Effective sales require a well-designed sales promotion strategy. Designing this strategy is not an easy process. During the design process, you'll have to make decisions that not only brings the product to consumer attention, but makes retailers and distributors want to sell the product. A good design requires you to shape the strategy to fit the market, consumer demand, even product marketing. In the end, the success or failure of the product may depend on your design, but a successful design will boost sales, and sales are the ultimate goal of any producer.
Instructions
1. Set the length of the sales strategy according to the product and your sales goals. Use a short-term sales strategy for well-established brands--where you can depend upon general consumer familiarity with the product--or when clearing out products approaching obsolescence. Use a longer-term promotion to introduce new products in the market or when expanding a product's reach into new sales area.
2. Determine a target for your sales promotion. Decide whether to focus on a push sales strategy that uses sales incentives to get distributors and retailers to push your product at consumers, a pull strategy that markets your product to the consumer directly or a combination of strategies.
3. Create promotional material for your sales that's in keeping with your product's marketing strategy. Maintain consistency with prior successful marketing strategies in order to build upon an existing brand name. Use a new strategy if the prior marketing effort was not successful or if introducing a new product. Use any consumer research available to develop an emphasis on your strategy, aiming toward those areas where you have a competitive advantage in the market based on product quality, brand loyalty or consumer interest.
4. Use sales incentives for distributors such as free trials, sales bonuses or discounts to make your product more attractive in a push strategy. Develop a system for tracking sales volume per sales representative to keep track of bonuses earned. Create a marketing plan for your product to give to all distributors to ensure presentation consistency among multiple retailers. Be sure to keep sales representatives up to date on any changes in the product or marketing emphasis.
5. Use incentives such as coupons, contests or rebates to attract consumer interest in a pull strategy. Create as narrow a sales focus as possible, limiting sales to a single product or brand whenever possible to increase consumer awareness. Make sure you include any product support information in all your promotional material, including website, addresses or telephone support numbers. Include a display at all promotional contact points, such as retailers, that includes the promotional marketing information.
Tags: your product, product consumer, product marketing, sales strategy, your sales, consumer interest