As a small business owner, running a sales promotion can be expensive, with marketing costs stemming from online advertising fees to direct marketing supplies. A successful sales promotion requires a mixture of the right objectives and tactics, and each one should be evaluated carefully. Take a look at your postpromotion data to see where your marketing efforts paid off and where you have room to improve.

Revisit the goals and objectives of your promotional plan. Familiarize yourself with numbers and time frames set forth in the plan. These might include the number of sales transactions, total sales or number of weeks. Readjust your goals postevaluation to revise any that are too low, too high or simply unrealistic.

Determine whether your promotional efforts were properly targeted. Reference your sales data to see if you attracted new customers, increased sales frequency or volume, or saw a boost in repeat business. Establish whether your incentives were properly matched to your targeted efforts. For example, if your goal was to attract new customers, did you provide enough low-risk trial offers and samples? Determine if your offers were compelling enough to entice people to buy but modest enough to turn a profit.

Tally up your sales from the promotional period, which might be as easy as adding up the total number of receipts. Determine if you met or exceeded your sales quotas. Calculate the total number of coupons redeemed, including paper coupons and unique promotional codes. Calculate your overall return on investment by subtracting the total promotional expenses from the total revenue generated and dividing that number by the total promotional expenses. Multiply that number by 100 to determine your ROI as a percentage.

Evaluate overall customer satisfaction to determine if your promotional efforts were appealing. Use data compiled from follow-up surveys, customer feedback forms and unique email addresses, such as “info@[yourbusinessname].com.” Determine if you maintained open communication throughout the promotion by assessing the number of phone calls, letters and email messages received. Evaluate the mindset and tone of all customer correspondence. Repeat the efforts that garnered the most positive response and eliminate or adjust those that failed to please.

Evaluate overall company awareness postpromotion. Check your media outlets for increases in consumer activity, such as increased activity on your company Facebook page and increased website traffic. Calculate the total number of referrals received during the course of promotion using business cards, email messages and other forms of correspondence.