I hastily put together this presentation for a conference thingy.On promotions.
No one talks about promotions very often, despite this course of action being the default for so many marketers.
Basic argument………..
Most people think price promotions attract new buyers, but in reality they mostly work on current buyers, because only they are remotely interested enough to notice them.
They produce a short term kick in sales, but after the promotion, everything snaps back to normal – there is little long term effect.
So marketers do it again, and again to get the same artificial sales hit.
Like an addiction.
Yep, price promotions are the crack cocaine of brand marketing.
While added value promotions – sponsorships, competitions etc perform in pretty much the same way.
But at least they don't cut margins, or get folks used to a lower price. It's just that they tend to only work on current buyers.
Many traditional marketers could be happy with this, because they labour under the misapprehension that they can build their brands' share through loyalty.
They can't. As Byron Sharpe shows us, brands grow through penetration, through getting more buyers, not more sales from the ones they have. Loyalty is a false God.
There is a massive saving grace for the traditonal promotion though – retailers love them. Doing promotions to keep the buyers in big retailers does make lots of sense, because penetration only comes from two areas:
Physical availability – broader distribution.
Mental availability – brand salience. Getting it noticed and though of in buying situations by more people.
Looking at promotions in a different way can do more that build distribution though. They can address Mental availability too.
The route to building salience is through being distinctive. Getting on the radar of people who just don't care.
Promotions can help with this by not 'saying at people' but 'doing with people'.
- Find a credible link between what the brand and the audience cares about.
- That bring the brand purpose to life.
- Do something interesting and compelling that buyers can participate within, something with a story, something that's socially combustible – a story, a rich purpose for an event you can access through purchase, a physical gift with purchase or even a competition.
- Then create the tools and impetus for buyers and participants to share, so it gets into the feeds and timelines of their peers.
This also creates cut through in advertising – telling the story of what you've done, rather than what you sell.
And if you've worked with the PR folks (and you should have) it should create headlines too.
Not sure if it's any good overall, and I wish I had more time to put in more of the compelling statistical evidence, but, as with so much I seem to go on about these days, just read Byron Sharpe's book. It's all in there.
NORTHERN PLANNER 
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