Discount promotions: instructions for use

What store owners just don’t do to attract more and more customers. One of the most popular methods is discounted promotions. Marketing specialist Maria Gerasimenko tells how to properly prepare and conduct a discount campaign and why in its success one should not rely only on word of mouth.

# PERSONA #

Preparatory stage

First of all, it is important to understand that it is impossible to arrange a sale of 50% out of the blue. Promotions must always be planned in advance, preferably a year in advance. Each store has analytics, and its owner knows when the store is low season, when - high, and when to start selling. In the middle zone of Russia, the Spring-Summer collection should be sold according to the following dates: February 1 - April 15 - receipt and layout of the spring assortment, April 15 - May 30 - receipt and layout of the summer assortment, from May 15 - “warming up” stocks, from 15 July - sale of the spring-summer collection. If in the first and second phase of laying out the collection in the hall at full price 30-40% of the product was sold, then this is normal. By the time a new collection arrives, as a rule, 10-15% of the assortment remains. The rest, that is, 45-60%, can be sold during the period of heating stocks and sales. In addition, do not forget about pricing: if we did not initially include a marketing budget in the retail price of a product, in this case a budget per share, then the promotion cannot take place without losses for the store.

Development and launch of the action

When developing an action, you don’t need to immediately rush into uncontrolled creativity or try to adapt the ideas of competitors. First of all, we must identify the purpose of the action - why do we arrange it, for whom it is designed and what effect we want to achieve. After that, it is necessary to draw up an estimate, that is, to understand what budget we are ready to invest in the action. Any sale takes our margin and therefore requires careful miscalculations. After evaluating the ratio of our costs and revenues, we must carefully consider the idea of ​​the action: how it will be organized, how attractive it will be and what image it will receive in the eyes of buyers. It is important to comprehensively evaluate the action in order to avoid an unforeseen course of events. Then consider how the buyer will find out about the action, that is, which information transfer channels you will use.

Advertising

Advertising LLC "Global Shoes" INN 7710961530 erid: LjN8JzKPK

Promotion Promotion

As for the promotion of the action, like advertising in general, it requires a lot of attention. Contrary to popular belief, word of mouth is not the easiest and cheapest way to tell potential customers about yourself. This tool seems to be budgetless, but in fact requires huge investments in service and customer relations. The social networks that are now forming a new word of mouth are also not as easy to use as they seem. Outdoor advertising is still relevant in the regions, but just a poster listing all the advantages of your store is not enough: the "outdoor" should be placed in the right place and have a design that is interesting to your target audience. To make effective advertising, thoroughly study your customers: where they go and go, where they dine, buy food, what income they have, whether they have children or grandchildren. Only with a full understanding of the portrait of the audience, the money spent on advertising will have a return. It is important to remember that any advertisement must comply with the AIDA formula - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. This means that advertising must first attract attention, then arouse interest, then arouse the desire to purchase a product, and only after that - induce an action to be taken - go to a store and buy a product.

Types of shares

Before choosing one or another promotion format for yourself, you need to assess whether it will suit your store. Previously, any promotion was considered a luxury, but now it is a mandatory flirtation with a customer, and the usual discounts are no longer surprising or interesting. This is the same last century as discount cards. Promotions can and should be different, and there are many options for their implementation. For example, the promotion "second product as a gift" or "first product with a 10% discount, the second - 15%, the third - 20%" will not only increase the average bill, but also make the buyer think and consider the benefits: buying 3 items, he gets a little great benefit. Also, buyers are attracted by promotions for certain categories of goods, for example, "Week of ankle boots". The "Bring a friend, get a discount" promotion allows you to expand your customer base and evokes positive emotions in buyers, directly related to your store. The "Birthday of the store" promotion is also good, but there are some difficulties associated with it: as a rule, stores open at the beginning of the season, in September-October, and it is not at all profitable to make discounts at this time. Therefore, to celebrate "Birthday" it is better to choose a period of low sales. But be careful - if your regular customers remember exactly when you opened, they will immediately notice the deception and you will lose their trust. Customer days are also best spent during off-season to shake up loyal customers. A new type of action "melting discounts" may be very relevant. The principle is that on the first day of the promotion, we give a 30% discount, and then every day we reduce it by 1-5%. In the first days, the activity of buyers may be small, but it rises rapidly when the discount is already noticeably “melting” before our eyes.

Maria Gerasimenko -

CEO of Fashion Advisers and the first online school for fashion business Fashion Advisers School, expert in business management and development, business coach. Fashion business management experience - more than 12 years. Successfully defended 2 MBA dissertations (Mirbi International Higher School of Economics, Russia, Moscow, 2013) and London Metropolitan University (Great Britain, London, 2017)

Main areas of activity: strategic and anti-crisis management of the shoe business, assortment matrix management, development of motivation programs, conducting trainings in the field of management, service and sales. Clients include: Unichel, Tamaris, s'Oliver, Kotofey, Rieker, Sinta Gamma, Helly Hansen, Rusocks and others.