Organisation

Planning out promotions gives you more time to think about your marketing. The what, why, and who of your campaign influences the platforms, audience, and really, all aspects of your promotion.

Proper planning allows for good communication, you have more time to think about how you want to talk about the promotion across different channels including emails, social media, etc. It allows you to think about what you are doing and why, rather than just doing it for the sake of it.

Having clear goals and time to think, creates better, more thought out promotions.
 

Engagement

Having more time allows you to create a strong visual look and feel for the promotion. You can do this by using consistent colours and even changing your homepage.

Visuals are important… they aren’t only the face of your promo, but the face of your brand as well. An attractive advertisement and look can vastly change how people interact with your campaign. A well thought out visual will capture customers’ attention and drive engagement.
 

Consistency

Planning your promotions ahead of time allows for you to have foresight, knowing what you’re going to do and when. When you have a clear plan of what you want to do ahead of time, you can make sure you have regular promotions across the year by planning one a month.

Being disorganised will lead to last-minute decisions for campaigns that end up badly executed or too many at one time. Regular promotions also keep your customers engaged (and here are some list templates to keep you organised).
 

Strategy

Once you have a consistent schedule you know what you are doing through the year, you can align this with other key dates in your business as well.

When you have a new product being launched or a peak sales period, you can align your promotions to better coincide with these important times and support sales. Having promotions in line with these events and planning them ahead of time is a good way to avoid having too many promotions on at once as well.
 

Diversify

Thinking about promotions beforehand will allow for more time to better choose different types of promotions for different goals. The same type of promotion will not necessarily work as well if you keep on using it, and having different offers going on keeps customers engaged and interested.

You can balance different types of promotions across the year e.g. giveaways or free shipping vs. more discount-based promotions.

For example, if you know you have your ‘Big 50% Off Summer Sale’ coming up, but you need to push a certain line of products before that, you can do a buy one get one free offer instead of 50%, off to diversify your offers and move more products. This example showcases the importance of diversity and how different goals need different campaigns.
 

Avoiding panic decisions

Having a plan can avoid a panic where you end up just discounting to make sales.

Last-minute decisions lead to badly thought out plans which don’t work as well as pre-planned promotions. When you are stressed or worried, you make irrational decisions in an attempt to do something.

Instead of planning a sale as soon as possible, sit down and plan your promotions for the rest of the year. Creating a plan will yield better results and help avoid being in the same position again.
 

Collaboration opportunities

Planning out your promotions will help you collaborate with other businesses.

First and foremost, it will show other businesses that you are professional and organised. Secondly, it will allow for sufficient time for you and your collaborator to come up with a strong message and campaign which works well for both of you.
 

Organisation is always important, and promotions are no exception. Planning promos properly will help you stay on top of messaging for your business.

To find out more about planning sales-boosting promotions without damaging your brand, Catherine Erdly’s latest masterclass can be found here.

Scurri