Sales Promotion Advertising
Sales promotion is, in its simplest form, any brand initiative designed to promote sales, usage or trial of products, leading to a measurable direct impact of the number of sales.
Sales promotion is best thought of as an umbrella term, incorporating numerous forms of promotions, from money off voucher or coupons, to on-pack promotions and everything else in-between. The primary focus of sales promotion advertising is to positively impact on sales, and is very efficient at doing so, but it can also impact on wider elements of your marketing strategy, working to drive loyalty to the brand itself, through communication and demonstration, giving consumers a much better idea of your brand, it’s products and the quality of these products ahead of making any purchase. Sales promotion can also be utilised to drive consumers to separate channels, whether this is driving to Facebook, Twitter or other sites within the social space, to search, promoting offers through specific brand-coined terms and phrases, and indeed, driving to the brand’s website itself.
Some of the common objectives of a sales promotion advertising campaign include product trial, brand loyalty and increased frequency of sales, all of which are metrics which through sales promotion are easy to detract and measure, making sales promotion marketing one or the more accountable and transparent elements of a marketing strategy. This ability to measure with ease the impact sales promotion advertising has on your sales is what makes it so attractive to marketers, as the returns of this activity can be readily quantified, demonstrating its benefit to your sales figures with ease, making sales promotion advertising a definite must in today’s economic climate.
A frequent feature of sales promotion advertising is the use of associations between the brand and celebrities, films, events or even other brands, working in conjunction with one another to appeal to consumers interests beyond your products and services.
This makes your communications better received, appealing to users by demonstrating that your brand is the best for them, making them believe that due to these associations that your brand is the best choice for their lifestyle. There are numerous examples of well executed sales promotion advertising campaigns that utilise such associations, with those of note include McDonald’s, who associated with kids movie releases with their Happy Meal product, Carlsberg’s association with the England football team and Robinson’s on-pack promotions for the Wimbledon tennis championship. When deciding to draw such associations with your brand it is important to get it right, remaining mindful of the negative impact the wrong association could have for your brand and the subsequent impact this could have on your sales promotion advertising.
Types of sales promotion activities that are commonly utilised in such campaigns can include prize draws and competitions, free mail, purchase gifts, liquidating promotions and, in its most simply form, discounts and vouchers. The means and methodology employed in the execution of a good sales promotion advertising campaign has changed in recent years, with this change being due to the advent of new media from the digital real, most notably the surge in social media and networking. A sales promotion campaign which is mindful of and designed to best utilise this will yield far better results and is essential for sales promotion advertising in the world in which we live today.
Put simply, sales promotion advertising provides consumers with an additional incentive or reason to make a purchase beyond the product itself. This can be something as simple as a prize draw, loyalty reward or discount on their next order, ensuring that consumers are driven back to your brand over those of you competitors time and time again.
