Tips for Managing Promotions
Marketing your products through sales and promotions is a good way to bring attention to your brand and items, but it can be as difficult to manage the pricing and inventory sides as it is to manage the marketing campaign itself. Before you start making the advertisements, it is a good idea to bring all three sides together to make sure the campaign is a boom and not a bust.
Know the Numbers
One of the first things that you should do before starting a marketing campaign or introducing a new product is a price analysis. This helps you get a better idea of what you should routinely price the products at as well as which promotional prices will work the best for all your company’s offerings. Lowering the price on one product may negatively impact the sales of other items your company sells and setting a price point higher than the competition without significant item differences can make the campaign less attractive to customers.
Understand How Advertisements Affect Demand
Advertisements are a good way to increase demand if they land well with the target audience. Marketing campaigns that miss the mark can do damage to the whole brand and not just the items featured, just like the ones which are a hit will increase the popularity of the whole company. Structuring your campaign should begin by determining how your products will help the customer with a common enough problem to expand your customer base. Outlining this problem and offering the product as a solution will bring people into your stores and on your website to find out more information and make a purchase.
Include Supply Chain Management
Now that you have determined the best price and marketing strategy for your products, it is time to consider the supply chain. How much demand is being forecasted from this campaign? How much can you reasonably procure from your suppliers and ship to your stores on time? How much space do you have to store any items which do not sell? When you fail to take these questions into account, you can end up with empty shelves and backorders, or on the other side of the equation, product taking up warehouse space because the demand is not high enough. By including your supply chain in your deliberations, you can come up with the right shipment policy to land comfortably in the middle.
Managing your promotions means considering pricing, demand and supply. With the right analysis of various price points, a marketing campaign that researches demand and solid communication with your supply chain, you can have more successful promotions and expand your customer base.