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Retail Insights & Analytics

Why Marketing And Promotional Planning Is Good For Retailers And Suppliers

Retailer and suppliers needs the right marketing strategy and promotional planning to drive profitable customer acquisition and improve retention rates.


No matter if you're a retailer or a supplier, the relationship between trading partners should become a symbiotic one in order to build your mutual business. At the heart of this is promotional planning focused on how to target the right customers. However, getting together to do this is one thing; using the right technology is another.

DSD SolutionsWithout the proper tools, going about your marketing and promotional plans can be subject to major blind spots. Much of this can be avoided by using more comprehensive metrics for a complete picture of what's occurring at retail and throughout the supply chain. To make decisions, you need relevant data, plus information in real-time to get ahead of competitors.

Real-time metrics are far more common now, and this can tell you a lot about what needs doing before working out a promotional plan. You have more things to take care of than you may know. Not having real-time data only leaves you in the dark, giving competitors the upper hand.

SEE ALSO: Applying Advanced Retail Analytics: Promotional Planning And Performance

Here's why marketing and promotional planning is good for both retailers and suppliers using metrics you need to make it work.

Understanding Why a Promotion Didn't Do Well

If you've already worked with marketing and creative agencies on a promotional strategy and you had mediocre execution and performance results, how do you know what went wrong? Trying to find answers for promotional performance without metrics is like looking into a mirror without a reflection (sans being a vampire).

Using analytics determines your promoted lift sales to see what you did right during your last marketing and promotional campaign. However, programs with more thorough analytics dig even deeper to scope out additional details through features like promotional scorecards.

It's important to analyze your metrics every quarter to keep on top of baseline sales, as well as impact your average retail price had on item velocity. You also want a quick summary showing how your promotional performance went so it's easy to read and understand for every company department.

Finding How Much Inventory You Need for a Future Promotion

Do you really know how much inventory you have left in your stores to use toward your next digital marketing campaign or upcoming promotional event? Keeping track of item performance and other inventory metrics helps you keep on top of what products keep selling well.

To ensure your brand is achieving  optimal promotional performance, your brand should partner with promotional performance experts at marketing agencies who specialize in lead generation and customer activation  to ensure your promotional planning is in support of key marketing KPI's . like and lead generation companies to plan and execute a marketing campaign and get inventory in on time before running out. Otherwise, working blind could mean embarrassingly running out of a favorite product during a major promotion event in your stores.

Using Real-Time Data to Prevent Future Mistakes

Trying to stay one step ahead of competitors requires having data in the moment, so it's worth reiterating how important real-time data is. The more you can see what's happening in every level of your company, the more you can weed out errors.

Discrepancies are a major part of making mistakes in promotional campaigns. This only happens when the supplier and retailer have no method of sharing real-time data through one central database.

Through the cloud, data sharing is easy to do and accessible 24/7. Being on the same page with your retail or supplier partner helps weed out mistakes immediately to prevent blunders in future promotional efforts.

SEE ALSO: 5 Signs You Should Invest In Retail Analytics

Finding the Truth About How Effective Your Promotions Are

Metrics simply tell you the truth about everything you're doing, even if it's harsh. You may think your promotions go well, but maybe they aren't when compared to how competing store promotions perform.

It's why retailers and suppliers need to work together every day to study their metrics and find out what's truly not working. Doing so creates a new level of communication that couldn't happen in the retail industry before the cloud became mainstream.

Contact us to learn more about our SaaS platform that gives you all the metrics you need to create the most effective promotional plans.

DSD Software

 

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