How to Make the Most Out of Joint Promotions

With the market being as competitive as it is today, relying on your marketing and promotions budget isn’t always enough. You may be able to reach a lot of potential customers through your marketing campaigns, but you are competing directly with other brands targeting the same market segments at the same time.

One of the ways to get around this challenge is by joining forces with retailers in promoting your products. It is not uncommon for retailers like Costco and Walmart to promote products available in their stores and offer special discounts to attract more customers. Before you do this type of joint promotion, however, here are some tips you need to know.

Clear Objectives

With retailers like Costco, the initiative to do a promotional offer comes from them rather than from you as the supplier. You get invited to certain programs that the retailers will be running and you have little to no control over those programs.

This is not a reason to do the promotional offer without clear objectives. Before you decide to join the program, it is still necessary to understand the objectives you want to reach. The objectives are goals you can set yourself.

With clear objectives in mind, you can assess whether joining the promotional program is the best move for your business. Review the offer objectively and take advantage of the opportunity to promote your products only when you can hit your objectives.

Plan Ahead

Keep in mind that the catalogues and coupons the retailers will send out are only the first half of the promotional offer. Those materials are designed to attract customers to the stores – or the online storefront – so that they can make purchases.

The other half of the equation is making sure your products are available. You need to forecast the amount of product required to meet the spike in demand, and then ship the correct amount to retailers in a timely manner.

Planning ahead for the promotional offer is a must. You need to have enough time on your hands so you can deal with product promotion logistics and the challenges that surround shipping higher volumes of products to the right stores.

Amplify

When there is a joint promotional offer running, it is tempting to just sit back and hope for the best. This isn’t the way to fully take advantage of the opportunity. What you need to do is amplify the promotional offers so that the offers also reach your target customers.

Thanks to digital marketing, reaching potential customers directly is a lot easier than before. Use social media to deliver relevant messages that direct the audience to the promotional offers. You can also rely on advertising networks to be more specific with your targeting.

Another way you can amplify joint promotional offers is by running your own marketing campaign to support the offers. Once again, giving yourself enough time and planning ahead allows you to do more things with the marketing campaign.

Stand Out

When retailers do their promotional programs, they tend to work with a lot of suppliers and products. How your products appear as part of the bigger promotional offer matters. You want to set your products apart, and the way to do that is by offering unique benefits to potential customers.

For example, you can set discounts for all of your products. The extra discounts are bargaining chips that could win your own page in the promotional material or catalogue. Customers are more likely to see your products and react to the offers this way.

Another way to stand out is by fine-tuning the kind of special offers you make available. Instead of a direct discount or a coupon, you can try bundling products and offering freebies with every purchase. Every little tweak counts, so work on the promotional offer sufficiently.

Follow Through

A spike in sales is to be expected when you are a part of a retailer’s promotional program. That said, the programs could lead to more than just a sudden spike in sales. Retention is not an impossible objective to achieve as long as you take the necessary steps to follow through on your offers.

The simplest way to retain customers is by offering additional coupons for future purchases. For instance, customers can try your products now and get a 5% discount. If they like the products, their next purchase comes with an additional 10% discount.

The way this promotional offer is structured persuades customers to make future purchases, increasing their customer lifetime value (CLV) in the process. Since the CLV is higher, you can afford to spend more on the promotional offers, which means you can make them even more appealing.

The key to successful joint promotions is careful planning. From the five tips we covered in this article, there is no challenge that you cannot solve. Running a joint promotional campaign that wins the hearts of customers will not be difficult at all with these strategies implemented properly.