Sales Starter Kit: Best Tips on Running Discount Sales for Your Business Online

Sales Starter Kit. 

Hello there!

So, you want to run sales or at least I think so, if not you wouldn’t be here reading this. 

Welcome. This article is a compilation of tips & strategies that will guide you through running profitable and stress-free online sales. 

Think of it as the Crash Course in Running Online Sales 101 that you never knew you needed. 

The content here will prove valuable whether this is your first time or you have been doing this for a while. 

It covers subtopics like how to choose the products to sell, how to calculate your profit margins, shipping tips, marketing strategies and so much more. 

Please note that because this is a resource created by Bumpa, this article will include pointers on how Bumpa can help you use these resources. 

Breakdown of this Article: 

The Starter Kit touches on these different aspects of running profitable sales. 

• Products: What Products To Sell

• Pricing: How to Calculate Cost & Profit During Sales.

• Strategy: How to Plan & Brand Your Sales.

• Website Customisation: How to Optimise Your Website for Sales.

• Content: Creating Content for Ads and Sales Awareness

• Marketing: How to Run Instagram Ads & Facebook Ads to get more sales.

• Rewards: How to Choose The Right Reward for Your Sales

• Post Sales: How to use customer reviews to get more sales.

Products: What Products To Sell

The first major decision you need to make when you decide to run sales is to decide what Products you want to have on sale. 

Different business owners run sales for different reasons and these reasons determine what Products would be on Sale. 

Here are some: 

Clearance sales:

Clearance sales are as the name implies, sales to clear items usually old Products that have not been sold out within a period of time.

For example, someone can run clearance sales to sell items stocked in the last 3/6 months but have not been sold out. 

What happens here is the business owner takes inventory of their old stock, reduces the price significantly, and sells them! 

Pre-Order sales: 

Some business owners run sales for new products that have not even been bought/stocked yet. 

This usually happens for business owners that import or produce their products and are about to release a new or never-made-before product. 

Pre-order sales for some business owners serve as purchasing capital for the product, help to let them know if they should massively stock up a new product based on the demand & many other reasons.  So the Products here are usually new Products.

Seasonal Sales

This is the most popular type of Sale that occurs. People do sales based on special periods: Christmas sales, Easter Sales, Valentine's Sales, Anniversary Sales, Birthday Sales, etc. 

The Products that are chosen here are based on the discretion of the business owner. 

For example, someone running Valentine's Sales or Barbie sales might run sales on all their red-colored outfits. 

Some run seasonal sales on all the items in their store, sometimes they choose products at random. 

Flash Sales

Flash sales are usually short-lived sales that the business owner runs because they want to make extra revenue or for any reason that seems valid to them. A flash sale can literally run for just 30 minutes or 48 hours.

The Products chosen here could be their fastest-selling products, some selected products, or everything in their store. 

Bundle Sales

The way a bundled sales runs is pretty simple. The business owner groups two or more similar products together and sells the bundle at a cheaper price than the original price of all the bundled products combined. 

For example, a hair care business can create a bundle like Wig Care Bundle that will have Setting Spray + Hair Glue + Conditioner and sell it at a price that makes the bundle a steal. 

Products that are sold in a Bundle sales are similar Products. These are items you know that the purchase of one usually means the need of the other. Eg: If you buy dishwashing liquid, you will most likely need a foam sponge and an iron scrubber. 

Usually, the entrepreneur bundles a fast-selling product with two or more products that may/may not be as fast-selling and adds them as a bundle. 

Now that I’ve listed how to choose Products to sell based on the type of sales you are running, I hope you have a clear idea of what Products to sell in your upcoming sales

Now, we’ll move on to the next phase of running a sale. 

Pricing: How to Make a Profit During Your Sales & Calculate Cost. 

Most if not all businesses run sales to make a profit, so one of the most important things to get right when running a discount sale is your pricing. 

Give too little discounts and you can reduce your chances of making a lot of sales, give too high discounts and you can make significant losses. 

Here are the things to consider when deciding how much to give in discounts. 

Figure out your Cost Price

Surprisingly, this is the number one thing most businesses get wrong. 

Many business owners determine cost price only by the cost of buying the product from the manufacturer.

Here’s a better way to determine your cost price 

As a Retailer: Add Cost of Item + Shipping/Clearance Cost + Packaging cost divided by the total units. 

As a Producer: If you produce your products, a better way is to Add Cost of All Raw Materials used + Cost of Transportation/Shipping + Cost of Packaging and divide it by the total units produced.  

Some businesses factor in the cost of labor, cost of rent, etc., and divide it by total units as well, whilst some just add these together as business expenses and determine overall profitability in a quarter or year by deducting these expenses from their overall profit.

Whatever formula works for you is fine, because you can always recoup any other expense when determining your profit. 

Decide How Much You Want to Cut off from Your Profit

If you’re running sales, you most likely already have a Selling Price you had originally and you could tell the Profit you’re making based on that price.

This is especially true if you use the Bumpa app & you add a Cost Price and Selling Price to your Products.

Now what you need to do is to determine how much you’re willing to cut from that profit margin and use that to determine your Discount Sale Price for that Product (insert a picture of Bumpa ‘s Product page).

A trick some business owners use is to inflate their original price and list their normal selling price as the discounted price, so they don't even reduce their profit. Please note that I am neither encouraging nor discouraging this.

It has its Pros and Cons.

Consider Market Factors

Another thing to consider when determining your discount price is to consider market factors like how much your competitors are selling the same product, the average spend per customer in your store (which you can see in your Bumpa Analytics), the buying power of your customers, what most buyers would consider as an enticing discount, etc.

Using this and comparing it with your profit margin will help you arrive at a safe point for your discounted price.

Cost of Running Your Discount Sales

One more thing to consider in arriving at the best range of discounts to give is to predict or determine how much you will spend in running your sales. 

For example, if you’re running sales with a Bumpa subscription plan, that would cost you 2500/5000 in the month, if you decide to run Facebook ads or Google ads and you plan on spending 50,000/100,000 on ads, then you consider that too. 

If you also decide to use influencers, new branded packaging materials etc., you will have to add these extra costs to determine the real cost Price as mentioned in point 1, then determine the best discounted price that can work for you. 

Some businesses also consider the cost of the gift items they want to give out during the sales whilst many decide to not add it, and just consider it as a business expense. The choice here depends on you. 

As much as you can, ensure you are making a profit that will keep your lights on. 

The pointers mentioned above should help you please your customers with tantalizing discounts and gather amazing profits for your business growth. 

We move on to the next section.

Strategy: Planning & Branding Your Sales

How you brand your sales will determine a lot about how your Sales will be received by your customers. Branding covers naming, timing, designs, and much more.  

Set A Goal & A Target.

You need to write down what your goals are with this sale as this helps you measure the success of your Sales when it's over and can serve as the starting point for the next sale you will run. 

Here are a few metrics that can help you set goals:

• Revenue: Write down a probable figure you want to process in sales. You can get this estimate by rounding up the total value of all the inventory you want to sell. 

• Profit: Create a rough amount you want to make in Profit.

• Inventory: How many Products do you want to sell during this Sale? 

• Social Media Growth: Another goal that might be important is to have an estimate of say follower growth during your sales period. You might also target something like a 20% increase in engagement. 

• Expenses: Believe it or not, you can also create an Expenses target. Like I don't want to incur more than this amount in expenses.

• Customers: Create an estimate of the number of new customers you want to get during this sale and the number of old customers you want to participate in the sale. It's easy to measure these goals if you’re using the Bumpa app by the way. 

Name Your Sale

Do you just want to use a recognizable, general name like Flash Sales, Back-to-School Sales, or Clearance Sales, or something a little more creative like Buga Sale? Everything 5k Sales? Valentine Promo Sales, The Leather Fair, Summer Sales etc?

You can go as creative as you want and remember there is nothing wrong with an already recognized name as well.

Timing

You need to decide when you want to run the sale and how long your sale will last. Do you want to do a 30-minute sale? Or run a sale for a whole week? 

Get Your Products Ready

If you’re not running pre-order sales, it's best that you have the products you want to sell ready in your warehouse or store.

If you produce products, you probably also want to produce them beforehand. If your products are custom, then you probably just want to get enough raw materials & resources ready. 

Location.

Even though this resource is for people who want to run online sales, one thing you’ll need to decide is where you want to run sales.

For example, some businesses decide to run sales only in their physical store. Some decide to run flash sales only on their Instagram story, some run sales only on their website. It’s your choice. 

Shipping Method

Depending on the volume of sales and the type of customers you have, you will have to determine things like these:

• Do I want to deliver to states outside my primary location? 

• Am I promising same-day delivery or I’m promising delivery within 2- 4, 5 -7 days to give myself time? 

• What shipping/delivery service will I be using during this sale? 

• Am I offering pickup as a form of delivery as well? 

Check out more shipping tips here.

Packaging Materials.

One of the things you would need to plan for is how you will choose to package your sales items.

Are you getting boxes? Are you getting new branded nylons for your Sales? Bubble wrap if your items are fragile or are going far.

One thing I would suggest is for you to choose branded packaging materials as they serve as extra marketing materials.

Fun story: I once bought items at a trade fair and I wanted to restock the item months after. I couldn't remember the name of the business owner or their Instagram handle, but I found the branded gift bag they gave me and that's how I made my next purchase.

Choose Your Gifts.

If you will be giving out any freebies with your sales, one of the things you will need to do is select the gift, know the price, and purchase/produce them. 

It’s possible that for the kind of Sales you’ve chosen to run, you require less planning or more planning. Regardless of where you fall into, I hope this helps you plan for your Sales. Now we move on to another important part of running sales. 

Website Customisation: How to Prepare Your Website for Discount Sales.

As you most likely know, running sales on your website is the easiest way to run a sale and most of the tips in this article will help you if you’re running online sales.

Using your website to run sales ensures that you can run sales stress-free and actually have a good night’s sleep because your Bumpa app and website will do a huge part of the work for you. 

Here’s how to prep your Bumpa website for massive sales: 

Add Discounts to your Products.

Add/Select the items you will be having on sale and add the discounts to them. You can Unpublish them if you are not ready for sales yet. 

Get a Custom Domain Name.

This helps if you’re running ads during your sales period. Plus, it's easier to trust a .com or .ng domain name. 

Create a Collection called Sales.

Create a new collection, add the Products you want on sale, and name the Collection according to the name of your Sales. It will be the first Collection they see on your website.

Update Your Store Banner Design

Create a design that shows you are running sales & upload it as your store banner. You can do this under the Customize Store button.

Edit Your Banner Custom Message

Edit the custom message at the top of your website to reflect your sales.

A good example is “Get 20% discount off every item for purchases over 20,000.” or “Free delivery for all orders above 10,000 from Sept 1- 10." 

Ensure Your Social Media Links are Optimised

If you are running a sale, it is important that you make sure all your social media links are optimized on your website.

Your WhatsApp icon on your Bumpa website is connected to your WhatsApp line.

Ensure your website or Sales collection link is on your Instagram, Twitter & other social media bio.

Add Your Return Policy

You should also add or update your Return Policy to your website to avoid stories that touch. 

Set Your Product Listing.

Set your Product Listing based on the kind of Sale you're running. If you're running sales on new Products, choose the Latest Products first. If you are running Clearance Sales, you can select the Lowest Price to the Highest Price. 

Connect a Facebook Pixel to Your Website.

If you plan to run ads during this sales period, it would be best that you add a Facebook pixel to your Bumpa website as this helps you run better retargeting ads that can bring those that have interacted with your ad or website to buy again. 

Content: How to Create Winning Content for Ads & Sales Awareness.

One of the most important parts of running a sale and getting people to buy your product is the kind of content you’re putting out there. Content can usually be split into a number of types: 

Designs

You will need to create flyers announcing your sales & selling your Products.

You shouldn't rely solely on captions to add important details like price, coupon codes, validity of sales, etc. It’s best to have things like that on a design as well. 

You can easily use a tool like Canva, AdobeSpark, the blank canvas of your Instagram reel or WhatsApp status. 

Video Content

As you probably already know, the most effective form of content in the 3 parts that exist: written content, design, and video: Video is the most effective.

You definitely want to use video content to showcase your product and convince old or new buyers why they should buy your product. 

Here are some easy video tricks you can use:

Show the Authenticity of Your Product.

If you sell hair, you can comb through it to show it doesn't tangle. If you sell eyeliner that doesn't smear, pour water on your face and show that the eyeliner actually stays intact.

Videos that immediately show the effectiveness of the product tend to do really well. Of course, you should ensure that you mention the price of such product and how long sales last. 

Use Trending Sounds/Recreate Popular Videos:

A simple secret to improve your Instagram SEO or promote your video organically is to use trending videos, and soundbites and create content around a popular trend.

Use a 3rd Party Service to Create Videos.

If you’re too lazy to create content by yourself, you can pay influencers or use tools like Nova by Loopify or use Invideo (a tool that converts text and images into video content)

Marketing: How to Run Ads for Your Sales.

If you want to really open up your sales to more customers, you will have to run a number of marketing campaigns/advertisements and I will list them here.

Facebook and Instagram ads

Meta (The parent company for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp) has created a business owners gold mine with Facebook and Instagram ads.

With close to 3 billion users and about 60% of sales & buyer intentions going on on Instagram alone, there's a lot you can do with ads on Meta.

• How to Run Instagram Ads

• How to Boost a Post on Instagram.

Google Marketing

Google marketing comes either by running Google ads or optimizing for Google My Business.

Side Note: I don't usually recommend running Google ads for small businesses except if you have really exhausted running Instagram ads, however, it still works.

Google My Business: This is a small and inexpensive way of marketing your products. It makes your store easily pop up as a recommendation to anyone who does a Google search of an item you might be selling.

If you don't have one yet, create a Google My Business Account and if you do, push your friends and customers to give a good rating on it.

Google Ads: You can run ads to be at the forefront of Google Search, take your products into people's email inboxes, and much more.

Rewards: How to Choose the Right Reward for Your Sale.

One of the biggest sales magnets you will need is to have a rewards system attached to your Sales. 

Now rewards for a Sale can be anything you want but here are a few things you can consider when choosing your sales reward system: 

Cost

If the gift you’re giving as a freebie is too expensive, you may want to reconsider finding something more affordable, that won't cut into your profit.

Usefulness of Reward

A reward is something that is useful to your customers. Don't try to save cost and give something your customers will not appreciate or use.

If you’re selling skincare, you can add a tiny bottle of facial cream. If you are selling hair care products, you can give a free bonnet. Stuff similar to the product they're buying. 

If it's a reward like a discount on their next order, don't let the discount be something ridiculous as a N100 difference.

Brand visibility

One other thing to consider when choosing a reward is to choose something that will further promote your brand.

If you can give a gift based on something you already sell or produce, that will help you go a long way that they may even purchase the gift item next time.

Basis of the Reward

You can give a gift/reward based on a particular amount or on any purchase. For example, you can say purchases from 20,000 above get a free gift or every item bought comes with a free gift. You can choose either of these options. 

Other Types of Rewards

Aside from the other types of rewards that have been listed earlier, other reward types can be offering free shipping for all or based on the volume of order.

You can also do a Buy One, Get One Free reward system.

Post Sales. 

Almost as important as running a Sale is the things you do after the Sale. Because here’s the catch, the things you do post-sales can bring you more sales after your discount sale has ended. 

Here are a couple of post-sales things you can do: 

Announce the end of the sale on all your social media platforms

This can be with a simple post on your special media feed, stories, etc. You can also go ahead to delete all the discounted prices posts you have or edit them to reflect their current prices. 

Make an appreciation post on all your social media platforms.

This could be a video, a small design, a Whatsapp status, etc. You can take it further by sending an SMS or email with the Bumpa app thanking them for patronizing you and reminding them of the delivery window etc. 

Get customer reviews

Ask for Customer Reviews on your website, Google My Business profile, Instagram, and other social media platforms.

You can also ask that they tag you if they wear or use your product. These serve as social proof and can positively influence other customers to buy your products.

I am certain that this article will help you run better online Sales.

If you need any help with your online sales or the Bumpa app, don't hesitate to send an email to [email protected]