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If you offer a $50.00 coupon off
first purchase, this may help some fence sitters to buy from you. But what if customer is already going to buy from you? You have just lost $50.00 in profit?
Instead of a coupon on a product customer is already going to buy, why not use coupon as an incentive to buy a new product or a new version of your product. When you use discount coupon in this fashion, you have introduced customer to another product. Now you have more than one product customer can purchase from you and you have not given away farm!
An Simple Exercise As always, here’s an exercise you can use to stretch your thinking about promotions Start from customer’s perspective and answer these three questions.
What goes on before customer purchases from you? What goes on while customer purchases from you? What goes on after customer purchases from you?
Answers to these three questions will give you ideas on how you can create promotions that will help customer buy from you now; buy more often; and buy more product?
For example, when I was in carpet business, we offered special pricing on vacuum cleaners. Vacuuming is single biggest effort you make to maintain your carpet. This was a natural add on for customer. But more importantly, it said to customer, “This store is concerned about my new carpet and how to maintain it in future!”
Conclusion There are a variety of promotions you can use in your business. Always ask, “Is this promotion fostering more sales now; more repeat customer business and purchase of more products from my business?”
Special Holiday Bonus I have combined five articles about getting more customers into your business into an e-book called, Doing Little Things to Get More Customers to Your Business. If you would like a free copy send me an email al@hanzal.com with subject line, “Free Holiday gift”.
Copyright Al Hanzal, 2004. All Rights Reserved
Small business owners havw been using Al's marketing and sales materials to achieve more profits with their small business efforts.
