Online promotion is the most common strategy for all businesses that own online stores. Because of the helpfulness of online promotion in encouraging consumers to spend more money shopping during sales seasons, you might have to compete with multiple competitors. The best solution is to find the most suitable tactic that matches your brand identity.
Here are 6 dynamic online promotion tactics that will boost your sales:
Flash Sales
A flash sale is a short discount or promotion provided by an online store. Buzz sales, launch day sales, holiday sales, or inventory sales are just a few of the names they can be known by.
These sales are designed to make customers feel limited in time and encourage them to buy on emotion or engage. A flash sale usually includes:
- Higher discounts or promotions than normal
- A short buying period
- A limited selection
- A limited quantity of a specific item
Online stores may offer flash specials on specific dates, specific items, or focused markets. Even though they may attract online customers at any time, they are especially popular during the busiest online shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Even as their main revenue flow, “daily special” flash sales are offered on some websites.
These tips below can help you have a successful flash sale:
Set Goals For Your Flash Sale
Determine the reason for having a flash sale. Your flash sale may be easier to plan and carry out as a result of this. To clear out inventory and make room for fall decorations, a home goods business, for example, might run a flash sale on summer decorations in August.
Make The Purchase Process Easy For Customers
Make straightforward, simple sales. It helps customers easily discover your store. Think about putting a clickable banner promoting the sale on the homepage of your website, linking to an additional section just for the flash sale.
Additionally, you can add an announcement bar at the top of the homepage of your online store’s website to catch the customers’ eyes the first time they visit your store.
Customize Your Flash Sales
For your flash sale, focus on a specific target market. For example, an apparel store might hold a flash sale with parents in mind. Clothing, furniture, and baby accessories are all possible sale items.
Be Ready For Online Promotion
There may be occasions when flash sales for specific items are more successful because different target markets spend their money in different ways and at different times. Evaluate your sales data to identify the days of the week, times of day, and email open rates that your customers prefer. Your flash sale should be carefully planned so that it is as relevant and on time as possible.
Make Sure Your Flash Sale Is Unusual
Think about limiting your flash sales to three per year. If you frequently offer deep discounts, they stop being special.
Your customers could stay away from making regular-priced purchases if you regularly have promotions. They might determine that if they wait a week or two before making a purchase, they might find something better at your next sale.
Additionally, having too many sales could cause consumers to question the quality of your products. They might believe that a product wouldn’t be on sale every so often if it were good.
Keep Your Sales Short
One of the most important elements of flash sales is time. Flash sales must be short to be effective. This helps to create a sense of urgency that encourages returning or potential customers to make a purchase. A flash sale typically lasts between two and 24 hours.
To add more to the fear of missing out, you can add countdown timers to push customers into a hurry situation if they don’t want to miss out on the deals.
Highlight The Discount
Make sure the offer is noticed among the other information in your online store. Think about using bold images or contrasting colors. Highlight the cost savings customers will get by purchasing your sale items as compared to your regular or competitor prices.
The common way that many online stores usually use to highlight their online promotion is by adding product badges. On Shopify app stores, you can easily add product badges with support from third-party product badges and label apps.
Promote The Sale
Describe your flash sale. The earlier you advertise it, the more likely it is that people are going to stay attracted and on the lookout for your sale. Use a range of strategies, including VIP or early bird discounts, social media marketing, mobile application notifications, email marketing campaigns, or text messaging campaigns.
To bring in more visitors to your website, take into account setting up paid search advertisements, such as targeted ads on landing pages.
Think Of Providing Free Shipping
Free shipping, in the eyes of many customers, is an encouragement to do more online shopping. Others add things to their cart and spend more money to be approved for free shipping. If you’re not in a position to offer flash sale items at an attractive price, this may be particularly beneficial.
A countdown timer for the free shipping promotion may increase the sense of urgency and motivate customers to make a purchase right away.
Additionally, you can also notify or remind customers about the online promotion of free shipping by adding feature icons or a free shipping bar to product pages.
Moreover, many online stores are unable to cover the costs of always providing free shipping. Instead, you can refer to these free shipping tactics as an online promotion, such as:
- Free shipping on purchases above a particular amount.
- Free shipping on a specific item or collection
- Free shipping is available for a short time.
Buy More Save More
Besides Flash Sale, the online promotion tactic “Buy More, Save More” is also another common way to boost sales during sales seasons. There are various types of quantity discounts, for example:
- Buy X, get Y free
- Buy X, get Y% off
- Buy X, get free shipping
Whatever the details, increasing the average value of your orders is a simple method to take advantage of these deals. They might help you quickly move more inventory, which is a good strategy for getting rid of out-of-date and unseasonable products.
Plans For Rewarding Loyalty
Want to maximize customer lifetime value, increase their loyalty, and boost customer loyalty? Existing customers have a reason to stay in a deal with you rather than your competitors through promotions for loyalty.
This strategy’s increase in loyalty is therefore its largest advantage. However, it also allows you to improve your marketing messaging and promotions, helps you collect more useful customer data on purchasing preferences, and creates a stronger connection between your brand and your target audience.
Loyalty online promotions typically go into one of the following types:
- Plans with a point method: Each time a customer purchases from you, they collect points that can be used for future benefits (including discounts, freebies, and free delivery).
- Tiered plans: This interactive method offers customers at higher tiers greater value advantages, encouraging them to make larger purchases.
- Customers often pay a charge to join VIP plans in return for exclusive advantages like free next-day delivery or early access to new releases of products.
The secret to a successful loyalty plan is simple; too many limitations will turn away customers. So make sure to use simple, straightforward phrases when describing the guidelines and advantages.
Cross-selling And Bundle Deals
One of the most effective tactics for raising average basket size and order value is product bundling and cross-selling, which also helps you introduce customers to new products they might not have previously bought.
Upselling and cross-selling are both successful strategies for boosting sales, although they operate in different ways:
- Customers are persuaded to upgrade to a more expensive product or purchase add-ons through upselling.
- Cross-selling motivates customers to purchase extra free products.
Then there is product bundling, which means offering several things together (or in a bundle) for less than the total cost of the individual products.
Upselling and cross-selling campaigns are both supported by bundling. For example, you could persuade customers to purchase a whole bundle of additional goods by packaging a better item with a less expensive addition.
Remember, when promoting a bundle, be sure to highlight the convenience of the deal and the savings on offer for buying all the items together.
Gift Cards
Gift cards are a traditional marketing strategy that can help you increase sales, attract fresh customers, and keep hold of current ones, especially during popular gift-giving occasions and times like birthdays and holidays.
Recipients of gift cards have an unmistakable reason to visit your online store. If customers enjoy shopping with you and your offerings, they may return even after using all of the money on their gift cards.
It’s expected that, lacking unusual self-control, the recipient will spend more than the value of the gift card, raising your average order value. If they don’t, the money on their card that hasn’t been used will be considered direct revenue for your business.
Gift card online promotion makes sense throughout the year, but you should completely step up your advertising during popular gift-giving holidays and other special occasions.
Email Marketing Online Promotion
Email marketing is one of the best online promotional methods for businesses that sell online since it offers an outstanding return on investment of $36 for every $1 invested.
Sign-Up Bonuses
To get results from your email marketing strategy, you must first expand your email list.
Sign-up bonuses can be useful in encouraging potential consumers to submit their email addresses. Gifts, unique products, and discounts on the next items they buy are examples of common promotions.
These offers are a source of warm e-commerce leads because they are often directed at website visitors, who are already aware of your brand and are at least somewhat interested in your products.
Reminders for abandoned carts
The average percentage of consumers online who abandon their shopping carts is currently 69.99%, according to the Baymard Institute. That much money was lost, which is unbelievable. Therefore, it makes sense to send emails to cart abandoners that encourage them to finish their transaction.
The title and photo of the “abandoned” products are frequently included in cart abandonment emails, along with a call to action encouraging the person who received them to continue where they left off. They sometimes use an encouraging factor, such as a discount or percentage, to encourage action.
Customized Coupon Codes
Personalization and email marketing go hand in hand, with most consumers preferring emails with personalized content.
Sharing personalized discount vouchers based on the customer’s purchase or browsing history is one such strategy. They can also be given as gifts for major anniversaries and birthdays.
Making customers feel special, depending on the reason for the occasion, will encourage them to take advantage of your online promotion.
In Conclusion
Your sales and revenue may be considerably affected by effective online promotions.
However, they are not the only way to encourage customers to act correctly. Additionally, they aren’t always effective at producing long-term growth. Running ongoing promotions might hurt your brand and the way people see the worth of your products.
That’s why you need to consider which are the most suitable online promotion tactics for your e-commerce businesses and how to run them at the right time.
Remember, we must get ready for the sale. Making sure you have enough inventory, can satisfy delivery deadlines, and are ready for potential increases in internet traffic during the sale period are all part of this. Consumers may become loyal customers in the future if this helps to ensure they have a great purchasing experience.
We hope you will have a successful holiday sales season with the above online promotion tactics!
