Planning a Promotional Campaign? Here is Your Checklist
Are you getting ready to launch a promotional campaign? If so, make sure you include all of the necessary steps to make your campaign a blazing success. This guide provides a handy checklist to help you plan and execute your next promo campaign. I will also share some tips on how to make your campaigns successful. Let's dive in.
What is promotion marketing?
Let's start from the basics. What is a promotional campaign? In short, a promotional campaign is any organized marketing effort to market a product, service, or brand. Typically, a promotion marketing campaign will have multiple steps or objectives and will be guided by a promotional plan.
The biggest difference between promotion and marketing is that promotion seeks to directly persuade potential customers to buy a product or service, while marketing is the process of creating value for a brand through the creation and distribution of products or services. In other words, marketing is the whole of your effort to position your brand and incentivize specific user behavior, and a promotional campaign is a tool that a marketing team uses to achieve those goals.
A promotional campaign is a coordinated effort to increase awareness and generate sales. There are several steps involved in creating a marketing campaign, including setting objectives, identifying the right audience, crafting messages, selecting channels, and designing creative assets. The strategy behind a promotional campaign will be based on the objectives set forth at the beginning of the planning process. For example, if the goal is to increase brand awareness, then the strategy will focus on reaching as many people as possible through different promotions.
It's also important to consider what kind of call-to-action you want your audience to take, and to track the results of the campaign so that you can adjust future efforts accordingly. With careful planning and execution, promotional campaigns can be a powerful tool for driving awareness and sales. In Voucherify, we identify the following types of promotional campaigns:
- Promo codes
- Cart promotions
- Referral programs
- Loyalty programs
- Gift cards
- Product bundles
- Cashback
- Giveaways and gamified contests
Promotional campaign goals
Promotional campaigns are a great way to boost sales, build brand awareness and encourage customers to use your products and services. However, it's important to set up promotional goals so you can measure the success of your campaign before getting down to the nitty gritty. Keep in mind that coupons, discounts, and other promotional tools can be used to promote your business and reach your target audience. With careful planning and execution, you can create a promotional campaign that will help you achieve your desired results.
Why are promotional campaigns important?
A promotional campaign serves many roles and can address different goals, such as the increase in traffic and sales for your ecommerce business. By promoting your brand through various channels, you can reach a larger audience and generate more interest in your offer.
People love special offers, free gifts and coupon codes, so companies use them often. Not having anything attractive, both for your new and existing customers makes you and your product hidden in the crowd. In other words, smart marketing campaigns are a must these days.
There are a few steps to creating a successful marketing campaign:
- Define your goals and target audience. What are you hoping to achieve with the campaign, and who do you want to reach?
- Develop a promotional strategy. This should include a mix of different tactics, such as online advertising, social media outreach, email marketing, and so on.
- Create compelling content. Your promotional materials should be eye-catching and informative, conveying why someone should buy from you.
- Execute the campaign and track results. Make sure to monitor your progress so you can see what's working and make adjustments as needed.
By following these steps, you can create a marketing campaign that will help boost traffic and sales for your eCommerce business. In the next paragraph I would like to guide you through all the steps of our checklist.
Promotional campaign checklist [Free download]
Sometimes, even well-planned campaigns, can turn into complete chaos. You may even have experienced it yourself: delays, overspending, human errors, lack of resources, fraud. Marketing is not a piece of cake. To make your life easier, I have prepared a universal to-do list to run a cool promotion campaign. Let's do it!
1. Set up campaign goals
When it comes to promotion marketing, the first step you need to do is set the goals for the specific campaign, aligned with the main marketing goals. What do you hope to achieve with your campaign? Are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or promote a new product?
Good, old SMART strategy comes in handy here. Your goals should be: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-oriented.
Once you know what your goals are, you can start planning your strategy.
2. Work on accurate data
Before you start thinking about what promo code will sound cool in your new promotion, and whether to give free shipping or maybe a 10% discount, you should review historical data and analyze things such as the success of previous campaigns, changes in the structure of existing customers, expectations of new ones, actions against the competition.
Sometimes you don't have to look for a brilliant solution – the simplest and most effective one may be at your fingertips, you just need to understand what you need. The problem may occur if you don’t have collected such data, your planning may be like walking in the fog.
3. Define audience and timing
When you're planning a marketing campaign, it's important to choose the right audience and timing. The right audience will be interested in your product or service and more likely to convert into customers. The right timing will ensure that your campaign reaches the right people at the right time.
Your promotional mix is the combination of tactics you'll use to reach your target customer. The most common promotional mix includes online advertising, social media outreach, email marketing, and so on. Choose the right mix of tactics for your campaign based on your goals and target audience.
Seems obvious, but very often we see bad campaign examples, that offer extremely low discounts for high-margin products, or are launched at such a time that no one interested has a chance to see it. At best, you will waste resources to launch and promote such an action, at worst you will have to run a recovery plan to make up for the margin losses.
4. Consider the budget and other resources
Budget is always a key consideration when planning any marketing campaign. You'll need to consider how much you're willing to spend on the campaign and any other resources you'll need to allocate. Be sure to set a realistic budget so you don't overspend or put your business at risk.
5. Prepare visual assets and marketing copy
There are a few assets you'll need to prepare to support your marketing campaign. These include visual materials, landing pages, and banners. Make sure you have all the necessary assets before you launch your campaign.
Many of them take time to prepare, and this also needs to be considered in the planning. After that, it can be difficult to judge whether it is better to launch a slightly late campaign (which can be crucial in the case of Black Friday, for example) or launch a not fully ready, unattractive promotion that may not engage as many new customers as we would like.
We know that preparing a graphic content is not easy, therefore we share with you our promotions kits in Figma - ready-to-use materials for various occasions.
6. Choose a promotion tool
Promotion Engine is software that helps you define the rules of the promotion, distribute codes, and help customers redeem vouchers.
In theory, you only need a piece of paper and a pen to create coupons. You can think of a code pattern, write it down, share it with customers and ask your IT team to accept it as a, let's say, -15% discount. In practice, however, you need to operate on the data sets of hundreds of customers, control multiple dependencies and stay within the budget at the same time. In other words, the rapid digitization has made it impossible to survive and thrive in the commerce space without a reliable system for dynamic and personalized offers. It's important to choose an API-first solution, which is easy to integrate and doesn't need a lot of time to implement.
By selecting the right tools, you will be able to define your promotions on point, combine various channels, launch them very quickly and track the performance.
7. Set up the promotion rules
After you've selected a promotion tool, it's time to define the rules of the promotion. These rules will determine how customers can participate in the promotion and what they need to do to redeem vouchers. Be sure to create clear messages and concise rules so customers understand the promotion and can easily take part.
8. Go live
After you've planned and prepared your campaign, it's time to execute it. Go live with your campaign and start promoting your ecommerce business. Be sure to track your results so you can see what's working and make adjustments as needed. Do some A/B tests, if needed. And be ready to react, if something unexpected happens. Even a super-planned campaign can meet some obstacles, this is why having a flexible and transparent environment is so important.
By following these steps, you can create successful marketing campaigns that help boost traffic and sales for your brand.
9. Collect the campaign data
After your campaign is over, it's time to analyze the results. It's important to measure the success of your marketing campaigns so you can make adjustments as needed. Be sure to track metrics such as reach, clicks, conversions, and sales. By monitoring these metrics, you can gauge the effectiveness of your campaign and make changes accordingly.
Learn more:
10. Repeat
Once you've completed all the steps for launching a promotional campaign and gained some insights, it's time to go back to step one and start planning a new campaign. Probably, you will have to adjust the goals, resources, and channels and re-launch the new campaign. This will help ensure that you are on your way to a successful promotional campaign.
Here you can download a Promotional Campaign Checklist template (PDF).
Summary
When you're planning a promotional campaign, there are a few key steps you need to take to ensure its success. As with any marketing campaign, there are always some risks involved. Be sure to consider any potential threats before you launch your campaign. This includes legal, reputational, and financial risks. By taking the time to consider these and prepare yourself for the worst with appropriate tools, you can avoid potential problems down the road.
To summarize, first, you need to develop a clear and concise promotional plan. This plan should outline your goals and objectives for the campaign, as well as your budget and timeline. Next, you need to choose the right promotional mix of tactics to reach your target audience. And finally, you need to measure the results of your campaign so you can adjust and improve your strategy moving forward. By following these key steps, you can create a successful marketing campaigns that achieve your desired results. So get planning today!
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