Online Sales Promotion
Online sales promotion can create personal relationships, channels of communication, and an exchange of information regarding a product.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Discuss on line sales promotion as a sales promotion method and relative to personal selling and sales promotion
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Key Points
- Online offers and giveaways are simple and enable marketers to cultivate and gather valuable sales information such as demographics, statistics, and consumer buying habits.
- The Internet allows sales representatives to reach exponentially more potential buyers.
- Interactivity is the key to site stickiness.
Key Terms
- Search Engine Marketing: Search engine marketing promotes websites by increasing their visibility on the search results page, usually through paid inclusion.
- search engine optimization: Search engine optimization offers a more organic, natural, and free way to garner a desired ranking on a search results page through the use of keywords.
- Affiliate Programs: Affiliate programs transform site visitors to business partners by offering rewards for referral business.
Introduction
Sales promotion techniques are certainly not new but they have been revitalized through new media and technology, especially as it relates to online usage.
Internet Marketing Plan: Some of the same promotions that work offline also work online.
Online sales promotions are meant to turn site visitors into consumers. The objective is to get the visitor to take action by contacting a sales representative and ultimately buying the offered product. The methods to accomplish this goal are diverse and include:
- Advertising
- Loyalty and rewards programs
- Contests
- Search engine usage and optimization
- Social media
- Email blasts
- Referral marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Inbound marketing
- Videos
- Coupons, premiums, rebates, and other discounts
Personal Selling – An Integral Part of the Online Experience
The personal touch often makes all the difference when selling. The development of a relationship with a sales representative created by a personal referral often makes the difference between an inquiry and a sale. Interactivity is the key to site stickiness. Through online sales promotion, relationships are developed, channels of communication are opened, and an exchange of information regarding a product’s benefits and a consumer’s needs occurs.
The Internet allows sales representatives to reach exponentially more potential buyers. Emails blasts can reach thousands of potential buyers at one time. Videos posted on websites like YouTube have the potential to go viral. Through content and inbound marketing, a sales representative is capable of offering specific, expert, and personalized information to site visitors. Social media enables a company and its sales team to make contact with like-minded individuals and to convert those who are unfamiliar with the product or service being sold. It adds new meaning to the phrase “cold calling”, which refers to a personal selling technique whereby a sales representative contacts people who are not expecting a call or sales pitch.
Affiliate programs transform site visitors to business partners by offering rewards for referral business.
Search engine marketing (SEM) promotes websites by increasing their visibility on the search results page. Placements can be purchased as “paid inclusions” or the value of website content can be increased by including keywords that are most often searched and used by individuals. The latter, also referred to as search engine optimization (SEO), offers a more organic, natural, and free way to garner a desired ranking on a search results page.
Giveaways
Online offers and giveaways are simple and enable marketers to cultivate and gather valuable sales and demographic information. Personal likes, personal experience, email addresses, payment information, and addresses are needed in order to deliver gifts, product samples, free information, or other “value added” items. Software companies do this all the time when they offer free downloads, stripped down versions of the software, or trial periods.
Look at the Results
Online sales promotions enable you to obtain measurable results. Online sales promotions also enable you to see what the competition is doing. Most importantly, online sales promotions enable you to identify what works and what does not, thereby saving you money and delivering you much more “bang for your buck. ”