| Promotion tip 1. Planning
Incentives…
...it all depends on the objectives you are trying to accomplish.
When asked,
a company spokesman will tell you the objective is "to increase
sales". Yes, that’s theirs, yours, and everyone elses
too. It has to be much better than that!
The single
most important element in an incentive promotion is planning. Just
as a house can’t stand without a good foundation, an incentive
promotion can’t be successful without good planning.
Whether your
objective is to increase the sales at your counter, increase the
purchases of higher margin items, introduce a new product line or
increase the sales from one month to the next, there’s an incentive
promotion designed to achieve it. But which one?
Should you
run your own, ours, or another vendor’s? And what kind? A trip or
frequent buyer promotion? A counter or premium promotion? Or how
long do you run it? This month, six months, a year? You must choose
an objective and make a plan on how to accomplish it.
Before you run
your next incentive promotion ask yourself:
- Did we identify
an area of weakness we’d like to improve upon or an area
of strength we’d like to take advantage of?
- Did we establish
realistic and attainable objectives for that area?
- Are we designing
or getting the professional help needed to design an incentive
promotion to attain these objectives?
- Do we know
for a fact that it will be profitable?
| 
