---
title: "Discounts, Gifts, and Lotteries Are Just 1/8 of the Promotional Iceberg: Uncovering the 7/8 Below the Surface"
description: "Discounts, buy-one-get-one offers, and lotteries are the most common promotional tactics, but they only represent a fraction of what effective promotion entails. This article argues that the essence of promotion lies in leveraging the target audience's focus during specific times to integrate marketing elements, boost short-term sales, and build a foundation for long-term growth, using the example of a Mother's Day campaign for soy milk makers."
author: "张婷"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-05-04"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/31xE9_8sYm0DZ8GGjj4v3Q"
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# Discounts, Gifts, and Lotteries Are Just 1/8 of the Promotional Iceberg: Uncovering the 7/8 Below the Surface

> Discounts, buy-one-get-one offers, and lotteries are the most common promotional tactics, but they only represent a fraction of what effective promotion entails. This article argues that the essence of promotion lies in leveraging the target audience's focus during specific times to integrate marketing elements, boost short-term sales, and build a foundation for long-term growth, using the example of a Mother's Day campaign for soy milk makers.

**Discounts** ?
20% off, 50% off, buy two get one free...
**Gifts with purchase** ?
Buy toothpaste, get a fleece blanket; buy a rice cooker, get an oven...
**Lotteries** ?
Spend over 1,000 yuan and get one lottery draw, with the prize being a seven-day luxury tour for two in Southeast Asia...
These are perhaps the three most common promotional methods we see.
When it comes to promotions, many companies are troubled by:
**Outdated methods**: Promotions always use the same old tricks; consumers are indifferent. Are there fresher ways?
**Borrowing from the future**: Promotions do boost sales in the short term, but they borrow from future purchasing power, essentially sacrificing profits to get consumers to buy earlier.
**No promotion, no sales**: Consumers won't buy without a promotion; they wait for price cuts.
Of course, brands have many factors to consider when seizing holiday promotions:
During holidays, consumers are more likely to visit stores and shopping centers, so promotions can convert more foot traffic.
During holidays, consumers expect brands to run promotions and set aside purchasing power.
During holidays, consumers' attention is directed toward specific objects.
We focus on the consumer attention perspective to explore how companies should design promotional activities.
When designing a promotion, it's worth diving below the iceberg to understand the essence of promotion and create a quality promotional event.
**What is the essence of promotion?**
In my view,
The essence of promotion is: **At a specific time and place, integrate several marketing elements to enhance consumers' awareness and understanding of the brand and product, thereby boosting sales in the short term while laying a foundation for long-term sales.**
There is a critical and easily overlooked element here: **time**.
What is time?
From a **resource** perspective, a company's sales are the accumulation of sales per unit time. The higher the sales efficiency per unit time, the more usable time available, and the better the sales performance.
From a **historical** perspective, time is past, present, and future. Past marketing actions affect the present; past and present actions affect the future.
From a **spatial** perspective, time is the space of movement; a specific time represents a specific space. In that space, consumers have their own specific psychology and behavior.
There are 365 days in a year, with dozens of festivals and holidays, each with different focal points at different times.
**New Year's Day, the beginning of the year, everyone focuses on reviewing the past and looking forward to the future.**
Luo Zhenyu's New Year's Eve speech, "Friends of Time," is held on the evening of December 30th each year.
Image source: Internet
**Spring Festival, a time for reunion, everyone focuses on family togetherness and friends.**
Many brands use a warm approach during Spring Festival. In 2017, PepsiCo launched the ad "17, Bring Happiness Home." Companies also introduce gift packs to meet the demand for visiting relatives and friends and giving gifts.
Image source: Internet
**Just passed April 23, World Book Day, everyone focuses on reading and learning.**
QQ Reading, in collaboration with Hunan Satellite TV, launched the program "Scholarly China: National Reading Season."
Image source: Internet
Children's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Nurses' Day—on these days, everyone focuses on specific groups or recalls related memories.
Double 11, evolved from Singles' Day to the current e-commerce carnival, everyone prepares to clear out the shopping carts they've filled over the past period.
...
You can list all other festivals, and on these days, people have certain psychology and behaviors.
Notice something? **At a specific time and place, consumers focus on certain things, have a specific circle of attention. This is social and commercial custom.**
As mentioned earlier, one way to capture consumers' scarce attention is to leverage what they already focus on. In short, **the key to designing a promotion is to bind your brand and product to the target audience's circle of attention during a specific time period, making it easier for promotional information to enter their scarce attention, thereby sparking purchase needs and driving sales.**
**Case Study**
Using "soy milk makers" as an example, we illustrate how to bind a product to holiday consumers' attention circles to promote the product and boost sales.
As we all know, soy milk has extremely high nutritional value, containing various high-quality proteins, vitamins, essential amino acids, and trace elements. Whether adults, the elderly, or children, consistent consumption is highly beneficial for improving physique, immunity, and preventing and treating diseases.
But soy milk's benefits vary for different segments.
For middle-aged and older women: Soy milk is rich in estrogen, which helps regulate endocrine function in menopausal women.
For middle-aged and older men: It helps prevent the "three highs" (hypertension, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia); men who smoke and drink are more prone to these diseases.
...
Suppose we plan a **Mother's Day promotion** with the marketing objective: **Children honor their mothers by buying a soy milk maker for their mother's health.** (For every marketing action, it's important to specifically describe the marketing objective: what changes do you want in consumers, what behaviors do you want them to take?)
During Mother's Day, everyone focuses on mothers. So **how do we establish a connection between soy milk makers and mothers?**
Mothers raised us, wrinkles crept onto the corners of their eyes, black hair mixed with countless white strands. You are still the dazzling sun at noon, while your mother is the setting sun, gradually aging. One major cause of female aging is the reduction of estrogen. Soy milk is rich in estrogen, which helps regulate endocrine and delay aging.
**How should marketing information be organized and delivered to target consumers?**
After breaking down the information path, one possible path is:
Image source: Yours Original
As mentioned earlier, the reptilian brain likes things relevant to me, likes comparisons, likes concrete visualization, likes survival advantages in memory, and likes emotion.
These principles can be fully utilized in the design and organization of the entire promotional information.
**(1) On Mother's Day, consumers focus on mothers**
First, evoke memories of mothers using familiar images and life scenes: mother feeding you medicine at the bedside, mother cooking the New Year's Eve dinner in the kitchen, mother knitting a sweater for you under dim light, mother eating only the fish head... (using consumers' existing life scenes)
**(2) Make consumers notice their mother's aging**
Use images that highlight aging, such as contrasting photos of mother young and old, your black hair versus mother's white hair (using contrast).
**(3) Create a sense of urgency about not wanting mother to age**
After realizing the aging, guide consumers to think further, realizing "The tree wants to be still but the wind doesn't cease; the child wants to care but the parent is gone," creating urgency to prevent mother from aging.
**(4) Make consumers know that female aging is largely due to reduced estrogen**
Explain what estrogen is and that reduced estrogen is a major cause of aging.
**(5) Make consumers know that soy milk can delay aging**
Introduce the nutritional value and benefits of soy milk.
**(6) Make consumers take the action of buying a soy milk maker for their mother**
If the first four steps are achieved, the fifth step is a natural progression. (Here we only analyze the category, not specific brands, which relates to competing with rivals; that's not covered here.)
Through the transformation of the above five consumer states and behaviors, the pre-set promotional objective is achieved.
Once a connection is established between the product and a festival, you can design corresponding promotional methods based on the information you want to convey and the objectives you want to achieve, for example:
Launch related activities on new media, encouraging users to share photos of their mothers young and now.
In offline stores, write blessing cards for mothers, which can be entered into a lottery with prizes like a parents' trip.
For children working away from home who send a soy milk maker to their mother, offer value-added services like free home delivery.
Purchase a soy milk maker and receive a cup printed with a cartoon image of you and your mother.
...
With specific scenarios and objectives, designing promotional methods becomes targeted, rather than always offering products or practical gifts.
With such deep thinking, every festival can create a story unique to your brand, offering ample opportunities. Instead of the current situation where every holiday promotion is just a price difference.
**Summary**
Promotion is not just about designing prices and gifts; the key is to leverage the target audience's attention circle during the promotional period, insert your product into their scarce attention, and design a path to influence consumers.
As a product manager or promotion manager, you need to thoroughly study your product, its usage scenarios, the attention circles of your target users throughout the 365 days, the connections between your product and these circles, and how to use these connections to organize and design information structures, so your promotions can better move your users and drive purchase behavior.
**Source: Yours Marketing Academy**
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