10 Keys to a Successful Promotion

Over a 35-year career marketing in the electrical industry I have ran more than a few promotions. And here’s the dirty little secret – not every promotion I ran was successful.

I’ve managed everything from hat promotions to large trip programs. And probably 5 times more manufacturer promotions. These are the most common contractor marketing initiatives for most distributors because they can influence purchases of discretionary products, they fit the profile of the audience and they appear to be relatively “simple” to implement (or at least management and sales believes this.)

Successful? Sometimes. For a contractor-oriented distributor, promotions can be a necessary “evil” as we want to have something in the market to generate awareness and support the sales organization (and sometimes drive counter activity.) But they can also be powerful sales generators and are great for generating awareness from customers and salespeople.

The reality is:

• Most distributor promotions fall short of expectations.
• Most distributor promotions do not work as intended.

The following reflects my opinion.

The reality is most contractor promotions executed by electrical distributors do not work or at least they do not work as well as they were intended or hoped for.

There are a lot of factors contributing to this situation.

Before I get into these contributing factors let me outline what I believe would be the appropriate path to executing a successful promotion.

• Establishing definable goals and objectives that are realistic, quantifiable, and most importantly, add to the profitability of the company.
• Conducting research to determine what is it your customers find of value in a promotion. These could be focus group questionnaires, input from various sales functions, and one on one conversations with individual customers.
• Planning is key. There must be enough time devoted to constructing the successful promotion.
• A communication process that directs the information to the target audience no matter how narrow or wide utilizing multiple platforms.
• Develop a clear call to action for the participant including a path to entry that is realistic to your customers.
• Offering meaningful rewards that are valued by the customer. These need to be a scaled approach. And there is rarely enough budget allocated, or invested, to provide the ideal rewards or ideally communicate the promotion. We do the best we can.
• Publicizing the results on the same platforms that were used to introduce the promotions.
• Execute post promotion analytics to determine whether the quantifiable objectives were in fact meet and sharing that data with the appropriate personnel, both manufacturer and distribution management. This must include conclusions.
• Following up on consequences, both intended and unintended, including additional business opportunities. These are your action items based on your conclusions.
• Incorporating the learning curve into your future activities.   

Now let me go back and touch on each of these for just a few minutes.

One of the most effective mentors I have ever known liked to say, “the road to h-ll is paved with good intentions”. What I have stated so far is common knowledge and most marketing and sales professionals are fully aware of their existence and their importance. The truth is it usually does not happen that way.

1. Hopefully by now you have your 2021 goals and objectives, as well as strategic planning roughed in if not substantially completed. It is impossible to know everything that is going to happen a year in advance so it is understood that these plans may require some adjustment as time goes on.
2. The research for what customers wants it is really done at the end of promotions gone bye. Certainly not every customer wants the same thing, but you can get a flavor for what is important to them and what will spark their interest.
3. Planning seems to be a major hurdle in many cases even if you are plugging in a turnkey manufacturer promotion. The promotion needs to be inclusive and that takes some additional time especially in initially developing a more wide-ranging approach to promotions.
4. Communication today is better and faster and more accurate than it has ever been. That is a dynamic reality, so we must be careful as marketing people that we do not draw the conclusion that our preferred method of communication should be everybody’s preferred method of communication and they ought to get with the times and accept it.
5. Usually, one of the biggest hurdles is the path for redemption of the prize or award or offer. You simply cannot assume that every customer you have is computer literate and wants to enter their claim on the web. Mail and fax machines still exist. Print is not going anywhere.
6. What is a meaningful reward? It has amazed me how excited even today’s professional tradesman, and as a side note that is how we need to think of them, go crazy for a good baseball hat. Make it a camo hat or something with a specific sports theme and you will have to hide behind the counter as they crash through your door. Great. The problem comes in when we have not actually developed historical data as to what incentives seem to work for what groups and constituencies. Many times, on the prizes, the manufacturers have lots of goodies to offer up ranging from Yeti coolers to big screen TV’s, so do not be afraid to ask. The financial relationship with manufacturers can go way beyond money.
7. The biggest criticism I was given during my entire career in distribution was that I did a poor job promoting the marketing team and the results of our efforts internally. I do not believe that most of the time marketing should be behind the curtain and sales should be on the stage. But the stories need to be told, press releases with pictures of people getting their big screen TV, winning the truck, or displaying 6 people with their brand-new jackets all tell the story of how successful these promotions are.
8. Developing data is challenging. What you are looking for is trends as this is a process not an event. The real issue is getting anyone to look at the data and then take action based on what they see.
9. It is important that the infrastructure exist to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the promotion. That includes both marketing and sales resources.
10. We need to repeat our successes and consciously eliminate issues their contribute to failures. That is not easy to do with the velocity of promotional opportunities that come at the distributor daily.

You could write series of articles of 1500 words each on every one of these items covered above. Obviously, that was not accomplished in this presentation. I would very much welcome input from the field as to their feelings on this subject. Please feel free to contact me at kcain5622@gmail.com or call me at 240.682.3660 and share your thoughts.

Finally, I would like to thank Channel Marketing Group for this opportunity. I think I am going to like my new home. David Gordon and his team have a lot to offer, so I encourage you to reach out to him or me to see how we can help. I think you will be pleased with the response.

Looking for some ideas – here’s two prior postings on promotions from 2018 and 2015. (sorry, the graphics seem to have been “lost” on the web somewhere!)