Do you truly have a strategy behind your sales promotions or are you just trying everything you can without clear goals and strategies?   Having a focused strategy is important. Having sales promotional goals are needed to obtain desired results. Just trying to do anything and everything all the time does not lead to sustainable success.

How to design strategy to achieve sales promotion goals:

Step 1:  Identify “types of buyers” for your business

Step 2: Determine “desired results”

Step 3: Create aligned strategy with type of buyer, desired results, and the sales promotions

Step specifics:

Step 1:  Types of Buyers—Who are you targeting? Knowing the type of buyer you are targeting shapes the strategy needed to acquire the customer.

Types of Buyers
  • Loyal customers
 These are people who buy your products/services most of the time
  • Competitors customers
 These are consumers who buy from your competitors  most or all of the time
  • Price buyers
 These are consumers who are consistently buying the least expensive brand
  • Brand switchers
 These are consumers who buy a variety of products in the category

Step 2: Desired results—Based on the type of buyer, the desired results and thus, corresponding strategy varies.

Desired Results
  • Loyal customers
 Reinforce behavior, increase purchases, and change purchase timing
  • Competitors customers
 Break loyalty to competitor products/services, persuade conversion to your brand
  • Price buyers
 Attract consumer by low prices or provide added value that makes price less important
  • Brand switchers
 Influence this type of consumer to buy more often your brand

Step 3: Sales promotions—Strategy development based on alignment of buyer to desired results. The following examples of sales promotional strategies align with trying to attract the identified buyer with desired results.

Sales Promotion Strategy
  • Loyal customers
 Loyalty marketing programs, bonus incentives for loyal customers, premiums offers for referrals
  • Competitors customers
 Free samples to introduce consumer to new brand options, sweepstakes, contests, or incentives
  • Price buyers
 Coupons, special discounts, refund / matched price programs
  • Brand switchers
 Any promotion that lowers the price of the product, such as coupons, bonus buy discounts, trade deal that make the product more easily available than competitors

What this means is that a manager needs to carefully analyze their customer base and then determine which customer segment they need to develop and grow. This will determine the appropriate strategy needed to target that segment of the consumer group. Determining where there is opportunity for growth is critical to being able dedicate resources to that seize that goal.  Written by: Sabrina Pack-PCM