Top 20 Creative Promotion Ideas to Increase Sales

Successful companies have a stockpile of promotion ideas on hand. Sales promotional ideas promote brand awareness, liquidate the inventory, and boost revenue. Good promotions help foster customer relations and keep shoppers coming back for your products.

Here are 20 worthwhile strategies to consider.

20 Best Promotion Ideas to Increase the Sales of Your Business

1. Free Samples

Free samples are an excellent way to promote a specific product you're trying to sell to your target audience. Many stores across the nation offer free samples when customers shop in stores only, regardless of purchases made within the store.

The idea behind free samples is straightforward. It helps to connect potential customers to new products. Free samples also help boost your customer relations by endearing your brand because everyone loves free things.

2. BOGO Sales

BOGO, or buy-one-get-one, sales can be held in stores or online for a limited time. They're a good way to increase sales and clear out stock. These sales can help empty your warehouses and shelves of goods, leaving you with more space for upcoming or seasonal products. BOGO is a method of self-liquidating.

They also create a sense of urgency in consumers surrounding your product, as customers can stock up on goods they use frequently.

3. Cashback Promotions

Cashback promotions are a great way to stimulate customer-business trust. When you allow loyal customers to build up a surplus of cashback at your store to cash in at a later date, it makes them feel better about spending money at the moment. Cashback promotions are proven to lead to more spending at a store.

4. Discounts Based on Lifestyle

Many stores offer discounts based on a customer's lifestyle. Typically these lifestyle benefits center around age or profession. You will require your customers to bring proof for lifestyle discounts.

The top four lifestyle promotions given are gifted to:

• Seniors age 65 and older
• Veterans
• High school and college students
• Teachers in grades K-12

Discounts are typically well known among lifestyle participants. Each year, you can promote the discounts to new participants or remind customers about the promotions.

Send an email or newsletter announcing the deals helps to stimulate sales from the promotions, too.

5. Flash Sales

If you need a burst of revenue for your business, then consider hosting a flash sale. Flash sales create a sense of urgency much the same way BOGO sales do.

Frequently, flash sales will draw shoppers to your e-commerce and brick-and-mortar locations alike. It can get redundant for your company and customers if you continually offer flash sales, though. It can make the sale lose the sense of urgency you have worked hard to build up in your customers.

One advisable strategy is to limit your flash sales to once or twice a year and make them a surprise. Suppose your company lends to reliability as a critical value. In that case, you may want to approach flash sales with a different strategy. For instance, you can offer a calendar of flash sales every month to allow your customers to plan out their shopping experiences around the sale. This method can make your company look more generous from a customer standpoint.

You can also combine flash sales with paid searches in the e-commerce side of your store to further increase your notability and revenue.

6. Coupon Codes

One digital marketing tactic involves sending coupon codes to your email list. Your subscribers can then use these coupon codes in your online marketplace or take them to stores.

You can also offer coupons through your app if you have one, which can help grow its number of users.

By encouraging your customers to download your app, you can increase purchases. Coupon codes play up the world of gamification. The tickets and promo cards associated with coupon promotions can make customers feel like the shopping experience is a game.

Have you ever noticed that customers abandon carts at an extremely high rate in your online store? In 2020 customers were dropping carts online at a rate of around 88%.

Cart dropping can be very unfortunate for your company. Still, if you have an email address for your customer, then coupon codes can come to your rescue. It is better to make some sales and no sales at all. You can schedule coupon code promotions to send to customers who have full abandoned carts.

7. Free Shipping and Returns

Much like coupons, customers also appreciate having the option of free shipping and returns. Free shipping is a great way to call your customers back to abandoned carts. Suppose shipping exceeds a customer's expectations while online shopping, then carts end up forgotten. If you offer customers free shipping, then your customer may come back and complete the purchase. However, giving your customer a free shipping discount also gives them that same adrenaline rush effect of playing a game. It's like free space making it one of the most popular promotion ideas for business.

8. Loyalty Programs

Customer loyalty programs won't provide you with vast amounts of income. Fortunately, the programs are beneficial in other ways:

• They build a sense of fellowship for customers.
• They help build positive customer relationships.

The steps you take to boost customer relations can improve profits over time by up to 25%. Loyalty programs come in all shapes and sizes. They include:

• Discounts of 10% to 30% off merchandise
• Punch cards
• Discounts for using store credit cards
• Gifts or samples

9. Joint Promotions

Joint promotions are all about bundling up products to give your customers the best deal. These promotions not only span your company's various brands, but you can even coordinate with other companies to make bigger joint promotions. Joint promotions benefit you in several ways:

1. Bring in more revenue
2. Expose you to other customers
3. Provides a networking initiative within your niche

Promotions are mutually beneficial for all parties involved. Good promotions allow customers to become familiar with new products. Both companies have a shot at a new customer base.

10. Social Media Contests

Promoting your content on a social media platform can significantly increase brand awareness. Social media encompasses booming platforms with millions of internet users. If your business does not have any social media accounts, you're truly missing out. It's an excellent way for your company to create company client camaraderie.

Holding a video contest on these platforms in the form of giveaways is the most popular. These contests typically involve your followers tagging friends to gain entries into giveaway drawings. Suppose you are seeking to grow your social media presence quickly. In that case, contests are a great way because they help you to build a following by having participants follow you.

Contests that feature giveaways are also very low-cost. Typically when you give away a product, you gain a much larger customer following. The newfound engagement will help you in the long run with future sales.

11. Shopping Spree Giveaway

You can host giveaways online or give away an individual product or collection. A shopping spree is like a giveaway, only more notable.

Shopping sprees can be hosted in stores or online and often involve a spin the wheel game. You can have your customers spin the wheel for a chance to win a prize, such as a $1,000 shopping spree in the store. Shopping sprees are a fantastic grassroots effort for your company because word of mouth spreads the good news about your business very quickly. As a result of a generous shopping spree, you may receive user-generated content that increases the online presence of your business.

12. In-Store Gamification

Many stores offer an element of gamification infused into customer life. If you want to enhance your store with a game-day promotion, consider bringing in a simple spin-to-win wheel like the sweepstakes giveaways incorporate.

Other special events that you can host are chocolate walks where you hand out small pieces of chocolate throughout the store. Every once in a while, your customers will be able to find a discount inside the wrapper.

Furthermore, you can have target games set up for customers to play. Target gamification promotions include bean bag tosses. If a customer makes it into the slot, you give them a rebate coupon.

13. Branded Gifts

If you have a strong company logo or brand on many of your products, giving away promotional products is among several good business promotion ideas. Gifts typically draw customers into a store. Seeing brand names out in the community can also help with the grassroots effort of launching conversations about your company to new customers. You can also consider offering a gift card for customers to purchase for friends and family.

14. Referral Discounts

Growth is necessary for every company. To grow your company, you need a more extensive customer base. Referral discounts incentivize the process of having people recommend your business to friends, family, and the internet at large.

Many customers even use these referral discounts on social media as influencers. These influencers can help bring exponentially more customers to your store as a form of influencer marketing.

15. Percent-Off Sales

Percent-off sales promotional ideas come in a variety of shapes and sizes and include different stipulations you can place on customers, too. For instance, you could offer your customers 20% off orders that are over $50. You could also provide your customers a 30% discount on orders that are over $100.

The rebate is set based on the bottom line. You can also have no bottom line and set a lower portion off of all products in your store. An example of having no bottom line price is a 10% off store-wide sale.

Percent-off sales promote a high volume of spending within your store, even exceeding the bottom line. Other insensitive sales and discounts offered within the shopping cart can help push your customers into the subsequent sales bottom line.

16. Participating in Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the largest promo ideas of the year. Offering 20%-off discounts won't cut it on these days because your competition is extraordinarily high. Many businesses offer discounts of 40% or more. There is so much hype built around these two sales days that target customers have a FOMO (fear of missing out).

These more extensive sales days can boost your sales numbers over your expected yearly quota.

17. Seasonal Sales

Also known as blowout sales, seasonal sales promotions are a good way of clearing out all unsold merchandise. Your customers also win with these sales because they get great discounts on products to use later in the year.

18. Holiday Sales

Holidays tend to put many shoppers in the buying mood. That's why you typically see sales hosted on holidays such as Presidents Day, July Fourth, and Labor Day. Customers almost expect deals on these days.

For these holidays, you can get by with a much lower rebate offer than a Black Friday sale. Typically, these rebate sales offer 10% to 20% off.

19. Free Trials

Free trials are a great way to launch tech products, like software-as-a-service. A free trial that lasts around 30 days gives customers time to form a habit around the use of your product. They're also more likely to keep the subscription.

Furthermore, free trials work great for subscription boxes. Subscription boxes can give out free trials that are smaller or equal to the size of a standard subscription box. Again these free samples help to inspire your customers to continue ordering the products or not cancel the subscription when the 30 days are over.

20. Free Exchanges

Free exchanges are not truly a discount but a service to your customers that helps to earn consumer trust. Suppose you own an online clothing e-commerce company. In that case, you can even establish your business under the guise of giving your customers the ability to have free exchanges as a method of trying on products.

It helps to give your online customers peace of mind. It also fosters customer relationships.

Choosing the Right Promotion Ideas for Your Business

Promoting your business requires understanding your users and finding out what they're looking for. Whether through social media, in-person, or your email marketing campaigns, there are various ways to promote and increase the awareness of your brand. Now that you have a stockpile of some great promotional ideas for your company, go forth into the next year prepared to increase your ROI and revenue.