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How to Create a Sales Promotion Plan

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How to Develop a Sales Promotion

How to Design a Sales Promotion Contest

A sales promotion is a way of advertising in places such TV, movie screens, radio, newspaper or billboards. The goal of a sales promotion contest is to offer customers things such as special discounts. Your business can really take off with a successful sales promotion contest if planned well.


  1. Detail your outcome goals of the sales promotion. If your sales promotion does well, you will reap the benefits for a long time. However, if your sales promotion turns out poorly, it will just be a waste of your time. You need to be sure that your goals are clearly spelled out so that your business has an organized sales promotion.

  2. Choose the format that you will be using for your promotional contest. There are several strategies that you can choose from such as rebates, loyalty programs, samples and sweepstakes. You then need to figure out if these promotions apply to anyone who comes to the contest or if there be certain restrictions. For example, you can give the customer a 40 percent discount if they spend more than $75 or if they have made a prior purchase.

  3. Define the guidelines of the promotional contest. For instance, you should have a specific day as to when the promotion starts and when it ends, including the time, time zone and date. In the guidelines, detail how will the customers will win their prizes. If you're contest is only available online, you need to state that in the guidelines.

  4. Implement employee incentives since these incentives will boost your staff to do more advertising for the contest. Incentives for your employees may be free products for the top five highest sellers, or a bonus for product sales.

  5. Keep your momentum going throughout the entire contest. You need to keep your customers and inform them what their status is during different times of the contest. If you have a contest and your customers don't hear from you, they will simply lose interest. When the sales promotion ends, send the results to all the participants.