15 Sales Promotions Ideas For Retailers To Generate More Revenue

Everyone loves to see, hear, and be a part of SALE. Customers love sales promotion as they get products at lower prices, and retailers adore them for increasing revenue. Sales promotions ideas for retail help you attract more customers. Moreover, the sales promotions ideas increase revenue from existing customers.

Defining Sales Promotions Ideas for Retail and its Benefits

Sales promotion ideas are a strategy to give a boost to a retailer’s sales. This strategy leads to a rise in brand awareness or demand for a particular product or store.

It is a temporary strategy creating urgency around the sales of products. The fear of losing out the chance to buy that product at lower prices motivates customers to buy it. Sales promotions management results in a higher conversion of leads to customers. It has long-term benefits like:

A) Generation of New Leads:

People share the news of sales promotions in their social groups resulting in new prospects.

B) The Opportunity for Engagement with Existing Customers:

Retailers send notifications about sales promotions to customers through email newsletters or messages. These notifications enable them to engage and maintain customer relationships.

C) Rise in Brand Awareness:

It results from word-of-mouth publicity by customers benefiting from those sales promotions strategies.

D) Increase in the Volume of Products Sold:

Retailers reduce prices during sales promotions, attracting customers. This technique leads to more volume sales.

E) Activation of Dormant Customers:

The announcement of the Retail Sale creates excitement among customers. Even the dormant customers become active and buy products.

F) Promotion of a New Product:

When introducing a new product, retailers need to market it to a large customer base. They can use unique sales promotions ideas for retail to expand their reach. This way ensures a good promotion of the new product.

G) Clearing the Aging Product Stock:

Sales promotion ideas for retail stores also assist stores in selling off near-expiry products. This way, you can avoid suffering losses resulting from returning expired products.

Strategizing the Sales Promotions Ideas for Retail

Retailers need to test the markets with several unique promotion ideas for retail stores. The testing will allow them to understand what attracts customers to retailers.

But the general premise will remain the same. You need to use methods to improve customer convenience. Retailers can achieve customer loyalty by managing relationships with existing customers. Furthermore, you must resonate with new requirements to generate new customers.

A Sales promotions idea often means attracting customers to your products/services to make them buy. It is not that simple. It requires an optimized combination of science and art. A sales promotions ideas is

• An art because it requires an understanding of human psychology. It includes customers’ spending habits, budget, and readiness to buy products.
• A science because a high-level planning is essential to design a unique sales promo. It includes factoring in the marketing principles, industry changes, and internal business policies.

Here, we will provide you with a list of unique sales promotion ideas that you can use in your retail marketing ideas. It will help you to understand several ways to design sales promotion techniques. You can identify the few that work best for your retail store as per your business requirements.

15 Sales Promotion Ideas for Retail Businesses:

Let’s go through 15 sales promotion ideas in detail. Any retailer can apply them to attract customers to their stores and drive revenue.

1) Flash Sales: The No.1 Method for Sales Promotion ideas

It is a type of sales promotion technique. The retailer offers products at discounts, but the duration is short. Flash sales create urgency in the minds of potential customers. If they miss this chance to purchase the product at a lower price, they will not get such a deal later. As a result, it creates hype around the offer, and hence, retailers see a sudden boost in sales.

You can keep such flash sales promotions ideas once or twice a year but set a fixed schedule. Due to the fixed schedule, the existing customers get excited about such flash sales. They wait for it and prepare the list of products to buy beforehand. Therefore, they become happy because of the possibility of huge savings.

These customers also bring new customers along with them via word-of-mouth publicity. It ensures a good volume of sales for your retail store and a rise in brand awareness. You can also attract new customers with such flash sales advertisements.

2) Coupons or Gift Cards: One of the Best Sales Promotion Ideas Technique

Coupons or gift cards are beneficial sales promotions ideas for retail businesses. You can use Ari POS to offer a discount coupon if the shopping cart amount is above a predetermined limit. The same theory works in the case of gift cards. They provide another chance for you to generate sales. Another benefit for you is that some gift card amounts are never used, resulting in money savings for you.

It is also a beneficial strategy for customers. The customer saves money when buying the product. It is a way to encourage shoppers to become loyal customers.

3) Buy One, Get Another Free: An Evergreen Sales Promotion Idea for Retail

The word ‘free’ creates excitement in customers’ minds. Getting more for less is what entices them. They love the idea of getting something free along with buying another product. It is an effective sales promotions idea with higher chances of conversions.

Retailers use this tactic to clear the stock of unwanted inventory or near-expiry products. They may also use this strategy to introduce a new product to reach a broader audience base. Retailers have two options:

• Offer the same product as the main one for free.
• Offer a different product from the same brand as the main product is free

Whatever the case is, it leads to high sales, generating a good amount of cash for the retailer.
Get a 30-days Free Ari POS to create combo deals and upsell offers with ease for your retail store.

4) Free Samples: An Creative Idea

Another unique sales promotions ideas example is offering free samples to the current shoppers. This strategy is for the existing customers who become loyal to your store. Retailers can use it to introduce a new product. Offering free samples allows improving the awareness of the new product among customers.

Among several benefits lies a key benefit of instant sales. The customer tries the free sample, likes it, and then buys it. Another benefit is the introduction of customers to the new product category. They may not have bought that product category in the past but may consider buying it soon. Customers love such sales promotions because they love to try a product before buying it.

5) Recurring Sales Promotions Event: A ‘Must Do’ Thing

Unique sales promotions events can ensure a sizable number of sales for retailers. They can arrange either:

• An anniversary sale
• A sale offer every six months
• A seasonal offer on some products
• A festival sale on festival-specific products

A Black Friday sale is an excellent example of a festival sale. Your existing customers are aware of such recurring sales offers from you. So, they prepare their shopping lists beforehand. As a retailer, it assures you of higher sales for your product/s. Through this strategy, you can clear your old inventory before introducing new stock.

6) Low-cost, Low-risk Sales Promotions Ideas for Retail:

Retailers can also sell more less-priced products to generate a good volume of sales. It is a less risky, and hence, a beneficial sales promotions idea. In these cases, the retailer sells a low-risk product at a low price. The risk is so less for the customers, and the product is so cheap that they do not mind buying it.

Small business owners and retailers need not advertise for such sales. They can keep those products in their store with the offer, and most incoming customers will buy them. The retailer may not earn a profit or may even suffer a loss in such offers. But it is a way to sell a higher volume of goods and achieve good sales.

With such a unique sales promotion idea, retailers intend to cross-sell or up-sell. They earn added revenues from selling related or more expensive products. The intelligence lies in the placement and pricing of related products.

7) Cashbacks: The Best Promotion Ideas for Retail Stores

Get X% cashback on the sale of Y products. You must have heard many such adverts of sales promotion ideas for retail stores. Customers get attracted to such offers because they can earn some cash in return. So, they do not mind spending money on buying the product before earning cashback.

When they get some cash in return, they feel like they have extra cash to spend on other products. Furthermore, cashback offers result in more loyalty from customers. It is a winning situation for the retailer as well since they earn loyal customers. Moreover, with the extra cash, they earn in

cashback, shop more and contribute to more sales. The cashback strategy attracts new customers to your retail store as well.

Check out the Forbes blog, “Why the Psychology of Rewards Confirms Cash Back Is King.” It talks about the benefits of cashback as an effective sales promotions ideas.

You can try Ari Retail Software to plan loyalty points and cashback offers to increase repeat sales.

8) Charity-related Sales Promotions ideas:

Charity-related sales promotions ideas are compelling for generating higher sales. It stimulates emotions in customers for other beings or causes that can benefit the world. Customers are more than ready to take part in such sales promotions. If the retail store supports the causes that customers align with, then you have hit gold.

It is a good strategy for retailers to increase their sales. It can establish the store as a socially responsible company as well. Customers will support your store and buy products often to support your brand and the cause. These sales promotions ideas result in customer loyalty. This kind of activity humanizes your brand. It makes everyone participating in the sales promotion event satisfied and happy.

This strategy is a wholesome one, as it results in:

• The rise in customer loyalty
• Acquisition of new customers
• Improvement in brand awareness
• An excellent promotional strategy for new products

9) Referral Benefits: A Great Way to Achieve More Sales

It is an effective sales promotion technique to attract new customers to your retail store and products. And how do you do that? You can ask your existing customers to refer their friends or colleagues to your store. Another way is to ask your customers to review your products on social media. There are some intelligent ways to ask your customers for reviews. We talk about these in our blog, “How to gets customer reviews to boost retail sales.”

Then, you give discounts to your existing customers for promoting your

brand. There are two different ways of designing this unique Sales promotions ideas:

• Give customers a discount on providing many referrals
• Incentivise them with discount after the new customer buys some product in your store

Either way, it is a beneficial technique to everyone involved. Your existing customers enjoy the discounts that you offer. You enjoy a new stream of customers. Moreover, with discounts on referrals, your existing customers’ loyalty towards you increases.

10) Joint Sales Promotion Ideas for Retail Stores:

There are two ways you can use joint sales promotions ideas for your store:

• You can collaborate with another retailer to sell related products. With this, the existing customers of the other retailer may become your new customers. It results in an expansion of your products’ reach. This will lead to more sales for your products.
• You can sell two of your own brand’s products as a bundle. Bundling a high-sale product with a low-sale one can benefit the latter.

The main benefit is that sales promotions ideas of two products are happening at the cost of one. But you must be careful with the partners/products you select for creating the bundle. A slight non-alignment of the strategy between two partners may harm the strategy. Even a negative connection of the product may backfire for your store.

11) Professional or Lifestyle Discounts:

This kind of sales promotion tactic shows that you care for the people of a particular profession. Your target audience can be people of specific lifestyles, age groups, or any other demographic aspects. You can offer discounts on products during some special days dedicated to such a category of people. Examples include Doctors’ Day, Army Day, Senior Citizens’ Day, and many more.

Those categories of people feel special with such customized sales promotions. They tend to buy more products, resulting in higher sales

revenues for you. It also helps you target a new customer group who might become your loyal customers in the future.

In our Retail POS Software you can easily capture customer data and plan personalized offers for important life events like Birthdays, Anniversaries, Wedding, etc.

12) Clearance Sales:

Retailers use clearance sales – a brilliant sales promotions idea – to clear their stock. They use clearance sales to finish off the seasonal products. It will enable them to make way for the new product category in the display. Retailers create urgency around the sale by keeping it for a few days only.

It is beneficial for customers as well since they get good bargains. There is a limit on the number of products, and the same goes for the chance to grab them. But the opportunity to save money is vast, which attracts customers to these deals.

13) Loyalty Programs:

It is a great sales promotion technique to reward your loyal customers for their loyalty. They remain loyal to your brand or store, and you attract them with loyalty program benefits. You need to assess customer data to understand their purchasing history and demographics. Based on this data, you design unique loyalty programs. You personalize these offers to customers to make them feel special.

But you must be careful while personalizing these offers for your customers. You must imbibe the market best practices while designing

customer loyalty programs. Read about this on our blog, “5 Best Practices for Customer Loyalty Programs“.

14) Free Shipping and Free Returns:

Sometimes customers fill their shopping carts with multiple items but end up not buying most of them. Retailers witness many of such instances in the case of online shopping. The main reason? Extra shipping charges. Customers are not ready to pay extra money for shipping. So, you must offer free shipping to ensure that the customer completes the shopping.

Similar is the case with the return policy of retailers. Customers return the product when it does not meet their expectations. They feel they are not responsible for the product’s inferior quality. So, there should be no extra charges or difficulty in returning the products. They expect their full money back on returning the product. Thus, offering free product returns can be one of the most effective sales promotions ideas for retail businesses.

15) Buy More, Save More Offers:

It is a type of sales promotion strategy that motivates customers to spend more to save more. These are also called tiered discounts. The more amount customers spend, the more discounts they get. For example, 5% discount if your spending exceeds US$100.0, but a 12% discount on spending more than US$200.0. If the customer spends more than US$300.0, they get a 25% discount.

With this strategy, retailers’ sales increase, making them happy. Customers are also happy because they feel they are getting more value

from the spending. Along with a higher volume of sales, it is a way to convert leads to customers. Retailers can provide these offers to their existing customers a day earlier. Thus, it is a way to give them extra benefits for being loyal and increase their loyalty. You can plan these discount percentage and loyalty benefits easily using Ari Customer Reward Program feature.

Conclusion:

The key to any marketing strategy is reaching the right customers at the right time with the right deal. Any retailer can achieve this by designing, executing, and managing sales promotions ideas mentioned in the blog. These are sure-shot ways to increase revenues. They also improve your brand awareness and attract new customers.

But a key consideration is how you customize them for your business and customers. You need to be different from your competitors in sales promotions ideas to attract customers. Another factor is the advertisement of these tactics to reach your targeted audience.

About Ari:

Ari, a retail management system, is preferred by many retailers around the globe. Ari has many features and functionalities that benefit a retailer in day-to-day operations. There is a possibility of creating rewards programs and promotional strategies in Ari. You can also design sales promotion strategies and manage them through Ari. You can check in detail the promotions management functionality of Ari’s Retail POS Solutions here.