Organizing a campaign

1. Evaluation of your needs
2. Customer management system
3. Brainstorming & creative ideas
4. Financial analysis
5. Planning
6. Setting goals
7. Strategic marketing campaign
8. Creative development of the campaign
9. Co-creating & collecting ideas in your team
10. Gather information about your consumer
11. Repeat successful actions

1. Evaluation of your needs
Evaluate the type of sales boost needed. Your business may need to move some seasonal products, encourage service trials or fill up a schedule for a specific month. Decide on specific financial and product needs before choosing the type of promotion you use.

2. Customer management system
Invest in customer management systems. Your online or in-store databases should keep track of customers, their purchases, each offer they respond to and other preferences. Before starting any promotion, you should aim to target it primarly at the customers who are most likely to buy based on these preferences.

3. Brainstorm creative promotion ideas
Simply taking a percentage off a sale price may encourage bargain hunters to buy, but many companies try to encourage customers to buy greater quantities, such as "buy one get one half off" sales. Read about generating new leads, retaining customers and boosting your sales in our article about creative sales promotions.

4. Do a financial analysis of each type of promotion
Your marketing and bookkeeping staff should be able to specify any losses that sales could bring, break-even points and potential returns on investment (ROI). Ultimately, you should choose a promotion with the best financial prospects.

If you are considering a coupon or discount percentage, make sure you choose your percentage offer carefully. The coupon should come across as an excellent deal, which often means they offer over 20 percent discount. However, it should be a financially viable coupon. Remember that if you have a low mark up on products, these coupons may not be the most suitable way to go.

5. Planning
Specify beginning and end dates for your promotion. Part of encouraging people to buy a product is communicating that this is an offer that only will be available for a limited time. In general, the greater the discount or offer, the less time it will be available, so as to suggest it is a very good deal that will not always be available.

6. Setting goals
Clarify your marketing goals. Identify a target number of people you want to reach and a realistic conversion rate for those people. This will help to plan out the size of your marketing campaign.

7. Develop a strategic marketing campaign
Your marketing team or marketing consultant should come up with a complete overview of the process from the message to the creative elements to data gathering. Invest plenty of time in this.

8. Creative development of the campaign
Specify your message for your promotion marketing. A sales promotion is not as simple as offering a coupon. It should be used to encourage brand recognition and returning customers.
Invest in creative services. Professional graphic designers, voice talent, photographers, writers and models can offer you a marketing product that will reach more people and have more success than what you can do on your own.

Get your entire team involved, if possible. A sales promotion should have everyone on board, from bookkeeper to sales staff. Encourage ideas from employees. A team based approach will allow you to keep track of how the process is handled and improve your future promotions.

Gather data on customers, new email subscribers, phone calls, online traffic and the increase in sales. Ask your marketing professional to do the math on your ROI, conversion rate and percentage increase in customers. Afterwards evaluate your success.

11. Repeat successful actions
Repeat successful sales promotions in the future. Try a new kind of promotion if the previous one was not successful. Although planning will increase the success of your promotion, there is always an element of trial and error in marketing.