As every business knows, they must promote their brand on a creative, consistent basis. Whether it be through advertising, special deals, sales, or contests are all effective ways for bringing in new potential customers and retain current customers.
By establishing fun and exciting promotional offers every now and then, you help keep your business afloat by showing your customers you want to help them save on their expenses, making them feel appreciated.
Challenge yourself to develop and execute promotional offers that are creative and enticing to your target audience. Below are ten solid promotional ideas that are sure to keep your customers interested in your business and help you raise your profit.
Ticket Savings: Adopt the Olympic Gold Medal format (Gold, Silver, Bronze) and apply it to your sales. Therefore when a customer makes a purchase they receive a gold, silver, or bronze ticket, which in turn allows the customer to save money on their next order. The saving percentage of the tickets are all up to you. For example you can have your Bronze Ticket = 25% savings, Silver Ticket = 35% savings, and Gold Ticket = 50% savings. Again percentages are up to you however using this method helps communicate the fact you appreciate your customers’ business and would like to continue doing business with them.
Putting a New Spin on Bogo: This essentially follows the same promotional scheme as the ticket savings. With every Bogo sale, offer a certain amount of points depending on the amount of the sale. When a customer reaches a certain amount of points, offer him/her a free item of a certain value, or a gift card, etc. 50 points = free $10.00 item; 100 points = free $20 item and so on.
Business Card Codes: Include special discounts on your business cards. This makes it even more exciting for a customer to do business with you once they see a deal is already offered on the back of your business card. Just be sure to let your customers know they’ll need the business card present to redeem the full discount price of the purchase.
Refer a Friend: A good way of promoting your business and increasing your customer base is offering a free gift or discount to any customer who refers a friend. Likewise offer a discount/coupon to that customer who referred the friend. Additionally, you can hold a refer a friend contest in which whoever refers the most friends receives a generous prize.
Trivia Contest: Almost everybody can’t resist from answering a trivia question, even if it’s just a wild guess. Therefore post a new trivia question every week on your website. Encourage customer participation by having them send in their answers via e-mail then at the end of the month offer a prize to the customer who has the most correct answers.
Name a Product: Another way to greatly improve customer participation is letting them name your product. Customers will feel part of the business if they have direct influence over a product name/design and it also helps you receive external input on what works and what doesn’t in the customer’s of today making it a win-win for both sides.
Customer Appreciation Day: Host a customer appreciation day either on or offline. Have refreshments, games, prizes, contests, etc. Offer demonstrations of your products or services and have a Q&A session afterwards. Strive to be creative and make this event special and memorable to your customers. Granted, online and offline events will be different but either way, your customers will know you appreciate them.
Customer of the Month: Recycle and remold the concept of ‘Employee of the Month’ and instead apply it to an active customer. Rewarding and recognizing loyal customers is just as if not more important than generating new ones.
Scavenger Hunt: Issue a short list of items and for each item the customer hands in or sends online, include reward points, discount prices, etc. If a scavenger hunt is conducted online, have your customers locate the items on a website and provide the link. Items should be too hard or too easy to find. Give your customers an interesting challenge, allowing them to engage and feel connected to your business more and more.
Daily Specials: Use each day as a special savings event for your customers. For instance on Sunday customers can have $5.00 off a particular purchase on Wednesday they can save 15% on another purchase and so on. If this proves to be too much on your business then you can always select one week out of every month and have daily specials.
All these ideas can be manipulated to suit the interests of your business. These ideas are all springboards on how you can build and execute the best promotional plan where you and your customers grow closer together and enjoy a fruitful partnership.
