Sales are a crucial period: print the communication materials that will maximize your impact and differentiate you from your competitors

3 essential communication tools during the sales

• The flyers

Flyers are great communication tools to announce sales.

Simple and economical, you can hand them out to passers-by on the street, put them on car windshields or organize a campaign to distribute them directly to mailboxes.

At Copymage, we suggest that you prefer A5 (148 x 210 mm), A6 (105 x 148 mm) or 1/3 A4 (198 x 210 mm) formats to advertise your promotions. However, you can also ask us to print your flyers in the format of your choice.

Don't forget that your flyers must:

• be concise, clear and punchy. They must carry a single message with a single objective: to encourage your prospects to visit you.
• Of course, if they are to be distributed on the street, they must be respect the following legal constraints,
  • include the name and address of your professional printer,
  • include your company's name, registration number in the Trade and Companies Register and its corporate form,
  • indicate all legal mentions related to the mentioned products (alcohol, food products, etc.),
  • specify that it is forbidden to throw your leaflet on the public road.

• The posters

Posters, hanging kakemonos and advertising tarpaulins are all ways to inform your future customers of your sales in your store as well as on the street.

For outdoor use, we advise you to choose a micro-perforated advertising tarpaulin, also called mesh tarpaulin, which will make your promotions visible to motorists from the road or pedestrians from the opposite sidewalk without any risk of deterioration. Indeed, this tarpaulin is flexible and resistant, it offers a very low wind resistance: it remains well stretched which guarantees the readability of your sales announcement.

Indoors, on the walls of your store or in your window, we suggest you choose large format A0 (84.1 x 118.9 cm) or A1 (59.4 x 84.1 cm) posters that will clearly indicate the sales period and the promotions that your customers can benefit from. Depending on the size of your business, you can complete these communication supports by adding kakemonos hanging in the aisles of your business.

• The small and large format adhesives

During sales periods, signage is a crucial issue.

In order to indicate the promotions offered in your store from the outside, we advise you to stick a large format sticker on your window. From this point of view, the window sticker has many advantages. It is a mirror-printed sticker, stuck inside the window but visible from the outside. It has the same impact as a window sticker but with greater longevity because it is protected from external hazards. At Copymage, window stickers can be made from:

• A transparent vinyl film. It allows to obtain a translucent rendering and lets glimpse the inside of the store through the glass. The edges of this vinyl film blend perfectly with the glass, allowing for complex visuals to be printed.
• A white vinyl film. It is totally opaque which allows to obtain vivid colors.

The small size stickers can be used to stick the discount information directly on the product labels . We suggest you choose different colors according to the amount of the discount to guide customers to the best deals.

What marketing strategy during the sales?

The sales period is an opportunity to sell off your stocks, it is also an opportunity to build customer loyalty and recruit new customers. The definition of the marketing strategy you wish to use during this promotional period will impact the creation of all the advertising media you will use. It is therefore essential to know who you want to address in priority:

• Your regular customers. If your main objective is to retain your regular customers, we advise you to collect all year long the contact information of your customers, for example when you create a loyalty card. You can then, a few weeks before the official sales period, send them an email, a letter or, more original, a postcard inviting them to come and benefit from "private sales" before the official sales period.
• Your one-time customers. These are the customers who come to your store mainly during the sales period. Your objective is to encourage them to come more often, perhaps by informing them about the advantages of being part of your database? A simple flyer in postcard format on a thick paper distributed a few days before in a place highly frequented by your target will give an elegant image of your store encouraging them to be part of your priority customers.
• Unknown customers. They discover your store for the first time during the sales. It is therefore essential to attract them from the outside with quality adhesive lettering on the window of your store and clear information on the proposed promotions indicated on a Roll-up at the entrance of the store.

What is the legal duration of sales in France?

Since 2020, the legal duration of sales is 4 weeks, 2 weeks less than before in order to keep an exceptional aspect to this period of promotions. There are two main sales periods in France:

• The winter sales begin on the second Wednesday of January at 8:00 am, unless this day is after January 12, in which case the sales begin on the^first Wednesday of January.
• The summer sales also start on the last Wednesday of June at 8:00 am, unless that Wednesday falls after June 28, in which case the sales start on the previous Wednesday, i.e. the second to last Wednesday of June.

You may run promotions in your store outside of sale periods. However, you may not use the term "sale" to refer to these promotions.

What are the legal obligations of stores during sales?

The regulation of sales touches on three subjects:

• The dates of the sales: as a retailer, you have the obligation to clearly display the start and end dates of the sales. This can be done by putting a sticker on the window of your business, by posting it in the store or by distributing flyers.
• Sale items: you can sell any item your store has purchased at least one month before the sale period.
• Prices during the sales: you must necessarily display the sale price before the sale and the amount of the discount you are offering during the sale period. Moreover, you cannot sell your products at a loss.

Compliance with these regulations is monitored. In case of violation, you may be fined.