POPcodes Tips on How to Create a Successful Promotion

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Promotions are a very useful tool for driving customers to your location no matter if your goal is to expand market penetration or to introduce a new product. Before creating a promotional campaign, you should make note of the following items:

  • Audience: Who is this campaign intended to reach? Who will appreciate it most?

  • Action: What do you want the recipient of this promotion to do?

  • Analysis: What do you intend to learn from this campaign? How are you incorporating lessons learned from previous campaigns into your current one?

Before creating a campaign, let’s first consider the following:

Examine Your Communication Opportunities

It’s helpful to identify the needs of your target market. For example:

  • Who is your target market?

  • Whom is your message intended to reach?

  • Do you intend to reach only your current users? Key influencers? Decision makers, specific groups? The public?

Choose Your Communication Channels

Once you have defined your market and products on offer, it’s time to decide on which communication channels you intend to leverage in this campaign. For example, will you communicate with your audience using:

  • Online ads

  • Email

  • Social media

  • In-store signage

  • Telephone marketing

  • In-person contact

  • Billboards & sign flippers

  • Radio

  • Newspaper

  • Any other media?

Define Promotional Objectives

Prior to executing your campaign, define your objectives in terms of expected behaviours by your audience. These objectives should be clearly defined and easily measured in the course of the campaign.

  • What am I trying to do with this campaign?

  • Whom am I trying to reach?

  • What behaviours am I trying to elicit?

  • Are these short term or long-term behaviours?

Define Promotional Mix

A well-developed promotion won’t just focus on one aspect of the promotional mix. Try to hit several of the core tenets of marketing:

  • Promotion

  • Price

  • Product

  • Place

Define Message

What is your promotional message? What are you trying to do and how will this be executed? Key focus areas should be:

  • Content

  • Appeal

  • Structure

  • Format

  • Source of message

  • Execution

Define Promotion Budget

What will the total budget for this promotion be? Make sure you take into account:

  • Cost breakdown per element of promotional mix

  • What will this promotion cost per location (or territory)?

  • Overall affordability of campaign

  • Cost as a percentage of sales

  • Competitive parity

How will these costs affect the overall success of your campaign?

Define Campaign Effectiveness Expectations

Once you’ve created your campaign, you need to define your expectations of what this campaign will generate. You should consider things like:

  • Timelines

  • Planned vs. actual objectives

  • Did you change consumer behaviour?

  • Did your target market behave as expected?

  • Did your target market understand what was being asked of them?

By incorporating some of these points into the overall design of your promotions you will be able to effectively bond with your customers in a way that leaves a lasting and meaningful impression of you and your business on them.

Bonus Content:

Here are a few more tips and tricks that will help you to create a successful campaign:

  • Keep it simple. One offer is often enough. Offering multiple, competing offers runs the risk of confusing your consumers (and your staff).

  • Include a barcode where possible. If your point of sale system has the ability to scan a barcode, utilize the barcode feature in the POPcodes campaign create tool. It will make the redemption process easier on your staff and speed checkout times for your customers.

  • Choose realistic expiry dates. Try to limit your offers to somewhere between twenty one and thirty days. Consumers respond better to frequent offers with shorter redemption windows than they do to longer ones. Create a sense of urgency and stick to a month or less.

Good Luck!

~POPcodes