Whether you're running a small business or an established company, finding new and exciting sales promotion ideas can take your business to the next level. From discovering fresh demographics to waking up dormant leads, the benefits of a good promotion are endless.
What can be more crucial for online business than boosting customer satisfaction? It doesn't matter no matter whether it's about a product or service.
What's the Definition of Sales Promotion?
Online and habitual brick-and-mortar businesses treat sales promotion programs as a marketing strategy destined to make the customers purchase goods or services for the following rewards:
Sales growth in short time periods, making friends with loyal customers, further customer retention, recurring purchases, and brand exposure are parts of sales promotions.
Sales promotion examples are different. They can be short-lived and planned for a specific period of time. They become useful tools for businesses willing to boost sales, cultivate the loyalty of the customers, and face competitors.
Sales Promotion Definition
A sales promotion is a campaign destined to entice customers, generate leads, boost sales, reach the target audience, sustain friendships with existing customers, and increase brand awareness of your company.
A sales promotion campaign offers discounts, referral discount programs, or other types of sales promotions to urge people to interact with the company and get its goods and services.
Sales Promotion Examples
As you go through the list, consider how each sales promotion idea can be applied to your business, and we're sure you'll see your revenue start rising in the very near future.
1. Coupons
Coupons are actual route one sales promotion ideas: a one-time discount with a deadline for a product or service, which pushes your potential clients to take action. Although most companies give out their coupons for free, you can make the money back through repeat purchases and volume of traffic for online sales.
Put a strict time limit on the coupons to spark a sense of urgency. Remind them that it's a one-time-only deal, not your average discount code. Finally, make sure your service is tip-top so they go away with a smile. And you know what that means — repeat purchases.
2. Gift cards
Got a loyal customer? Nudge them to use your gift cards as a birthday present for a friend, and you can spread your customer base using one of the most powerful marketing tools there is — word of mouth from a friend.
Gift cards are super cheap to make whether they're online or physical. Many companies sell them for their own value, meaning very minimal loss. However, one of our sales promotion ideas for small businesses would be to offer a discount to encourage customers to buy, as well as include a referral discount program.
3. Flash sales
With a flash sale, you raise the pressure on your users to buy. Set an unmissable discount and a near deadline and get advertising. You'll see your sales go through the roof as FOMO takes over your customers and drives them to the checkout.
As sales promotion goes, a flash sale is great for shifting excess stock in a short amount of time, but you've got to make the most of your opportunity. Advertise your flash sales on social media platforms using a countdown to create a sense of urgency and drive more sales. You can even add free shipping to a deal.
4. Happy hour
This promotional incentive is more suitable for physical stores, you can identify times when business is low and make a push online for more customers. Brand your happy hour and create a recurring sale so it becomes a weekly plan for your most loyal customers.
Restaurants often use this technique to boost their mid-afternoon revenue when diners wouldn't ordinarily come. If customers are coming for two-for-one tacos, they'll make up your bottom line through drinks, increasing the average order value.
5. Double down on the doubters: abandoned carts
Are your analytics telling you that customers are filling their cart and not going through with the purchase? One of the best sales promotion options is to target them individually with a discount on the items they were considering with abandoned cart promotions.
This doesn't mean scraping through your website manually. With the right tools working in harmony, you can make automated workflows that send out discount emails to the right people with the right product.
6. Double down on the doers: discounts after purchases
After a purchase, your users are feeling satisfied. They saw something they wanted and got it. Deal done, right? Or not? It's time to try out another sales promotion tactic.
You can ride the wave of a sale by pinging your buyer an email with discounts for other products with sign-up promotions. This is one of the best sales campaigns for small businesses as it fast-tracks customer loyalty and helps to increase your brand awareness. Use email automations to send out your discounts, and with a bit of tactical work at the beginning, your discounts will run themselves like a well-oiled machine.
7. Social media challenges
Some of the most memorable sales promotion tools in history have been a result of social media challenges. The playbook is simple:
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Come up with an idea that is likely to go viral
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Launch your plan into the social mediaverse
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Watch your sales rise as your challenge spreads
The prize for your challenge could be offering free samples or a free product, but the benefits don't stop there. The main reason challenges are such great sales promotion ideas is for the huge exposure you get, as well as valuable user-generated content.
8. Partnership deals
You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
Partnership deals with complementary businesses work on the trust brands have with their customer bases. Put simply, you advertise a partner to your customer base while they do the same for you. The fact that it's coming from a trusted brand makes customers more likely to purchase, and there is very little investment involved.
Slap on additional discounts, offering a lower price to increase the likelihood of a purchase, and you're up and running with a partnership deal. A healthy partnership in business is the best sales promotion idea.
9. Influencer-driven sales promotions
Influencers are sales leaders and are here to stay. These people can give you, as a company, privileged access to their trusting followers. If you're smart, you'll choose an influencer who is relevant to your business but who mainly appeals to a different demographic.
Therefore, you get a fresh set of potential customers, rather than a group who are already aware of you and your brand. Influencers are often excellent creatives, and can turn a glowing testimonial into a promotional deal video masterpiece in no time.
10. Loyalty programs
The holy grail of marketing and sales is a loyalty program. It is a great way to encourage repeat business that rewards customers, but it goes way beyond that. A loyalty program works like an exclusive club that everyone wants to join. Yes, you'll be offering discounts and freebies, but keeping a chunk of your market to yourself is worth the cost.
Start by aligning your users with their loyalty level in a
customizable CRM and provide clear metrics for what it takes to move up levels. You can be offering free shipping or referral discounts for specific levels to add more value to the program and incentivize customers to make more purchases
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11. Subscription services
Products from business software to toothbrushes can all be converted into subscription services. This is a great way of ensuring future business and increasing the number of website visitors.
You can incentivize your users to commit by offering them a discount. A common idea is to offer three different price ranges and promote the extended payment term:
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One-time purchase: full price
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Six-month subscription: 5% discount
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Year-long subscription: 10% discount
For B2B sales promotion ideas, such as SaaS, you can segment your plans by scope, with the cheapest plans offering a stripped-down version of your full package.
As well as repeat business, subscriptions plans are one of those strategies that points customer attention directly at you, not at your customers.
12. Free trials
As a customer, you must have noticed all the big players offer a free month on their subscription before you start paying. This is among the most classic options destined to create customer commitment and ensure revenue for well into the future.
The way it works is easy: Hook new customers in offering them a freebie, then prove your worth to them throughout that month. At best, you've got a new recurring customer, and at worst, you're back at square one — which isn't exactly the end of the world.
13. Sign-up promotions
Another way of inspiring new customers to sign up for your service are limited registration offers. Rather than sticking with a free trial, you can entice customers by offering six-month discounts or a couple of freebies as an incentive to sign up.
These kinds of offers are often more intriguing to new customers than a simple free trial and are better for non-subscription services. Once your new customers have filled in a form with their email addresses and more, you can get to work on your email marketing.
14. Tripwire sales
Another great sales promotion tactic that works on different tiers is the tripwire strategy. Aimed at brand-new clients, you can offer low-price, low-risk products to get people familiar with your brand. Once you've got them hooked, you can start pitching upgrades and more complex items.
Tripwires work especially well for pastime-related products. For example, budding artists begin with a low-investment set of paints before moving on to more advanced tools for more advanced techniques.
15. Buy one get one free
As far as promotional ideas to increase sales go, a buy one get one free (BOGOF) offer has been there from the start. Whether you're trying to build customer loyalty or you've simply got some stock you need to get out the door, a BOGOF deal can be just the catalyst you need to stand out from the crowd.
Aside from boosting your customer satisfaction, BOGOF offers are great for sparking impulse buys, so factor them into a popup or a marketing email to drive sales.
16. Bundling
Buying a camera? You'll need a stand with that. Learning the guitar? Don't leave the house without a case.
Bundling is the art of collecting items together and selling them as a whole, rather than individually. Incentivize each sale with a discount and it will be simply too good to ignore. Bundling is a great way of separating yourself from the crowd, so make sure you're undercutting your competitors before launching the offer.
17. Add-ons
Similar to bundles, offering add-ons is a great way of increasing your sales through relevant recommendations. Standard subscriptions are great, but if someone wants to go a little further without going up to the next price level, they can snap up a couple of add-ons to refine their package.
As one of the best sales promotion tactics, you can confidently upsell other products to companies without them feeling ripped off since they are buying services related to the initial purchase. Using add-ons rather than bundles in B2B relationships is a great way of establishing trust from the outset.
18. Seasonal sales
If you're looking for sales promotion ideas you can plan in advance, seasonal sales are a great bet. Plan your campaigns around seasons such as Halloween and spring, and you can stay relevant all year long.
Of course, the big seasons will be saturated by all brands, so we would recommend targeting more niche events that are relevant to your business. There are heaps of calendars online that mark observance days that could be relevant to yours. So pick one when business is normally light and blaze your own promotional deal.
19. Donation promotions
One of the best ways to generate confidence in your brand is to align yourself with a charitable effort. Whether it's environment, gender, race, or disease-based, you can boost your image promotional ideas to increase sales.
The classic sales promo idea involves your company donating a percentage of each sale to a charity of your choice. Through the sales process, your customers will be aware that part of their money is going to a good cause.
20. Free shipping offers
We all love discounts, and free shipping is a great motivator for people to push the button and make a purchase.
Companies successfully combine free shipping with other sales promotion ideas. For example, you can offer it in a flash format, driving sales over a usually flat weekend. Similarly, you can push for more revenue by shipping orders over $50 for free. However you choose to employ it, free shipping is sure to lure in your more spontaneous customers.
Now you've got to grips with 20 excellent sales promotion ideas, it's time to put them into practice.
Bitrix24 Sales Promotion Strategies & Capabilities
A collaboration program known as Bitrix24 offers all capabilities needed for administration, cooperation, and communication. You get a fully integrated platform for all files, contacts, tasks, messages, and projects with it. All it takes to use the platform right away is creating an account, inviting your colleagues, and using it.
In addition to the regular CRM's functionality, Bitrix24 offers sales promotions that can turn out to be useful for the newbies in business. Let's have a look at the sales promotions that Bitrix24 offers in 2024.
Bitrix24 TOP 5 Sales Promotions Ideas to Target Audience
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Sales promotions through Tripwire. "Upselling" is another term among promotion examples. Customers may wish to buy the cheapest version of the product in the beginning. The sales representative should try to integrate them into the brand's ecosystem and sales CRM with sales promotions. A client may wish to buy a more expensive item in the future with discounts and special offers from the seller.
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Sales promotions through Fairtrade. Customers placing a high importance on ethical qualities will find your business more appealing when it is humanized. Make sure your team members invest at least minimum effort into live communication. It's one of the best sales promotion examples.
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Sales promotions through Free Returns. People are less inclined to return high-quality products produced by a brand. This sales campaign aims to make the buying process less complicated.
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Sales promotions through Joint Promotions. You'll need to arrange a partnership to achieve sales promotion results. Make sure you know what to sell to your clients, basing on the needs of your customers and the offerings of your competitors.
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Sales promotions through Social Media Contests. It's one of the sales promotion examples destined to use online contests. This type of sales promotion example is the essence of CRM. For instance, a store that sells toys for kids can invite its patrons to snap pictures with amusing animal figurines from their newest line. These photos must be shared in numerous social networks and chats along with hashtags that include the store's name. Five writers of the top photos will receive a 25% coupon for the next purchase or a free product. It's one of the simplest and regularly working sales promotion examples.
Bitrix24 gives you everything you need, including a website builder, CRM, sales workflows, marketing ideas, and so much more. As you now know, free trials are among the best sales promotion ideas, so head over to Bitrix24 and take advantage of your free month today!
FAQs
Which sales promotion examples are most effective?
The best sales promotion tools are those that inspire customers into action. Flash sales are the most effective promotion as they offer discounts and put a countdown on the time to purchase. The double strategy encourages customers en masse to buy quickly.
What are the main elements of sales promotion?
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The activity of the users;
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The participation of the users (likes, chances of winning in the promotion companies, reactions to the promises of gains, and so on);
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Targeting, depending on the users' age, activity, and interests;
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Regular mass media announcements and other means of online social interaction.
What are the top 10 consumer sales promotion options?
Five of the most common consumer sales promotion techniques include:
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Coupons;
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Free trials;
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Social media challenges;
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Sign up incentives;
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Free shipping discounts;
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Free gift cards and free samples;
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Special discounts;
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Flash sale periods and seasonal sales;
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Referral program;
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Sweepstakes and contests in social media.
We hope our sales promotion examples will help you promote your business in 2024.
