Do Your Clients’ Marketing Promotions Promise Value?

The past few years have been hard on sales with consumers increasingly worried about recession. Even more consumers are now worried that prices will get even worse going forward. Your clients need to focus on marketing promotions to stay ahead of the competition in coming years.

Promotions Are Highly Influential

According to a study by RELEX and Incisiv, 20% of retails sales ($1 trillion) were driven by promotions in 2023. Why? “Shoppers today are more value-conscious than ever.”

One of the easiest ways to spot value is marketing promotions. When consumers see compared prices or a percentage markdown, they know they’re saving money. And savings will always help consumers feel more comfortable making purchases.

According to a SalesFuel blog based on data from Vericast, 90% of consumers use coupons, specifically. That’s right, it’s not just older consumers. 59% of 25- to 34-year-olds actually feel excited when they receive opportunities to save.

Overall, the study says there’s an estimated $450 billion in possible incremental retail sales…if retailers utilize effective pricing and promotions.

Choosing the Right Promotions

Of course, if your clients rely on marketing promotions that are too extreme, they’ll end up hurting their margins. If your client relies on outdated historical data to guide their promotions, their margins will erode. That’s where you come in to save the day.

You need to offer them post-promotion analysis and scenario testing to measure each marketing promotion’s success. That way, your clients can made data-driven decisions when planning for the future.

Value Marketing

In addition to marketing promotions, pma also recommends taking advantage of value marketing. “Value marketing is a strategy that allows you to connect deeply with your audience by aligning your brand’s offerings with their core values and beliefs.” Yes, that includes cost-effectiveness but extends to so much more to provide increased value.

Value marketing is all about “resonating with your audience’s lifestyle and principles.” That means researching your clients’ target audiences and utilizing audience segmentation. When you identify your client’s target audience’s subgroups, that makes ad personalization so much easier.

And personalized ads are significantly more effective at inspiring the recipient to take action.

Audience Research

So, how do you get that data on consumer age, locations, interests, etc.? You could:

• Send your client’s consumers surveys and feedback forms to fill out
• Use customer data from customer service, transactions, mobile apps, web registrations/account creations, loyalty programs, or subscriptions
• Look up comprehensive consumer persona/behavior data

You can easily look up your client’s target audience’s data on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel. There, you can learn:

• Demographic information (e.g., gender, age, average household income, etc.)
• Purchase intentions for the upcoming year
• Personal interests
•  Favorite things (e.g., TV, movie and music genres; sports, etc.)
• Marketing information (e.g., which types of ads influenced them to take action within the last year)

That information will make it easy to create personalized marketing promotions.

Value-Centric Strategy

Along with savings and personalization, your client’s marketing promotions should show value in other ways. Just make sure those values align with your client’s target audience’s.

For example, your client’s target audience might care a lot about the environment. They want products that are sustainable and environmentally conscious. If your client’s business values include environmental sustainability, that would be a great addition to an ad.

But there’s one more step: Choosing the right channels to promote on. “The goal is to be where your customers are,” says pma. So, look up which ad types resonate with your client’s target audience the most and focus on those.

And just like before, be sure to study these ads. Figure out which ones are working and which fall short. That way the next marketing promotions campaign will be an even bigger success.

Photo by: Mimi Thian