Successful businesses continually capture, report and make decisions with marketing Promotions information.  That is, they understand which marketing activities are generating genuine sales leads for their business. 

This article focuses on the simple subtleties of capturing really meaningful promotions information.  If your business isn’t doing this ... read on, and then go do something about it.

We all love travel, so imagine a travel retailer selling flights and holidays.

You walk into a store (or ring up) and wait patiently for the next available consultant to finish on the phone, or for the preceding customer to leave.  Your turn has come...and you get to describe your dream trekking or dream cruising holiday to the consultant!  During the course of the conversation, and as your personal details are being taken down, you might be asked...“so how did you hear about us?”... 

What would you say? 

Had you attended a public travel show to ‘suss out’ who knew what about your dream trip’?   Did you look up the Yellow Pages locality guide under Travel Agents?  Did the store hit your mail box with a catalogue?  Was it one of the endless TV, radio, newspaper, or billboard ads that finally caught your eye?  Were you on the web and clicked on a link from your regular news service?  Did you Google ‘Matchu Pitchu’ or ‘Mediterranean’ or did you just type in <storename>.com.au?  Were you drawn in by an alluring shop front, complete with travel specials?  Did you chat to the consultant at their quarterly in-house travel seminar they promoted?  Was it your friend who tipped you off about the ‘travel guru’ that you were now sitting in front of?  Or was it the regular brochure that the company have sent you since that Contiki tour you went on back in ’05?

Would the consultant have received the most appropriate information using that approach?  Perhaps not…Probably not.

In saying this it is a fair question if you want to gauge whether your marketing or advertising pieces are reaching your audience.  It is what you might call a marketing or branding question, by understanding where you are being seen or heard.  But is it the right question for knowing what drives sales?

Following are some tips for achieving the most relevant Promotions information to assist with your marketing decisions:

1. Find out if this is an Existing Customer very early in your conversation

Include a dead-simple line that breaks the ice and gains some marketing insights, for example “Have you shopped with us before?”  If they say no, great, you’ve got an open invitation to introduce them to your store.  If they say yes, even better, they have come back!

We’ve spoken about marketing channels before – an Existing Customer is maybe the most leveraged customer you can sell to.  They know your business, and the fact that they’ve returned means you must have done something right!

2. Ask a Sales Question to get accurate Promotions information

Consider the idea of structuring a Sales Question as well as the marketing question we talked about earlier, into your sales approaches. This will extract a more specific piece of feedback. 

“Do you mind if I ask ... so what brought you into our store today?”  This question would be the basis for determining which marketing activities are actually driving customers to your business, and indeed back to your business.  You may need to do some digging to find out which marketing piece it was, or who the actual referrer might have been – so it may need some practice and some role playing.  To be better informed is always worth the effort.

3. Record Leads and Sales by Marketing Channel

Record this information.  Finding out where each shopper (Leads), and where each ‘buyer’ originated from in terms of your marketing promotions.  Refer to our previous articles on structuring your marketing channels to categorise the responses.

So you have some ideas for engaging your customers and enlisting their help to improve your information flows.  What do you need to put in place to get started?  Are there some questions the sales & marketing team needs to consider to make it work?

Remember, a store like yours, has a tremendous capacity to put great systems in place to create a really successful business.

Users of BusinessNAV’s MarketNAV sales & marketing management system are able to capture sales & marketing metrics to forward-plan marketing activities to achieve sales targets.  This provides an accountability mechanism for head office sales and marketing teams/outlet managers. Contact them on 1300 BIZ NAV (249 628) or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   today!