Using coupons to increase sales is one of the age-old business strategies. Coupons still have their fair share of contribution in small local businesses, startups, online shops or in any kind of businesses. Advertising Age reveals an intriguing piece of information that coupons are used by 87% of all shoppers. You might already know why coupons are valuable to your business; if coupons are used in right ways, it can expand your business, increase your sales, attract way too many customers, introduce you to the actual competitive business world etc. The aim of this article is to provide you with proper strategies that you can follow to successfully use coupons in promoting your business.
- Make a Significant Offer: Most of the times, 10-20% off coupons earns you the attention or the traffic that you need but may not increase your sales. So be generous and make an offer that will make customers feel strong urge to buy products. Offer discounts as much as 50% or more if that still keeps your profit intact, lure them with bonuses like “Buy One Get One Free” on items that sell less and sometimes on the most attractive products. You can also present them with free stuff as in free trial, information, consultation etc. depending on your product line. These kinds of offers are sure to increase your sales by leaps and bounds.
- Give Away Coupons on Products that won’t Sell: Products that are sitting at your store for days and simply won’t sale, you can single out those items to offer your coupon codes on. You can give a remarkable percentage on those products; alternatively you can also give them away for free with condition applied that it will be available only after a certain amount of purchase by the customers.
- Use Specific Headlines: Do not be vague or obscure with offers you are making through coupons. Keep it as specific as possible, for example, “50% Off on Cades Shoes for Men”, “Get a Lemonade Free with Set Menu” etc – bold the letters if necessary to catch attention.
- Get New Customers with Coupons: Old or new, no matter what is the state of business, you will always be in need for new customers. Coupons can help a great deal in this regard. Give out coupon codes on your popular items on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. Use hashtags on your brand name and tweet several times a day using different punch lines to get the most amount of response. If you’re not able to reach new customers through social media, you can submit coupons on sites like piucodicisconto.com, retailmenot.com and couponsolver.com as these sites already have a large customer base. Though you can hashtag on Facebook too, it is better to add attractive pictures of your product with the post. These coupon deals actually get you more customer than you think.
- Remunerate New Customers with Coupons: Coupons can be an amazing tool to keep bringing back your customers. Whenever a new customer buys a product from you, automatically send them a discount as an appreciation for new business relation building up between you two. This will not only flatter the customers enough to comeback for the second time, they will probably become regular buyers too if you can keep up the logical expectations. The coolest thing you can do is to email them offering a coupon on your products on their return to your store and it will only be effective if they further buy something from you.
- Use Coupons to Address Customers’ Personal Interest: Once you have the email address of a former customer, build a healthy communication with them. Try to figure out their area of interests and send them coupon codes on related products. Person to person communication can be best applicable to the customers who left their carts and did not continue. Also, if someone gives you a good review on social media sites or has high opinion on your products, reach out to them and offer coupon deals as a way of saying thanks.
- Reward Regular Customers: Acquiring new customers is relatively easier than to retain the old ones. Remember that any customer is of the same value to you. So show appreciation to your old customers by sending them generous coupons on products they might be interested in. You can use the up-sell trick here by suggesting them to buy relative products which seem to be highly beneficial to the buyers and give them coupon codes on them.
- Set a Time Limit to Your Coupons: As businesses, you need to know what goes on in the customers’ head! For most customers, they are prone to be more excited about a product and feel more urge to buy it when there is a time limit on offers. Be tactful on setting the time limit on your coupons; do not provide customers option to use coupons whenever they wish to, thus they take the offer for granted. Set a time period in between of which the customers will most probably require your services/products.
When it comes to business strategies, there are almost never ending options to explore. Along with these tactics, you can also try to use colorful attractive pictures in your coupons, be tricky about the use of words, be persuasive and if tried with integrity, coupon deals can definitely earn your business a huge profit along with a commendable traffic.
