Do you want to increase your sales and drive more visitors to your website? How about a promotion? When marketed well, promotions are ideal strategies for reaching out to both existing and new customers.
A promotion creates an explicit buying incentive for your target group. It creates a sense of urgency for casual visitors to complete their purchase. It attracts bargain hunters and encourages the undecided to finally click on “Buy Now”.
You can also achieve long-term growth with a promotion. With the right marketing plan, your promotion can attract a new group of buyers and turn them into long-term customers. But first you need a strategy to create and publish your promotion.
8 tips for developing a strong advertising strategy
Most promotions have 2 main goals: increasing sales and maximizing market presence. When developing a strategy that is aligned with these goals, here are some tips to keep in mind.
1. Keep promotions simple
A high response rate is likely if your promotions are easy to understand and actionable. The simplest strategy is to discount the item for everyone. If you cross out the original price on your website and add the new price, perhaps in bold, the benefits of the promotion will be easy for everyone to see.
Another option is to use discount codes. If you choose this option, you need to make sure that the discount code is easy to use. Customers don’t want to have to search for the code when they’re on your website.
The discount code should be clearly visible in an email so that recipients can easily find it again if they forget to copy it. Think about posting the code on your website too so it’s easily accessible.
2. Combine products
One way for businesses to sell more products is to offer two or more products at a combined price that is less than the total cost of each item if purchased individually. Merchants often use this strategy to bring a product that is not selling well to the customer by combining it with a popular product.
Let’s say you sell jewelry at $ 20 per pair of earrings and bracelets at $ 10 each. The earrings sell themselves, but nobody is interested in the bracelets. If you were to sell a pair of earrings in a set with a bracelet for $ 25, you could reduce the inventory of bracelets and potentially attract more loyal customers.
A famous example is Nintendo, which sold 100,000 additional consoles as well as more than a million game cartridges when it bundled the two items.
3. Reward customers to drive orders
You can increase the average value of your orders by offering a free item when a customer reaches a certain purchase threshold.
A popular version of this strategy is conditional free shipping – the “Free shipping from $ X” offer. One article explains that free shipping would increase the likelihood of buying online for around 80% of US customers. If you’re getting a lot of orders valued at $ 60, you should consider offering free shipping over $ 75.
If you can’t afford to offer free shipping, that’s fine. Choose a small free item that will be added when a certain threshold is reached.
4. Reward top customers with special offers
Some analysis of the data suggests that existing customers spend 31% more than new buyers and that they are 50% more likely to try a new product. You can strengthen this loyalty by rewarding your most spending customers with tailored offers.
To get even more out of this strategy, encourage your best customers to share their experiences on social media. This is a great referral reward opportunity.
5. Change products and homepage
Many retailers view merchandising as a strategy for local trading, but it’s just as important for e-commerce. Your customers get used to your side. If you rearrange them and add new visuals, you will draw attention to your promotion.
Consider moving your home page and product pages when you start your promotion. A good place to start is to revise your homepage and put the advertised products in the foreground. You can also revitalize each category and individual product pages, highlighting not only the advertising, but also accessories, add-ons or popular related products.
6. Promote product reviews
Reviews are important to many customers. A study shows that nearly 95% of consumers read reviews before buying. Compared to a product with no reviews, showing five reviews on the retailer’s website can increase conversion rates by up to 270%;
Before posting your promotion, make sure that your products have good reviews. In the meantime, start collecting original reviews. A particularly effective technique, especially when introducing new products, is sending products to customers and asking for reviews. With their permission, you can publish them on your product page.
Buyers can also give you reviews. Through automated product follow-up emails, makes it easy to collect reviews from current customers. All you have to do is add a review request to a recently purchased product, perhaps with a link to the reviews on your website.
You can also include links to third-party review sites. Don’t worry if not all reviews are great – studies show that negative reviews can help build trust and lead to up to 85% more conversions .
7. Try different promotions
Different target groups respond to different promotions. Consider doing A / B testing, a simple and effective way to understand how your audience is reacting.
In the A / B test, 2 versions of a campaign are sent, e.g. B. a percentage promotion versus a monetary promotion.
8. Make yourself unforgettable
Consumers have advertisements in their inboxes and social media feeds on a daily basis. It’s important to stand out as a brand, preferably with a personal touch. You may want to include a thank you card or a free sample in the package to please your customers.
Promote promotions
Now that you have the inside knowledge to develop a strong marketing promotion strategy, you can focus on promoting the promotion. Raise awareness to maximize your sales growth.
Email marketing may have decades of history, but it hasn’t lost any of its clout. A 2015 research study found that for every $ 1 spent on an email campaign, an average return of up to $ 38 could be achieved.
You can use advertising to make your e-mails even more attractive to customers.
Expert tips: As an added benefit, offer your most loyal customers early access to the promotion.
Social media
Social media ads and organic posts can spread your promotion among new and existing customers. Address existing customers and look for new customers with similar interests. Mostly important, your customers are active on social media. Therefore, you shouldn’t miss any opportunity to make your offers stand out.
Retargeting
In the age of automation, it is easy to set up messages to address customers who have not ordered in a long time. Maybe someone filled a shopping cart and then decided not to buy it, or maybe the person just browsed and then changed their mind. A promotion can bring many of these people back. These people will then receive special emails encouraging them to complete their purchase.
Postcards
In today’s digital world, postcards can make a big impression. You can easily create promotional postcards and send them to your loyal customers. Postcards don’t get lost in their email inboxes and the sensory engagement makes the buyer feel special. Postcards are also a great way to target an audience with personalized offers.
Turn new customers into existing customers
Promotions are tried and tested strategies for attracting new customers, but it shouldn’t stop there. Now that you know how to get people to buy, it’s time to get them regular customers.
Loyalty is an important factor in making repeat purchases. Here are some key tips you can use to convert new buyers into repeat customers.
Tagging new customers
The more you know about your new customers, the better you can personalize the messages for them in the future. Make sure to tag all new customers who visit your website during your promotion. Tag them based on what they are buying and consider adding an “Engages with Promotions” tag.
Expert tip: Use your audience tags for better conversions to personalize future communications. Segmented, targeted, and personalized email could generate a significant amount of revenue, and conversions can increase even further with more personalized page views.
Send welcome emails
Welcome emails are a great way to build relationships. If you don’t already, add an option on your checkout page where customers can give you their email address and sign up for future emails. Send a welcome message to everyone who registers. Think about how you can make a great first impression on your new customers.
Expert tip: If you set up automation to send welcome emails to new customers, you can be sure that those messages will be sent consistently. Better still, it will happen with no continued effort on your part.
Maintain communication
Your new customers should keep hearing from you after the promotion ends. Use the tags you’ve set up for these customers to send personalized product recommendations.
Through your connected store, you can predict what your customers will like so you can send emails with product recommendations and encourage them to make repeat purchases.
Put your latest products and bestsellers in the foreground to generate interest. This invigorates the interaction with the customers and ensures that your brand is present with the buyers, which helps you to increase your sales.
Get started with your promotion
With these tips you are ready to start designing your promotion and spreading it.
Start with your Audience dashboard. See who your customers are and which segments you want to reach with your promotion.
Then go to your website and add promotional content. If you have a website on you can create an unlimited number of landing pages for the promotion.
You can create effective multichannel marketing campaigns. You can use these campaigns extensively with you reporting functions. You will find out where the most engagement arises, who reacts and what your customers have in common. By reviewing this information after your campaign, you can continue to optimize your advertising strategies.
Promotions are a powerful way to increase sales. The key is to come up with an attractive offer, market it intelligently, and follow up in such a way that customers old and new will stay loyal to you.
Your customers are waiting. It’s time to create a promotion that you can’t resist.