Promotion Tracking Tool
Accurately evaluate and monitor the impact of promotional activities and take advantage of promotional opportunities with Assosia’s promotion tracker.
When you walk into a retail shop or visit an online store, it is not unusual to see promotional displays and banners, talking about “price cuts” and “discounts” here and there. You might see “buy one get one free” offers in supermarkets or “autumn sales” in clothes shops. These are all examples of promotional pricing, which is an invaluable force in retail business success.
Every brand uses promotional pricing and promotion price tracking to some extent, from local convenience shops to luxury boutiques. It comes in several forms but always has the same goal: to get more products into customers’ hands and give brands an edge over their rivals, so they can make more sales, revenue, and profit. This is particularly true in consumer packaged goods (CPG) and similarly competitive sectors. This guide explores what is promotional pricing.
What Is Promotional Pricing?
Promotional pricing is, in a nutshell, the process of temporarily reducing a product/service’s price. Cutting the cost of an electronic device from £100 to £80 is a simple example, or when supermarkets choose a few grocery items and let buyers buy any three of them for the price of two. Promotions come in various forms, but they all ultimately provide some sort of savings to the customer.
The goal of this is straightforward: promotional pricing can increase engagement in stores and raise sales and other performance metrics. It is also effective for clearing out old stock or generating interest in products that might not always have the best sales figures. When done well, it is a valuable force for profitability.
Part of the reason this tactic works is because of one simple word: urgency. Customers hear about or see a deal in store and feel compelled to act on it. They know it will not last forever, and they see it as an opportunity to make a saving or get a good value buy. So, more often than not, when promos are handled properly, they generate good sales in relatively short periods.
Price & Promotion Tool & Retail Forecasting
Real-Time Data for Strategic Investment Decisions
Promotional Compliance Audits
Planogram compliance and on-shelf promotional assessments ascertain that promotional activity is being correctly executed across purchased featured space and all applicable stores.
Promotional Pricing in Business Strategy
We have covered the promotional pricing definition. But it is worth digging deeper into this topic to see how it ties in with broader retail strategy. Marketing, sales tactics, pricing decisions, and retail analysis are all key elements of that strategy. Yet promotional pricing is a vital piece of the puzzle. It should not be overlooked or regarded as less important than the rest, because it can directly shape a business’s success.
There are innumerable reports and statistics that prove this. Back in 2024, for example, over a four-week spell, close to 30% of supermarket sales were of products that were in promotions at the time. So 30% of all supermarket revenue was purely fuelled by promos. That shows just how influential they can be, especially now.
Today’s customers have more choices, and they are often more discerning because they want to get the best price every time. So they will actively seek out and make decisions based on promotional pricing. This is true in multiple markets, but especially FMCG and CPG. There are numerous products in these fields, along with intense competition. Brands that effectively harness promotions tend to perform best. The benefits speak for themselves: bigger market share, more revenue, more profit.
How Assosia’s Tools Enhance Your Promotional Pricing Strategy
As mentioned earlier, data is the key ingredient for an effective promotional pricing strategy, and the Assosia pricing tool provides that data. It delivers actionable insights not just across online sales platforms, but physical stores, too, giving users customisable, real-time reports on competitor pricing, market conditions, and more to perfect their promotional plans.
With Assosia delivering invaluable retail business intelligence, businesses find it significantly easier to track pricing and promotional activity. They can monitor the effectiveness of their promos as they continue, and call on the Assosia team to carry out online audits and in-store (offline) retail environment investigations to collect the precise data points they need.
This delivers both short- and long-term results. In the short term, it helps you launch and manage your promos seamlessly. Thinking more long-term, it helps you look back on past data and reports from prior promo campaigns to optimise your next ones. Through Assosia, every subsequent promo you launch will be better than the last.
Challenges in Implementing Promotional Pricing
Many of the challenges associated with promotional pricing stem from a single core issue: a lack of data. When businesses lack the insights needed to time and price their promotions correctly, they make mistakes. Mistakes like:
- Bringing prices too low and thereby cutting into profits
- Failing to properly market and provide visibility of promotional products
- Selecting the wrong products to include in promos
- Pricing purely based on competitors, not taking other factors into account
- Not tracking promo performance or learning from prior promotions
- Relying too heavily on promotions, potentially damaging brand reputation in the process
Since so many of these risks are directly or indirectly linked with data, this underscores the importance of having a reliable way to obtain the data you need, so you can then go on to make smart, informed decisions.
Best Practices for Implementing Promotional Pricing
Getting promotional pricing right can be quite the challenge. It is not as simple as just picking a few products and cutting their price tags. You have to schedule the timing, the prices, and the products for optimal impact and ensure that all the surrounding factors – product visibility, promotional signage, displays, etc. – are also correct to maximise your odds of success.
Best practices include:
- Set goals every time you plan and launch a promo, so you have some way to measure its success
- Review promotional campaigns as they end to assess how well they worked
- Look back on past campaigns when planning follow-ups to improve their effectiveness
- Embrace emerging technologies, like AI, to optimise your promotional pricing strategies
- Make your promos customer-centric and designed to appeal to your ideal customer profile
- Track prices over long-term periods so you know how to designate individual promo prices
- Ensure that promotions are well-marketed and displayed to attract customer attention
- Show savings as a percentage so customers understand the value they are getting
- Keep your best-selling products at full price and use promos on lesser/complementary goods
- Monitor your competitors, but do not simply copy their promos – try to better them
How to Track the Effectiveness of Promotional Pricing
Tracking promotions lets you see how well (or badly) they go. This involves three key elements:
- Objectives
- KPIs
- Tools
Objectives are what you outline before a promotion begins. Examples might include specific sales figure targets or a certain number of new customers you want to acquire by the end of the promo. KPIs are the metrics you will use to gauge the success of your promo. Common ones for this type of tracking are revenue, sales volume, and average order values.
Lastly, you need tools/software to actually carry out the tracking. Leading price and promo tracking tools will help you set the KPIs you want to measure and do the hard work for you, generating reports as your promo continues and once it reaches its end for a quick, clear assessment of its effectiveness.
Real-World Success Stories of Promotional Pricing With Assosia
Assosia is a leading name in price and promotional tracking, retail audits, and a range of other retail data services. We deliver the intelligence retailers need to get ahead, and many firms have chosen us to help power their promo strategies.
That includes one of the UK’s largest retailers, which tasked Assosia with offline price and promotion tracking reports across several retailers and product categories. The client needed up-to-date data to make smarter choices in its upcoming promos and to inform its pricing strategy.
We deployed field agents to visit the stores requested. They covertly recorded prices of the relevant products, checked promotional displays, and so on. Same-day reports were made and shared with the client for top-priority goods, while lesser items were reported the next day, so the client had all the information they needed, as quickly as possible.
The client was empowered, courtesy of the data gleaned in our research. They used it to respond swiftly to price changes and promotions in the market as they happened. They remained competitive in a saturated market and maintained their market share as a result.
Conclusion: Optimising Promotional Pricing with Assosia
Promotional pricing is highly effective for getting more customers in stores and more products through checkouts. Yet you cannot hope to succeed with it without data. Assosia provides that data. We can help you master promotional pricing and perfect the art of slashing prices at the right times and in the right amounts to get the best returns. Speak to us today to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the key benefits of promotional pricing?
Promotions often generate improvements in sales and profits for brands that master them. They can help clear out old inventory, as needed, and may also assist with customer acquisitions and retention.
What types of promotional pricing are most effective?
It varies from sector to sector, but flash and seasonal sales tend to work well because they introduce that important sense of urgency that gets customers to act fast and make purchases. Buy one, get one free deals are popular too for improving order volume.
How can Assosia help my business with promotional pricing?
Assosia’s tools provide insights for your business to make smarter promotional pricing decisions. We help you find the right timing to launch promotions, identify optimal promotional prices, and more. We also offer additional support and services, like compliance audits and space vs. sales studies.
What are the common mistakes businesses make with promotional pricing?
One common error is slashing prices too low, often due to a lack of data. Brands often fail to track their promotions, which prevents them from learning from them for future campaigns. They may cut prices on products that lack sufficient interest to significantly impact sales.