CPGs: Improve the Effectiveness of Trade Promotions

Many CPGs use trade promotions to drive sales and increase brand awareness. Regrettably, those efforts often end up wasted, as trade promotions seem to be notoriously tricky to execute across the industry. According to Salesforce, nearly 40% of trade promotions are not executed as intended. Every time one of these promotions fails or isn’t executed with precision, you stand to lose months of work spent planning the promotion and communicating with retailers. 

Don’t let your valuable investments go to waste. Instead equip your sellers and distributor partners to be able to communicate and execute on trade promotions with precision with the help of a sales content management platform.

Effectively Communicate & Plan Promotions

For trade promotions to be successful, they require careful planning and precise maneuvers. Simple slip-ups or gaps in communication during preparation could result in products being out of stock, unavailable, or completely missing from the point of purchase. If that happens, all the time, energy, and resources that went into creating that promotion are ultimately wasted. And, even worse, the company could lose market share.

Sellers play a major part in helping set up trade promotions. They make sure products have been ordered and will be ready for purchase in appropriate quantities at the right time. Since a lot of products often compete simultaneously for that same spot on the shelf, your sellers may have their work cut out for them in convincing retailers to choose your company’s products over the rest. This is where the marketing department comes in clutch.

Sellers rely on market and consumer insights to secure trade promotions with retailers. Your marketing team must be able to arm your sellers with the latest and most relevant information about the programs if they want to help them guarantee success. The best way to provide that steady stream of reliable content is via a centralized sales content management system.

Through a sales content management platform, members of the sales team can quickly and easily gain access to the information they need (sell sheets, promotion details, pricing and consumer insights, etc.) to successfully execute trade promotions in the field. Without that centralized system in place, sellers would be forced to comb through as many as 8 different repositories to slowly piece together those same assets. 

Content is also far more likely to be used when it is easily accessible. Providing your sellers with a simple route to the content they want increases the likelihood that they will use approved, compliant content rather than drawing from outdated sources or making up their own content. So, not only have you saved your sellers time, but you’ve also increased the overall effectiveness of your trade promotions by backing them with better content. 

Act Fast: Delivering the Right Content at the Right Moment

Have you or your sellers ever been out on the road only to receive an urgent call from one of your retail partners asking you to send over trade promotion materials ASAP? You’d love to help them out and push the deal forward, of course. The only problem is that you’re miles away from your desk and have no means to access the resources they need. Even if the delay is only a few hours, that’s still time wasted that could have been spent making progress on the promotion.

Scenarios like these become a thing of the past when you have a centralized sales content platform on your side. Even if you receive a content request from your retailers in the middle of traveling, you can simply step aside to open up your company’s sales hub on your phone and send all the necessary materials over in a matter of minutes. No more spending ages digging around in multiple repositories to gather everything you need. Just like that, you’ve saved valuable time and made yourself available to solve problems even while mobile!

Unfortunately, speed alone isn’t enough to secure success. Sellers must also make sure they send the exact materials needed for each specific trade promotion. Otherwise, the promotion won’t run as effectively as it could. This level of precision can be especially difficult for CPG brands who represent an immense number of SKUs. Using a centralized content hub helps sellers stay organized and keep track of the most current information.

Develop excellent relationships with your retail partners and maximize the effectiveness of your trade promotions with a sales content management solution. Learn more about Mediafly’s sales content management solutions here.