Sales Promotion: Do's and Don'ts

Sales promotion is a method to promote the sales in addition to standard merchandising techniques such as advertising or personal selling, providing offers of free sample, giving gifts to the purchaser and so on. In other words, sales promotion is a way by which the companies/business owners/corporations rewards their customers which in turn helps in attracting more customers.

Sales promotions should be done positively for the benefits of the customers to survive in the long run. As most companies deviate from this they negatively use sales promotions to hurt and exploit their customers which results in the downfall of the company's reputation. They only reward their new customers which rushed from the promotional activities. This results in the reduction of the company's sales.

There are few of the do's and don'ts of sales promotion that a company should look upon.

- A sales promotion should be simple and rewarding at the customers end. A small gift with the product is a good idea of promoting the product.

- It should not be any of like a jackpot, gambling, etc. Like a sales promotion saying, buy 50 packets of chocolates and get a chance to win one million dollars.

- There should not be many terms and conditions.

- Though sales promotion is for rewarding customers, it should also be of some benefits to the companies.

- Sales promotion must be genuine and it should not exploit the customers.

- It should be less costly and really rewarding for the customers.

- It should make its customers proud and should provide better offers than its competitors.

All these practices can help in providing better sales promotion for a company. Besides this the decline of sales is because of the better deployment of the sales promotion by the competitors. There are many times when these sales promotions practices decide the fate of a product. The new products should have a better sales promotion as to attract customers. There are few points to be undertaken in sales promotion.

- Understanding the position of the product.

- Recognizing the advertising and marketing strategies for the type of the product or service.

- Understanding the target audience.

- Analyzing the results of previous promotion.

- Keeping an eye on the competitor's promotional strategies.

- Giving benefits to the customers.

- Recognizing the strengths and weakness of the sales team.

- Define your objectives.