What are promotions?
Promotions are a key part of growth marketing, and can take many different forms. They are typically used to drive short-term spikes in traffic or conversions, by offering incentives such as discounts, free shipping, or entry into a prize draw. Promotions can be run on your website, social media channels, or through email marketing.
Types of promotions
There are many different types of promotions that you can run, depending on your goals and the products or services that you offer. Some common types of promotions include:
- Discounts: Offering a percentage or fixed-amount discount on your products or services.
- Free shipping: Offering free shipping on orders over a certain amount, or for a limited time period.
- Entry into a prize draw: Offering customers the chance to win a prize if they make a purchase during the promotion period.
- Bundles: Offering a discounted price on a bundle of products or services.
- Limited time offers: Creating a sense of urgency by offering a discount or prize for a limited time only.
How to create a promotion
When creating a promotion, there are a few key things to keep in mind:
- Your goals: What do you want to achieve with your promotion? More traffic, more conversions, more email signups?
- Your target audience: Who are you trying to reach with your promotion?
- Your budget: How much are you willing to spend on your promotion?
- Your timeline: When do you want your promotion to start and end?
Once you've decided on your goals, target audience, budget, and timeline, you can start to brainstorm ideas for your promotion. Once you've settled on an idea, you'll need to create some promotional materials (such as an email template or social media post), and set up any necessary tracking (such as Google Analytics goals).
The benefits of promotions
There are many benefits to running promotions, including:
- Increased traffic: If your promotion is successful, you can expect to see a spike in traffic to your website or social media channels.
- Increased conversions: A well-targeted promotion can result in more sales or signups.
- Improved brand awareness: A successful promotion can help to raise awareness of your brand.
- Improved customer loyalty: Offering incentives to customers can help to build loyalty and encourage them to come back in the future.
The best time to run a promotion
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the best time to run a promotion will vary depending on your goals, target audience, and product or service. However, there are a few general things to keep in mind:
- If you're promoting a seasonal product or service, it's generally best to run your promotion in the lead-up to the relevant season.
- If you're promoting a new product or service, it's generally best to run your promotion around the time of launch.
- If you're looking to increase traffic during a slow period, consider running a promotion during that time.
How to measure the success of a promotion
There are a few key metrics that you can use to measure the success of your promotion:
- Traffic: How many people visited your website or social media channels as a result of your promotion?
- Conversions: How many sales or signups did you generate as a result of your promotion?
- Engagement: How many people engaged with your promotion (e.g. clicked through to your website, shared your post, etc.)?
You can track these metrics using Google Analytics or other similar tools. It's also important to track any changes in metrics such as website visitors or email subscribers after your promotion has ended, to see if there is any long-term impact.
Case studies of successful promotions
To help give you some inspiration, here are some examples of successful promotions that have been run by businesses in different industries: