Just starting out as a small business owner, you may think it’s pretty straightforward to have a sale: offer a product, put it on sale, bring in new customers, and, well, make money. But it’s nowhere as easy as it sounds. As a matter of fact, sales is not an easy part of any business, no matter the size. Since the market is usually very competitive for small businesses, sales may get even more challenging. That’s why as a business owner, you need a solid marketing plan.
There are many ways to conduct a suitable marketing plan. You can implement different marketing strategies to make sure your small business is thriving and you have increased sales. Email marketing, CRM tools, sales automation, digital, and affiliate marketing are all examples of marketing strategies. One strategy that is risk-free and guaranteed is having sales promotions. There are lots and lots of different sales ideas for small businesses. This article has all the vital sales promotion strategies that will help increase your small business sales in no time. I will also teach you how to choose the most suitable ones and implement them into your marketing plan.
What Is Sales Promotion?
It’s very straightforward. Sales promotion strategies are ways to increase sales or brand awareness. Small business owners do so by reducing prices and giving out discounts. When you offer a strategized promotion, your customers will be motivated to purchase from you, and also, if your goal is so, recommend you to their friends and family and bring new customers in. The most suitable sales ideas for small businesses are ones that cost the least. Small business owners do not usually have a huge budget set aside for advertising. That’s why sales promotions work best for small businesses.
Types of Sales Promotions
There are different types of sales ideas, but which ones would work best for you? To answer that, let’s get to know them and how they perform:
1. Percentage discounts
Percentage discounts promotion is the strategy in which you offer a deal of n% discount off your prices, for example, 5% or 20% off. This type of promotion is one of the most popular and best sales ideas for small businesses. As for implementing this method, usually, what works best with the percentage discount offer is n% off everything. The mathematics here is that, for example, if your profit will not allow a 20% discount, go with 15%. Your sales will increase, and you will still make a profit with the discount implemented.
2. Flat amount discounts
An alternative to percentage discounts is the flat amount discount. In this strategy, you reduce a flat amount of Dollars off your prices — for example, $5 off or $20 off. There is a controversial discussion about which one of the two strategies is better. Sometimes a flat amount is a better idea for a discount, and sometimes a percentage off works best. How to know which one to implement? Let’s see an example.
Let’s say you sell a product for $25 for a month’s worth of use. An offer for 40% off looks and works much better than an offer of $10 off, even though they’re literally the same. On the other hand, let’s say you have an expensive product of $350 value. An offer of $50 off works much better than an offer of 15% off. Even though the 15% off deal is a better deal, $ 50 off sounds like a considerable discount, and customers will not usually go through the trouble of figuring out just how much 15% of $350 comes to.
The decision to choose between the two depends on your products, your prices, and your customers. You have to do the maths and calculations and have a psychological view on which one will better affect your customers.
3. BOGO
BOGO, or Buy One Get One free, is another one of the most common sales ideas for small businesses. BOGO works in two ways: Buy one get one free, or buy one, get the second at X% off. You can implement BOGO in your sales strategy if you want to have a stock clearance. BOGO works best if you have a pile of products in your stock that you want to sell quickly.
In terms of customer reaction? BOGO-free tends to work better than BOGO-half-off. Usually, with BOGO-half-off, the discount goes towards the item with the lowest price in the pair. This frustrates customers and results in a smaller ROI compared to BOGO-free.
4. Multi-save and conditional promotions
Conditional and multi-save promotions are another type of sales idea tailor-made for small businesses. You will increase sales without necessarily killing your revenue in these promotion strategies. They will also encourage customers to check out more items and shop for more than the products with a discount.
Multi-save promotions offers are:
- Buy and save off the entire sale.
- Spend and save off the entire sale.
- Buy and save off specific items.
- Spend and save off specific items.
- Buy and pay a fixed price.
Conditional promotions offers are:
- Buy and get one or more items for free or at a discount.
- Spend and get one or more items for free or at a discount.
- Buy and earn loyalty.
- Spend and earn loyalty.
5. Free shipping
Free shipping is one of the most commonly used sales ideas for small businesses in the e-commerce industry. This promotion strategy is a little tricky to work with. It either works great or results in the lowest success rate. The problem? The promotion is sometimes not clarified enough. As a business owner, you can solve this problem easily by setting the free shipping promotion right and informing your customers thoroughly of the policies. The best thing you can do is to make sure your customers are not confused with the free shipping policies.
For example, when choosing the free shipping promotion, instead of free shipping on select orders, go for free shipping on orders above $100. This will clear out all confusion, and your customers will better understand how the promotion works.
6. Try before you buy
Another terrific sales idea for small online businesses is the “try before you buy” promotion. If you have an online shop business, you most definitely know that customers have a hard time buying a product they haven’t touched before. You can offer a ‘try before you buy promotion to solve this problem.
The promotion works exactly like how it sounds. You will ship a product to a customer, and they will be paying the shipping fee only. You will set a return time period, for example, two weeks or a month. If the customer does not return the product by then, they will be charged the total price.
The “try before you buy” tactic is a risky promotion not many e-commerce businesses go for. You might be left with a lot of used returned products you cannot resell. The trick to prevent this is to go for products with high satisfaction rates. If a customer is pleased with your product, the chances of returning it will decrease considerably.
7. Gift with purchase
Here’s another sales promotion idea: giving freebies with purchases. Customers love being gifted for their purchases. You can give away gifts from your excess stock, or you can design merchandise like T-shirts, mugs, and makeup bags. You can set free gifts on specific items or purchases above a certain amount. A lot of small businesses include stickers and small practical free gifts in all their sales. You can come up with your own free gift to match your products, budget, and brand identity.
Now that you know the most effective sales ideas for small businesses, it’s time to think about which one is the best for your small business? How can you choose the most effective one? In the following section, I’ll provide some tips and hacks for choosing the best sales promotions for your business.
How to Decide on the Right Promotion
If choosing the best sales ideas for your businesses seems confusing, don’t worry. Follow these steps to choose the right promotions to increase your sales:
Be crystal clear about your objectives
The first question you should ask when deciding on a promotion strategy is not “which sales promotion should I offer?” Instead, it should be, “What do I want to achieve from the promotion?” You should begin with setting a goal for your promotion. Are you trying to:
- Increase website traffic?
- Boost your bottom line?
- Make room for new inventory?
- Increase brand awareness?
These are the types of questions you can ask to determine your objective. For example, if your goal is to encourage your customers to stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic and shop online, a free shipping promotion will do the job. BOGO is the right solution to clear your inventory to introduce your new products.
Test promotions and survey customers
If you just started your small business or are confused with what exactly your goal is, you can test different promotions to see which one suits your business best. You can also survey your customers. Your customers will be more than happy to help you understand their needs. You can, for example, think that free shipping promotions will increase your sales. But if you run a survey, your customers might just tell you that a discount or a gift with purchase will make them a lot happier. RunSensible’s survey design and delivery tools can help you with that by increasing your open and response rates.
Should restrictions apply?
Usually, sales ideas like percentage and flat amount discounts work great. But if you want to protect your profits or are worried about customers taking advantage of your promotions, you can set some restrictions and policies. Some types of restrictions you can apply on promotions are:
- Product-specific promotions: the promotion only applies to a specific product or category.
- Spending thresholds: the promotion only applies to customers with a purchase over a specific amount.
- Customer-specific promotions: the promotion only applies to a specific buyer persona.
Setting restrictions will not only make sure that you are in a safe profit zone, but it will also motivate your customers to purchase accordingly.
Final Words
Running a small business can become quite intimidating. We understand how frustrating it can get to run a business on your own and struggle with sales. That’s why we talk about the best sales ideas for small businesses. Of course, there are other promotion ideas and strategies, some of which you can find in my list of 21 killer sales promotion ideas. Remember that without the right sales and marketing tools, you can’t run most of these strategies with any considerable success.
For any of these promotions to work how they should, you need tools to handle email marketing and lead management, which means picking the right CRM. RunSensible is a CRM and marketing tool that has all the tools your business needs in one place, from marketing and calls to invoicing and payment, and it’s specifically designed to help small businesses like yours save time, money, and energy.
These promotion tips and tricks will help you understand your objectives and customers better and increase your sales. Before deciding on a promotion strategy, make sure you follow our tips on how to choose one to make things more straightforward for your customers — and, well, to have fewer headaches yourself. If you have any questions or suggestions, leave us a comment. We would love to hear from you!
