Tactical campaigns that increase sales and drive engagement
Clare Bingham is Engagement and Operations Director of FMI, our brand engagement and incentives focused sister company. Here she writes about how FMI design and build effective tactical campaigns that increase sales and brand engagement.
To give you a clear idea of what this blog means by incentives, let’s define them:
Incentive, /ɪnˈsɛntɪv/ noun. A formal scheme using rewards and recognition to promote/encourage actions or behaviour. Used to motivate employees, and in sales to attract and retain customers.
For businesses, an incentive is a great tool to help increase performance among a workforce and channel partners. Or, to shift consumer preference in the market.
A study by the International Society of Performance Improvement shows: “If selected, implemented and monitored correctly, incentive programmes…increase performance by an average of 22%. Team incentives can increase performance by as much as 44%.”
But for how long should an incentive run and how often should they be implemented within a marketing plan?
Is it worth pursuing an incentive scheme if budget is limited?
There is a strong case for long-term programmes. They build ongoing brand loyalty within a business and often outperform short-term programmes.
We refer to long-term activity like that as ‘engagement programmes.’ Where frequent and regular interaction with participants creates brand advocacy and ambassador-like behaviour.
But is this reason enough to take short-term incentives out of your marketing plan?
The ‘tact’ of tactical
A quick search of the word tact in the dictionary displays: “a keen sense of what is appropriate, tasteful or proper” as one of its definitions.
We think this is the perfect approach to tactical incentives. Simple, tightly-focussed and hard-hitting programmes.
Launched whenever they are appropriate to inject a bit of energy and drive into a target audience.
This is what makes tacticals a great tool to enhance your ongoing communication with your audience.
We’ve used them to cause tactical disruption in the market place and effectively train staff on key product messages.
To help manufacturers increase brand loyalty during peak sale periods. And to drive product sales within channel partners.
Just as date nights are essential for a romance to work and flourish, tactical incentives are key to keeping things fresh in your business.
They are the perfect companion to product launches, ensuring that your sales staff are fully trained on the core USPs of the new range.
The short and punchy nature of tactical incentives makes them fun and engaging. They add the right amount of drama keep staff excited and intrigued about your brand.
Incentives can even overcome barriers in your business. Whether that’s negative brand perception, low performance rate or lack in brand confidence.
Incentive plans need not be expensive. Tactical incentives can meet and exceed your objectives without exceeding budgets.
It is certainly worth pursuing an incentive scheme, even if your budget is limited. The return on investment speaks for itself.
Approaching your tacticals
Build your programme around what you want your incentive to achieve. A few days’ training, boosting engagement, or increasing sales. Keep the communication simple and straightforward.
Use creative messaging, and weave graphics and videos in for maximum engagement. Keep that up for the during of your campaign.
Speaking from our experience with tactical incentives, you’d be surprised what you can achieve in just ten days or within a few short months.
From a sales performance uplift of 225% to increased participant registrations of 83%, the numbers start to speak for themselves.
When it comes to incentive marketing strategy and effective programme delivery, we at FMI know that you don’t need spend your entire budget trying to reinvent the wheel.
Our incentive and engagement experts have considerable industry experience in employee and channel incentives, and extensive reward options to help you achieve greater successes in your business.
If you think a tactical incentives campaign would work for your brand and help to increase sales, get in touch with us today.
We’re always happy to provide ideas for campaigns which drive real ROI and results.
