Whether you’re a new business or an older business, you’re likely to include online coupons as part of your marketing materials. Use the suggestions below for making your coupons more effectively reach your customers by considering whether a mixture of offline and online coupons can give your business marketing a boost.
Determine to whom you’re marketing the coupons. Online coupons frequently work best for customers who already know about your company and search for coupons they can use based on your company name. If you’re a new business, investing some of your marketing dollars in reaching an audience through a mailer or some other form of traditional coupon may more effectively reach potential customers than online coupons.
Avoid wasting the paid time of your salaried employees by making your coupon process too complicated if your business has a real-world, brick and mortar presence. When coupons are printed out by customers they are susceptible to all kinds of printing variations from size to clarity which result in wasted paid employee time as employees read through your company coupons. The savings you achieve in using coupon internet marketing that is online is lost if you’re shifting expenses to the cost of having your checkout personnel taking more time to read through coupons.
If your business has a brick and mortar presence, incorporate the capability for your customers to use your online coupons directly from their smartphones rather than merely accepting printed out versions of your coupons.
Don’t bother generating online coupons that require email registration or other additional opt-in selections from users if there’s another way for customers to obtain coupons without using sign-ups such as by going to coupon websites. Online users will usually try to avoid sign-ups if they’re searching for a coupon.
Be consistent in your internet marketing methodology so that if you normally deliver coupons to customers through email you should not suddenly stop delivering coupons and use emails for advertisements instead. Consumers will frequently opt out of emails that originally provided savings and then transition into advertising materials.
Vary promotion codes rather than varying coupon amounts to determine what source a customer is using to obtain your coupon marketing materials in terms of from an online source or from an online source.
Consider delivering your customers larger discounts through traditional mailed coupons in order to avoid internet problems such as a recent problem that occurred with Petco. Petco offered online mystery discounts that ranged up to 50 percent off. Soon customers figured out the code for the most valuable 50 percent coupon and naturally began using that one. Petco ended up stopping the promotion by calling the coupon fraudulent rather than acknowledging their error leaving a lot of customers annoyed. If you’re offering a tremendous savings, you can usually better control the use of your coupons by requiring an “original” and using traditional rather than online access to your coupon.
A blend of traditional coupons and online coupons can usually work best for a business. Use the considerations above in planning your business internet marketing materials and their inclusion of coupons.