In fact, many marketers often rely on the subjective judgment and feedback of sales before planning promotional activities, and quickly finalize the promotion plan after clarifying the contents of special offers and gift-giving activities. This kind of situation, on the surface, is not a big problem, and sales control is familiar. After the activity, the sales volume is also reflected, but the key point is whether holding such an activity has obvious effect on the promotion of retail market share, whether the profit of the enterprise can be improved to some extent, and whether other factors such as brand reputation and brand first mention rate can promote it. Facts have proved that compared with natural sales, the growth rate of retail sales (volume) is often within the same level, which shows that the role of this promotion is very limited. Therefore, it is of great significance to pay attention to the market research work in the early stage of promotion for improving the effect of promotion activities.

Generally speaking, market research should cover at least three aspects: one is to understand the changes in the consumption behavior of the target consumer groups, which can be obtained on the one hand through the accumulation of customer data at ordinary times, and on the other hand through the collection of terminal information one month before the event. For example, the consumer groups of an international brand mentioned above are mainly single offices with a monthly income of more than 4,000 yuan or families with a monthly income of more than 1 10,000 yuan. The consumption characteristics of this kind of consumer groups are mainly: advocating brand consumption, paying attention to life enjoyment, pursuing a simple and elegant lifestyle, accepting novelty easily, and being easily influenced by European life. Therefore, during the promotion, they launched a product representing western life, namely coffee machine, made a consumption promotion for the new product, bought a coffee machine and gave away a coffee formula. At the same time, with the help of the fierce passenger flow during the "Eleventh" period, they displayed the new products to be listed in key shopping malls in super-large cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, and got a lot of feedback, which won very important information feedback and prospective customer information accumulation for the next new product listing. Facts have proved that these works are fruitful, not only the promotion of new products is smooth, but also the brand reputation has reached a new level. The second is to try to find out what the main competitors will do in the same promotion period. When international brand companies are discussing the detailed promotion plan, a competitor's "deep throat" revealed a very important message to them, that is, the contents of "buy gifts" and "special prices" during the "Eleventh" period. Immediately, they immediately revised the content of the promotion activities and strengthened the promotion efforts, with the intention of closing their throats step by step and keeping close to their opponents' promotion activities. Sure enough, in the next "Eleventh" promotion, they hit their opponents accurately. According to the feedback from marketers and salespeople, competitors' SP activities are basically suppressed, and shopping guides have to turn to other products with no active content. Third, pay attention to the analysis of sales data and previous activity data, try to find out the characteristics of consumption changes and analyze the market situation in order to improve the effectiveness of promotion. This work should be done by the marketing managers in each district. When subdividing the regional activity plan, they should combine the characteristics of each city to decompose more targeted promotional activities and improve the promotion effect. Just like playing chess, the key to a master is to grasp the overall situation and have a vision. He knows every move and the intention of the next move. Can an opponent not lead people by the nose? The same is true for promotion. If we can analyze a large number of data in the early stage and grasp the changing trend of the market, the effectiveness of promotion will naturally be greatly improved. An international brand company that we have repeatedly mentioned has also noticed this problem. Through data analysis, they found that the "May Day" and "Eleventh Day" promotions tend to be higher and lower (as shown in the figure below), so they increased investment in promotional resources such as demonstrations and gifts in the first three days and the last day. At the same time, at the pre-holiday mobilization meeting, they issued an incentive plan for promoters to encourage them to actively compete with each other in the first three days. As expected, three days after the "Eleventh", many companies began to run out of grass and food, and the gift resources were exhausted, but the logistics department could not go to work until the fifth day. Naturally, the international companies above smile the sweetest.

Market research is only to ensure the correct direction of promotional activities and provide a basis for good promotional activities. However, if a formed promotion plan lacks a key point to make the finishing point, then even the best case is hard to jump out of numerous promotion activities. Therefore, choosing a wonderful advertising language for the case is another key factor for the success of the promotion activities. It can not only be used as a unified slogan for media propaganda, but also be conducive to the overall spread of promotional activities.

From the perspective of small household appliances circle, many small household appliance manufacturers ignore the role of SLOGAN. Usually activities are also done, and the intensity is also great. However, it is almost difficult for people who participate in every link of the activity to form an overall impression, let alone consumers. Moreover, when summing up promotional activities afterwards, generally only XX months' summary can be marked, which can't make people form an overall impression. It's like, a beautiful and smart child has no name, and the person you like can only scream "baby". At present, only Philips has done a good job in advertising creativity and publicity, and it seems that only Philips has this processing ability. For example, during the "Eleventh" period, the commemorative slogan "Philips, 20 Years in China" put forward by Philips was hung in various stores to remind consumers that Philips is holding a promotion for its 20th anniversary to attract attention.

Therefore, we believe that a wonderful advertising language is not only to refine the whole activity plan, but more importantly, to convey it to consumers and the media in various ways to create momentum for the activity.

Gifts are the top priority of the activity.

Gifts are playing an increasingly important role in sales promotion, which has been widely recognized by the industry. The key is how to jump out of a variety of gifts by this means. At present, we find that many manufacturers' gifts are becoming more and more homogeneous, such as the spatula of induction cooker, which has become the standard of induction cooker, and it is difficult to have any special products that make people shine. During the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period, the joint promotion activities organized by Emmett induction cooker bundled with a certain brand of cookware were spread through soft text and promotional POP, which made many consumers enthusiastic about it, at least resulting in "eyeball effect". In addition, Philips, which has a solid market work, has also won the favor of many consumers by bundling its main coffee pot and giving it to a brand of coffee beans, and displaying it in the purchase field through stacking and special events. Therefore, when planning the "Eleventh" promotion activities, how to play tricks on the gifts has become an important standard to test the working ability of the marketing department.

Generally speaking, a big trend of giveaways is exquisiteness, brand and high quality. How to distinguish it from competitors, or how to make old trees sprout, is the daily accumulation and thinking of market personnel. We suggest that marketers should pay attention to contact with professional gift suppliers on weekdays, get new gift information in time, and pay attention to "brainstorming", often analyze what products are suitable for what gifts, how to package several highly relevant gifts, maximize the promotion of gifts to products, and work hard on packaging, form and content to broaden their thinking. Take the coffee machine as an example. Common gifts are coffee beans, coffee cups and grinders. Can you give other related products? What about creamer or refined coffee formula imported from Switzerland? Or, like a brand air conditioner, the cabinet-buying air conditioner launched during the eleventh period is a fashionable product being broadcast on TV shopping stepper. In short, if the gift can be new, fashionable and sufficient, the effect will not be bad.

Media publicity is crucial.

Another important factor of promotion is media publicity, which focuses on the choice of media and communication opportunity. Like an international brand company mentioned repeatedly above, during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period, their investment in national media publicity was about 26.5438 million yuan. For example, they put a subway advertisement in Shanghai for one month, put a TV advertisement in the prime time to educate a well-known column name (the audience is in line with its target consumer group), and put a lot of soft-text publicity in the mainstream media of various cities in the form of barter and cash. It is precisely because of this kind of media publicity that the promotion has achieved another function, and the rate of brand promotion has also improved to a certain extent.

Refinement is the key factor to ensure the implementation in place.

One of the biggest mistakes made by many marketers is to ignore the key issue of whether the promotion and implementation can be in place. Especially for an important promotion activity like the "Eleventh" promotion, any small link may have problems, which will affect the final promotion effect. As mentioned above, the investment of promotion resources. By refinement, we mean not only the refinement of copywriting, but also the refinement of activity plans and monitoring links. For example, handing out leaflets may not be taken seriously, but imagine that during the event, the supply of leaflets in the store was finished in less than three days, and customers had nothing to expect. Will it affect sales? In addition, the subdivision activity plan should be understood and implemented not only by the sales staff of the company, but also by the agents and retailers. Generally speaking, the detailed plan should at least determine the shopping malls that the local city can participate in, whether the special price can be implemented, whether the agent's inventory can meet the predicted sales during the promotion period, which shopping malls can implement stacking and poster output, which shopping malls need to be stationed in temporary promotion, whether the gift-buying activities can be implemented, and whether the demonstration can be implemented. After that, the marketing department should provide work instructions or implement the work and responsible person in each link through training, telephone conference and other forms.

The so-called "a hundred miles, half ninety", the key is to win in execution. No matter how good the promotion copy is, if it can't be put in place and there is no corresponding monitoring link, it can only be a blank piece of paper, full of nonsense.