A promotion is any action undertaken by a brand with the ultimate goal of stimulating sales of a product or service. Normally, sales promotions are for a limited period of time and are usually associated with advantageous conditions for the end consumer. For example, special discounts, bonuses, competitions or giveaways.

Why should you run a promotion?

Some of the main reasons why a brand may decide to run a promotion include:

• To attract consumers to the brand
• To increase brand visibility at the point of sale.
• To increase visibility during a product launch.
• To increase turnover at the point of sale.
• Stimulate sales of a strategic product for the company.
• Stimulate sales during seasonal or recessionary periods.

Why should you use SFA software for your promotions?

Companies spend a lot of resources on promotions. In addition to the cost of a discount or special price for a product, you must also take into account the added cost of communication efforts and the implementation of the promotional plan. Therefore, a crucial point in your promotional strategy should be to have the necessary technical support to achieve the maximum efficiency of the campaign.

An SFA such as Vincle Retail Execution allows companies to:

• Improve communication: The sales force team will be informed in real time of the promotion. This speed gives a lot of foresight in preparing and managing the correct implementation.
• Better analysis: An SFA tool allows for a complete audit of the promotion’s compliance and to understand – on an analytical basis – what are the reasons for the success or failure of the campaign.
• Better negotiation: Information about the performance of the promotion can be received instantly by the team in charge of the commercial strategy. This possibility will be very useful when negotiating with distributors on the status of contracts.

7 keys to your promotions at the point of sale

1. Know your audience

The main difficulty when launching a promotion is to find a value offer that really interests the target audience. For this reason, it is important to adapt the promotion to the characteristics of the consumers at whom the promotional campaign is aimed.

2. Study your competition

When launching a promotional campaign, it can be interesting to study the actions undertaken by the competition. There are point-of-sale management softwares that allow you to have a clear picture of the visibility and positioning of a competitor’s brand at the point of sale by simply taking a photograph of the shelf.

3. Monitor your promotion

What should be the objective of your promotion? Obviously, an essential KPI will be sales volume. Although we can also find other interesting metrics to track such as the frequency of replenishment on the shelf or the increase in visibility at the point of sale.

In order to have traceability of how a certain promotion is working, it will be of great help to have sales automation software that allows us to have constant visibility of the campaign.

In addition, having the right technology in place will allow us to receive information quickly. The speed of the information is key to making decisions for possible corrections to the strategy throughout the promotional campaign.

4. Meet consumer expectations

Disappointing consumers is one of the biggest mistakes a brand can make. According to a Harvard report, 26% of consumers who are faced with a product out of stock replace the desired product with a different brand.

If an active promotion at the point of sale is out of stock, it seriously jeopardises the consumer’s relationship with the brand. Having software to improve communication between POS, customer and brand makes all the difference.

5. Present information in an orderly fashion

Once the campaign is over, the marketer should be able to present, in a synthetic way, the results of the promotion in order to determine the success or failure of the action. An SFA helps to generate reports automatically which will help a lot in the company’s decision making process.

6. Speed of implementation Go-to-Market strategy

Speed is always a decisive factor. In the world of sales, reducing the time between strategic decision making and implementation at the point of sale can be crucial. The right SFA will minimise implementation times and reduce possible deviations along the way.

This is partly because this tool allows for almost instant communication with all the actors involved in the sales strategy and, at the same time, makes it possible to have a bird’s eye view of the tasks to be carried out by the sales force team.

7. Sales pitch

It is impossible to sell something if the benefits that the buyer will obtain have not been studied. When a promotion is launched, the entire sales force team must be very aware of the benefits of the promotion for the brand, for the point of sale manager and for the end consumer.

Point-of-sale promotions are a very valuable tool for brands. Understanding how they should be carried out and what are the best strategies is key to ensure their successful implementation.