10 Clever Sales Promotions for Paid Campaigns

We all love a great sales promotion.

Whether it’s 20 percent off, buy one get one free, or a limited time offer, we’re all suckers for a deal, so why aren’t you using sales promotions in your paid campaigns?

Sales promotions can make your ads jump off the page, boost engagement, and grow your sales. Let’s look at ten of the best sales promotions for your paid campaigns.

What Are Attractive Sales Promotions for Paid Ads?

Sales promotions are a marketing device designed to boost sales and convert potential customers into actual buyers. We see them everywhere we go, whether it’s on TV, on the internet, or even when we drive by a billboard:

• “buy one get one free”
• “free entry for veterans”
• “25 percent off when you buy in the next 24 hours”

These are all sales promotions, and they’re designed to get us to part ways with our money and buy products!

How does this fit with paid advertising?

It’s in the name! Sales promotions aren’t useful unless you promote them, and one of the most effective ways to do this is through paid advertising. Whether you advertise on Google, Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn, or any other platform, you need to attract people’s attention. Sales promotions can be the perfect way to do this.

Sales promotions and paid campaigns go hand-in-hand, which is why you likely see them all the time on paid ads.

10 Sales Promotion Ideas for Paid Marketing Campaigns

There’s no limit to what you can do with sales promotions; one of the few things that could be holding you back is your creativity.

However, when you run a sales promotion, you’ve got to remember that sales aren’t the only measurement of success.

Think about your margins and understand exactly how your promotion fits into your business plan. A deal for “90 percent off all products” might be the most talked-about sales promotion you ever run, but if your goal is to make a profit, it’s not much use to you.

With this in mind, here are 10 of the best sales promotion ideas for paid marketing campaigns, but as always, it’s how you make them work for your business that’s going to be the most important thing.

1. Offer Seasonal Sales Promotions on Your Products

On average, 19 percent of all retail sales are made during the November and December holidays.

Before you even consider Valentine’s Day, Easter, Independence Day, and every other holiday, seasonal sales represent nearly a 5th of all revenue. That’s an incredible amount, and it goes to show the power of seasonal sales promotions.

You may think, if it’s such a busy period, then why would I discount my products with promotions? However, this is also one of the most competitive times of the year, so it’s vital that your paid advertising stands out.

Great seasonal promotions allow you to do this.

For example, which ad copy is more appealing in February? “Beautiful diamond necklaces at great prices,” or “The perfect diamond necklace for Valentine’s Day, now with a free Cupid bracelet?”

As with this example, seasonal sales promotions make your ad copy relevant, allowing you to capitalize on the buzz surrounding seasonal change.

The other big bonus for sellers is that it’s a great way to control stock. If your products are very seasonal, you want to maximize their exposure at the right times of the year, and using seasonal sales promotions with paid campaigns can help you do this.

2. Feature Flash Sales

Putting a time limit on offers creates urgency, which can be a powerful marketing tool.

As consumers, we’re very accustomed to seeing this. Countless websites have offers that expire after a specific time, and they do this for a reason: It works.

Flash sales are a great way to sell a lot of stock quickly, so it’s very effective if you’ve got a product that’s not selling very well or you want to get rid of it to make space for a new line. However, flash sales are only applicable if you get the message in front of enough people.

This is where your paid advertising comes in because it’s one of the easiest ways to ensure your target audience sees your message.

The kind of promotion you come up with is up to you, but the ability to create urgency with your ad copy will generate the buzz you need to make your sales promotion a success.

3. Offer Temporary Sales Promotions With a Countdown Timer

Of course, you can create urgency with your PPC ads through good copy, but there’s also a way of customizing your ads, so they show a countdown timer.

A study from Experian found that emails inducing a sense of urgency had a 59 percent higher transaction-to-click rate, and a countdown timer is a great way to do this in a highly visual way.

Not only is including a timer in your PPC likely to boost your CTR, but it also improves conversions, which can make a big difference to your ROI.

Setting up a countdown timer on your Google PPC ads couldn’t be easier. Set up your ad campaign as you usually would, and when you get to the point where you enter your copy, write your headline and then enter a curly bracket: {.

A dropdown menu will appear with different options, where you can select “countdown timer.” Put in the date you want your promotional sale to end, and you’re ready to go.

Not many advertisers make use of this option, so adding a timer to your PPC ads can be a great way to boost your performance.

4. Provide Free Samples

Forget the fact that people like free things, and the word free tends to jump off a page.

Free samples play on something our culture programs us to do: reciprocate. When someone does something nice for you, you want to return the favor, and in this case, it results in sales.

It’s probably not a conscious thought, but deep down, there’s a feeling that people want to return your kindness of a free sample by making a purchase.

However, free samples go even further than using societal norms to encourage people to buy your product.

They’re also a great way to cut through the noise. When someone looks at a product, they go through a complex calculation of whether they want to buy it: the buyer decision process.

When you give someone a free sample or trial period, it allows them to make a logical, informed decision that can result in more people purchasing your product.

You can easily incorporate free samples into your PPC campaigns. Experiment with your offer and find the one that works best for your business.

5. Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) Sales Promotions

I already mentioned the power of the word “f ree,” and BOGO sales are a great way to capitalize on this.

As consumers, we place a tremendous amount of value on the idea of getting something for free, even at the expense of getting the best deal.

For example, if you only need one of something, then getting that item at 25 percent off is probably more beneficial than getting two of them for the price of one. You’ll end up paying 25 percent more and have an extra item you might not even use.

For retailers, BOGO sales promotions are an excellent way of benefiting from people’s natural love for anything free. As you’re selling more products, it’s a way of boosting revenue, particularly for products where you’ve got excess stock.

BOGO sales promotions can easily factor into your paid advertising for both products and services, so make sure you’re getting your message across with your copy. T

his can be particularly beneficial for businesses selling time-based services during the low season. If people are paying you for your time, and you’ve got plenty of it, then BOGOs can increase revenue since your cost is your time.

6. Offer Incentives in Your Sales Promotions

There are two main objectives with PPC advertising: First, you have to get the clicks, and second, you need to ensure enough of those clicks result in you achieving your goals.

Adding incentives to your sales promotions is a great way to help you achieve both of these objectives.

Offering little incentives such as “free video consultation,” “free shipping,” and “Amazon vouchers” doesn’t cost your business much, but they create excitement about your promotion and give people the encouragement they need to take the first step and eventually become a customer.

7. Discounts for Groups of Customers

You’ll often hear of promotions such as “veterans go free,” “50 percent off for teachers during back to school,” and “free appetizer for emergency service workers.”

Rewarding these hardworking people might be a part of your business culture, but it’s also a form of promotion. You’re showing that your business values its community, and it wants to give back, which is excellent PR.

When veterans come to your theme park, they bring their families with them, and the same goes for emergency service workers eating at your restaurant. This means you’re still bringing in all-important revenue, but you’re also reaching new audiences and building your public image.

Don’t forget that certain groups have their days on the calendar (Veteran’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc.), so think about how you can celebrate them with a great promotion.

8. Social Media Contests As Sales Promotions

A big part of marketing is reaching people wherever they are, and for more than half the people in the world, that’s on social media. If your sales promotions aren’t taking this into account, they won’t have the maximum effect.

Social is all about creating engagement and getting people to share and interact with your content. A smart way to do this is by running a social media contest as a sales promotion.

For example, a website about running could partner up with Usain Bolt and run a competition where anyone who shares a certain post gets entered into a hat to win a run with Usain.

Every business, whether big or small, can come up with prizes people will want to win, and it’s yet another way to create a buzz around your promotions.

Another benefit is that it significantly boosts your social media reach, introducing new people to your brand and helping create your customers of the future.

9. Loyalty Promotions

There are over 3.3 billion loyalty memberships in the US alone!

Earning customer loyalty is incredibly important for businesses. While a lot of earning loyalty is about being genuine, loyalty programs are also a great way of keeping customers coming back to you.

While you can incorporate this idea into your PPC copy, this is an area where you can make use of all aspects of your digital marketing. One method that’s particularly useful for promoting your loyalty program and rewarding your customers is email marketing.

If you’re getting great engagement from your email campaigns, then it’s a good way to reach people with your loyalty promotions and ensure they translate into real-world results.

10. Offer Vouchers for Sales Promotions

Vouchers are another way to make your paid campaigns pop and boost conversions. For example, if you’re looking to create leads, then a paid campaign offering a discount voucher when people give you their contact details can be very effective.

Vouchers or discount codes are easy to make through your e-commerce site or plugin, and they can allow you to reach a very targeted audience. Simply generate your voucher in Shopify, Woo Commerce, or whichever platform you use and send them out to your customers.

When they check out on your site, they can enter their discount code, and it will be deducted from their total price.

Again, the only limit with vouchers is your imagination, so think about how you can use vouchers for sales promotion to stand out from the crowd and engage with your audience.

Conclusion

Sales promotions are popular because they work.

Your paid campaigns are a perfect opportunity to work promotions into your marketing strategy, and they can greatly improve your click-through rate, the level of engagement your audience has with your landing page, and your conversion rate.

Remember not to get too carried away, and make sure you consider how your offer fits into your overall business goals. Revenue without profit generally isn’t useful, so you’ve got to find the right balance.

These 10 best sales promotions for paid campaigns can help you stand out from the crowd and create a serious buzz around your brand.

Which of these sales promotions will you try to work into your strategy?

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