When & How To Promote A Sale

It doesn’t matter what holiday is coming up, if you sell a product or service that would see an increase in sales because of that holiday, you need to have a big promotion to maximize results. Father’s Day, Memorial Day, Christmas, Black Friday and plenty of other times throughout the year, businesses have a unique opportunity to take advantage of millions of consumers who are looking for a bargain.

So how do you advertise this promotion to maximize your return? There are several options available and it also depends on who you are marketing to. For example, if you are selling cars you will have a different demographic for consumers than if you were selling toys. The other question is when is the best time to start promoting? Again, that depends entirely on your demographic and method of marketing.

If you are promoting a product or service to be purchased as a gift for an upcoming holiday then you need to start promoting as quickly as possible. For example, if you are selling “World’s Greatest Dad” t-shirts for Father’s Day, make sure you start your promotions at least a month before the holiday. However, if you own a restaurant and you are trying to get people in for dinner on that holiday, you can afford to start a little later.

Remember, it’s not just about when you start, its how you market yourself and that you keep it up. Here are the best methods to use and how to keep them active:

• Email Marketing: An email campaign is great because it’s cost-effective and allows you to reach millions of targeted consumers, directly on their phones and computers. You can market to millions of people for a national campaign or go as small as special interests, age and gender in a small area of a city. Ideally, your email marketing campaign should begin a month before the sale with recurring emails sent out every week. This builds familiarity with the brand and you should see better results on the second or third drop.
• Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms allow you to set the budget and target the areas you want to advertise to. Another great advantage is that people spend so much time on these platforms that they are going to see your ad multiple times. This ad can be ran 2-4 weeks ahead of time and increase the budget going into the final week.
• Display Ads: If you are unfamiliar with display ads then don’t worry, you’ve seen them. Every time you visit a website and you see ads on the top or the sides of the page, those are display advertisements and they are the main way blog and informative sites generate revenue. These are tricky because they are ran through Google and need time to setup. You want to start the campaign at least a month ahead of time and increase the budget the final week.

Whether it’s for a holiday or just because you need to see a boost in sales, having a promotion is something every business needs to do. Understand that if you are doing one, you need to advertise early and often in order to maximize your results. There are plenty of ways to do it and the better your strategy, the better your return will be.