Pick the offer on three conditions at once: healthy margin, spare capacity to deliver more, and a genuine reason for someone to act now. Most campaigns fail because only one holds. Then size the discount against its break-even volume — a 20% cut on a 40% margin line halves your margin, so you need to sell twice as many just to stand still. Decide the success measure before launching rather than afterwards, honor the end date, and review on margin against an equivalent period with no campaign at all, since sales often rise in that month regardless, which is how a promotion that lost money gets recorded as a modest success.
What this actually feels like
The usual campaign: discount the thing that already sells, post about it for a week, and conclude it went quite well because things felt busy.
It probably lost money. There is usually no way to tell, because nobody defined what winning looked like before it started.
What it costs to do by hand
Planning and sizing is two or three hours. Producing the assets is four to eight. The post-mortem is an hour, and it is the hour almost nobody spends.
Which is why the same mistakes recur annually — the memory of a campaign is that it felt busy, and that recollection is not evidence of anything.
Running a promotional campaign end to end
Picking on margin, capacity and urgency; the break-even arithmetic; non-price offers that cost less; and the post-campaign week that decides whether it paid.
Read the guide →Input, skill, output
- QuickBooks — Sales and margin by line.
- HubSpot — Audience segments and staging.
- Canva — Assets for each channel.
- Read sales — What is worth pushing.
- Brief and write — A plan plus captions.
- Make and stage — Assets built and queued.
- Campaign brief — The offer, audience and dates.
- Copy and assets — Written and produced.
- Staged and ready — Queued for you to approve and send.
Who this is for
- You run promotions and are not certain any of them made money.
- You have capacity you would like to fill in a predictable slow period.
- Your last campaign was measured on how busy it felt.
If none of those describe you, this is probably not your first priority — and the rest of the library may point somewhere more useful.
Common questions
What should I promote?
Something with healthy margin, spare capacity and a real reason to act now. All three — most campaigns have only one.
How deep should the discount be?
Work out the break-even volume first. A 20% discount on a 40% margin line means selling twice as many to make the same profit.
Do I have to discount at all?
Often not. Added scope, better payment terms, priority scheduling and genuine deadlines cost less margin and do not train customers to wait.
Can I extend a campaign that is going well?
No. Everyone who acted before the deadline learns they need not have, and every future deadline you set is worth less.
How do I know if it worked?
Margin dollars against an equivalent period with no campaign, plus an estimate of how much was bought at a discount by people who would have paid full price.
See it on your own books, once
The First Close is one real month of your books, closed properly and configured to your chart of accounts, delivered inside two weeks. Full reconciliation against every processor, every exception flagged with the transaction behind it, and the narrative written. $497, refundable if the packet is not delivered, and it credits in full toward the first month if you continue.
Get Your First Close — $497 See a sample packet