Sometimes, running a successful tobacco store promotion can feel like a gamble. You might put a bunch of time and effort into a promotional strategy just to get a lackluster return.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Modern point of sale (POS) systems for tobacco stores allow retailers to test out promotions and monitor their impact. By taking a more strategic approach to your promotional ideas, you can reduce costs while improving their effectiveness.
In this post, we’ll cover why you should be testing out your promotions and give you six great tobacco store promotional ideas to get you started.
How Testing Promos Helps Maximize Profits
“Run more promotions, get more customers, get more sales.” It’s a piece of small business advice we hear again and again.
If only it were that simple. Running more promotions isn’t the same as running effective promotions. How do you know if your promotions worked?
Growing businesses use the reports on their POS system to test promotions and monitor their effectiveness. Taking a data-driven, quantitative approach to promotions will help you home in on which strategies were most profitable, and give you insights on how to improve them.
Huge businesses with lots of extra cash can afford to try everything and hope for the best — but small and mid-sized businesses need to be more strategic. Start by planning a few tobacco store promotions, measure their impact, and only expand on the ones that work.
6 Tobacco Store Promotion Ideas and How To Run Them
You can run various great tobacco store promotions and ads — but before you start, make sure your ideas don’t run afoul of the FDA’s tobacco advertising rules. Also, know which channels (social media, TV, radio, etc.) you can advertise on and which ones you can’t.
With that caveat out of the way, here are six tobacco store promotions you can try to boost sales.
While it might seem old-fashioned, an email newsletter is still a great promotional tool to include in your online marketing strategy.
Send a weekly or monthly newsletter highlighting new products, events, and deals. Make it easy to find by putting up signs in your store with a QR code or a URL to visit. You could also include a link to sign up on your receipts.
While you can’t use paid advertisements or advertise specific products on most social media platforms, you can still use them to promote your newsletter. Encourage followers to learn about new products and get discounts, then link to an age-gated signup form.
How To Measure Success
One way to measure the success of a newsletter is to track click-through rates. How often do readers click links that you include? For example, you might include unique discount codes.
Use your POS system to see how often those codes are redeemed. More importantly, track what types of offers and information are consistently popular. This can give you some easy insights into what promotional strategies to try later.
You can also monitor the success of a newsletter by looking at the number of sign-ups, the open rate of your emails, and how many people unsubscribe.
2. Set Up Discount Days
Holding regular discounts is a great strategy to drive more foot traffic and boost sales. Discount days entice old customers to come back while drawing in new customers with the promise of a great deal.
One way to run this promotion is by discounting certain types of products on specific days (e.g., “Get 15% off all vape refills every Thursday”). Make sure you market your promotion and stay consistent. No one wants to show up on “Buy Two Get One Free Tuesday” only to learn you moved it to Friday without warning.
Use your tobacco store POS system to figure out:
- Which types of products to discount
- How much to discount them by (make sure your promotion doesn’t hurt your bottom line)
- What days to hold them (e.g., create special promos on slower days to drive more foot traffic or take advantage of busy days to upsell customers)
You can also customize your POS interface to make it easy for staff to apply special discounts automatically.
How To Measure Success
Check out the sales reports on your POS system to see if the number of transactions is consistently higher on your discount days. Also, look into your average revenue and profit margins on your discount days vs. a regular day.
If you’re getting more people in the store but making less money, you’ll need to adjust how your discounts work to maximize your profit.
3. Create a Customer Loyalty Program
Customer loyalty programs are a highly effective tool to drive return business and market directly to customers. Members of customer loyalty programs also tend to spend 12-18% more than nonmembers.
Most modern POS systems come with customizable loyalty programs built-in. The most common loyalty program lets customers earn points for every purchase and redeem them for free items or a discount.
A customer loyalty program can also be paired with other promotions on this list. Giving customer loyalty members exclusive or early access to specific discounts can create a sense of urgency and drive more signups.
How To Measure Success
Beyond looking at the number of sign-ups, you can also use your POS system to monitor metrics like:
- The percentage of transactions from loyalty members
- The average purchase amount of loyalty members vs. nonmembers
- The most popular products or product categories bought by loyal customers
- How often loyal customers make a purchase
Don’t forget, customer loyalty programs are a great marketing tool too. Find what products your loyalty members like and offer them deals and discounts tailored to them.
4. Host an In-Store Event
You may not be able to sponsor outside events, but that shouldn’t stop you from hosting your own. In-store events allow you to connect directly with customers and show off your expertise.
Some tobacco store events to try are:
- Product launches
- Tasting events
- Educational events on cigars, rolling tobacco, or other niche areas
- Seasonal events like holiday parties or summer cookouts
Use your POS system to determine your peak hours and most popular products. In other words, play to your strengths — create events that cater to your customers' preferences.
A few reminders:
- You can’t give out free samples, but you can use your POS system to create a “sample pack” at a discounted rate.
- You must ID every event guest on entry and obey any local tobacco laws and regulations.
- If people don’t know your event is happening, they won’t show up. Use your newsletter, social media accounts, and store signage to advertise events well in advance.
How To Measure Success
First and foremost, see how many people turned up to your event by counting how many people you ID at the door.
Use a daily sales report to see if your event generated extra income, more customer loyalty signups, or moved specific inventory. Sometimes, an event may take a little time to pay off fully. So, monitor your sales numbers in the days and weeks after an event, too.
You could also give out a coupon or promo code at the event and see how many customers returned later to use it.
5. Create Custom Product Bundles
One of the main draws of local tobacco stores is getting a recommendation from the friendly and knowledgeable staff. Turn this expertise into something you can sell with a curated product bundle.
You can create unique product bundles if your POS system supports custom SKUs and carton-pack inventory support. For example, you could create a cigar sampler, pair a vape pen with the most popular flavors, and more. The sky is the limit. It’s usually a good idea to offer products together with a slight discount so customers know they’re getting a curated bundle at a great price.
A product bundle is a fun way to show off your personality. Accompany your custom products with a sign that explains your pairings and highlights the overall discount.
How To Measure Success
Monitor how many product bundles you sell, and don’t be afraid to change things up occasionally. See if specific product pairings work better than others, or if they sell more at certain times of year. Last, understand the profit margins of each custom product to dial in a price that’s competitive but still good for your bottom line.
6. Offer Buy One Get One (BOGO)
Buy one, get one (BOGO) offers are a classic retail promotional tool and a solid strategy for tobacco shops.
A classic example of a BOGO offer is “buy two packs of cigarettes and get a third free.” BOGO works best with items that have high profit margins.
Here are a few more tips on running a successful BOGO promotion:
- Set a strict time limit: Create a sense of urgency by limiting BOGO offers to a day or two.
- Encourage loyalty and newsletter signups: BOGO is an excellent customer acquisition tool, so take advantage of that by encouraging new customers to sign up for your loyalty program or newsletter.
- Plan your timing: Set your BOGO offers at peak hours or time them with seasonal or local events for the greatest impact.
- Limit amounts: Limit the number of items single customers can get to make sure an overzealous customer doesn’t clean out your stock.
How To Measure Success
The success of a BOGO promotion depends on your goals. Were you trying to boost sales or clear out some slow-moving inventory?
Use your POS system to monitor things like:
- Inventory levels and churn rate
- Sales by product type
- The profit margins of BOGO offers
Additionally, see if your BOGO offers are helping lift overall sales or other areas like customer loyalty or newsletter signups.
Boost Your Tobacco Store Promotion Effectiveness With a Trusted Partner
One last tip. We mention marketing in pretty much all of these ideas because no tobacco store promotion will magically be a success just because it’s there. Use every tool at your disposal to get customers interested in your promotions.
Thanks to all the regulations, tobacco product marketing can be tricky — but it’s not impossible.
Leverage POS Nation’s comprehensive retail solution to try out new promotional ideas, increase customer engagement, and increase sales. With detailed reports, you can easily see what promotional strategies are working and which aren’t.
Schedule a demo today to discover how we can help your tobacco store do more with less.
