A promotion is one of the surest ways to lift a shop's sales, and the promotions customers take an interest in are usually the ones that touch them directly, or that matter to them more than usual. In April, what everybody has on their mind is the long holiday and the Songkran festival. Those two things give you plenty of promotional ideas that will lift your sales without much difficulty.
Better still, you do not have to spend anything on making new products — no Songkran-patterned collection, no Songkran-themed menu — because you can build a striking promotion using an effective POS for restaurants or shops such as Qashier, which makes setting up promotions that draw customers in remarkably easy. Here are the ideas we would suggest.
Four promotion ideas for this Songkran
1. Set a promotion on a particular product
Start simply, by setting a discount on something you already sell, choosing the products that suit Songkran: cold things that take the edge off the heat, such as cold drinks or a dessert that leaves people feeling refreshed.
You could of course discount the item by hand each time a customer pays, but with the discount feature in Qashier POS you can set the promotion up once, and when the customer pays, the price comes down automatically. It makes running the shop easier, cuts out the fuss, saves your staff getting confused, and leaves your customers happy.
2. Offer a discount on a set
If you run a restaurant, you can sell food or drinks as sets: a main course with a cold drink, say, or a drink with a snack and a dessert, as a special set for customers to choose.
To make your promotion more tempting, we would suggest giving the set a name that stands out and catches the eye — “The Big Chill”, “Summer Steak”, “Sun-Defying Soda” — and customers will be that much more likely to buy.
After that, add those sets to your menu as new items. Adding a new item to Qashier's POS system is not difficult at all: you can add new products either on the POS terminal or on the website. You can create a separate category for your special promotional sets, and when a customer orders one you simply select the new item you have created. Importantly, you will not lose track of your stock, because Qashier's POS has stock management built in, updating the back office the moment a sale is made and alerting you when stock is running low.
3. Set a time-limited promotion
A time-limited special offer is another way to draw customers in, because the promotion feels like something special they should not miss, which makes them keener to buy. When it is a discount or something given away free, it feels like even better value.
Time-limited promotions have other advantages too. If you run a restaurant there will be stretches when few customers come in, and you can build a time-limited promotion to draw them in during those hours, or to pull some customers away from the rush and take the pressure off the room, so the restaurant runs more smoothly. Before a long holiday, you probably do not want to be left with a lot of stock or ingredients on your hands, so you might run a special time-limited promotion discounting products or giving something away before you close. All of this can be set up through the discount management system in Qashier POS as well.
4. Build a good promotion for after the long holiday
Once the Songkran holiday is over, your customers may feel rather flat — post-vacation blues, as it is called — and thoroughly bored at the prospect of going back to work. You can take the chance to cheer them up with a special promotion: “Eat up and face the week” for office workers, say, or “Loose change will do” for customers who spent everything they had on the holiday. As well as lifting your sales, promotions like these deepen your relationship with your customers and give them a reason to become regulars.
You can also invite customers to become members and record their details with Qashier's membership system (CRM), which will help you work out who your best customers are going to be. Those are the promotional ideas you can apply to your own shop this Songkran. Do not let the festival pass without using it to draw customers in, because as well as lifting sales, it helps get your shop better known.
And do not forget that Qashier can be your retail business's partner, with digital solutions suited to every kind of shop: easy to install, free of fuss, usable by anyone, with a team on hand to support you seven days a week. Talk to us about what Qashier can do for your business. For more details, contact us on LINE Official: @qashier.th or call 02-544-0267