Have you done promotions for your products?  If not, you need to try doing one.

Today, we're talking about promotions for your online store. This is a question I get asked over and over again. What is a promotion? Why do I have to do them? What are some ideas for promotions? 

What is a promotion? 

Product + Offer + Scarcity = Promotion.  That's what it is. Today, I'm going to give you five ideas for promotions that you can do in your eCommerce store or your online store.

1.  Percentage Discounts

Now, if brick and mortar storefronts have taught us anything, it's that everyone loves to buy things that are on sale. 

Formatting your product pages to have a sale price can increase your conversions. Consider showing two prices for any given product. You can display the retail price, or you can show the sale price. 

You can experiment with the terminology in your shopping cart, such as suggested retail pricing, or MSRP, (manufacturer suggested retail pricing.) Play with it and see what works for you. If you do some percentage discounts, that's a really good one, a good promotion.

2.  BOGO or Buy One, Get One FREE 

Again, everybody loves free stuff. Do you have a product that has enough margin in it that you can offer a buy one, get one free?  If you have to raise your price to offset the amount, try it. 

If you can’t offer a BOGO, get creative with your pricing with bundle pricing.

Let me give you some examples of Bath and Body Works. They're somebody I like to follow because they're creative in their promotions.

For example, they have a body lotion that retails for $6.00 every day. However, when you go into their store, they have these big sales that are five for $30. 

Guess what? 

It's still $6, but it's the way they're getting you to buy more in a bundle, and it's that perceived value. They also do three for $18. 

Guess what? 

It's still the $6. It's just the way they are promoting their products. 

They're playing with promotions and getting their ticket per customer up by doing these promotions that have a definitive start and stop date. It's just creative what they do. Try getting creative doing your pricing or your BOGO and test this out.

3.  Quantity Discounts

Another great way to improve sales and average order value is to offer discounts based on the quantity purchased of a specific product. 

Configure these discounts many different ways,  including a flat rate, a fixed percentage, or a sliding scale. This can be especially advantageous to e-commerce sites that are looking to both sell to the average consumer, as well as to distributors or merchants that need to buy in bulk.

4.  Offer a Customer Loyalty Discount or Rewards Program

Offer rewards points or customer loyalty discounts to your returning customers, reward them for every dollar they spend. You can call it a loyalty program, or you can call it a membership, or you can call it whatever, but you give them points towards something free or some discount. 

Here's another example. My husband and I have a restaurant we like to go to for lunch, they gave us a card, and they punch it every time we go, after ten times you get a free meal. As crazy as it sounds, my husband carries that card in his wallet, and he pulls it out every time, because he's like, "We're gonna get a free one." It works.

5.  Offer Free Shipping

You can blame it on Amazon, but it is no secret, everybody loves free shipping. Additional shipping charges always contribute to checkout abandonment, and that is the Achilles heel of e-commerce. If you can offer free shipping by raising your prices and building it into your margin, that is the thing to do.

I gave you five ideas: percentage based discounts, BOGOs and creative pricing, quantity discounts, offer rewards points or customer loyalty programs, and free shipping. That's five ideas to get a promotion kick-started in your eCommerce store. 

If you want to learn more about how to create promotions that drive up your sales come on over to our Facebook group, Product Bzi Made Easy.