Need Help Marketing?

Using coupons can be very effective in a down economy. Remember an earlier post titled,  Coupons can be used to accelerate sales in down economy and in fact it is one of our most popular posts too.

But how often have you printed a bunch of coupons for your promotion and been left with extras when the promotion was about to start? Or worse when the promotion has ended?
Did you print too many? More likely you did not have a way to distribute the coupons for maximum effectiveness.

In today’s post I wanted to describe a few ideas around how to get your coupons to go viral.

• Display coupon offers in other Locations
  If you have multiple locations is the promotion you are running going to be for all stores, or only specific stores on certain days.
• Talk to local merchants on your street or block about promoting you
  Another way to get word of mouth marketing is to distribute coupons to other vendors. This week I was buying take out Chinese food at our local restaurant, and while I was waiting I noticed a coupon sitting on the counter for free bowling. The coupon was certainly inviting since I was just waiting around for the food order to be ready. And two I had not hear of the new bowling location in my area.
• Re-purpose the same offer on your website, or in your email newsletter
  Get the word out online or by email, with a forward to a friend option could help. Make it easy to forward the email version of the coupon to others, meaning that you may not want to personalize each coupon code for instance.
• Twitter or Facebook
  A lot of companies are encouraging sign ups by promoting incentives. For example, this offer is only available to our fans or followers.
  
• Encourage sharing to get the word out
  Bring a friend with you when you redeem this coupon and you eat free. That type of thing. Or require a certain level of participants such as a group or 3 or more.
• When giving out the coupons give out several to the same people
  Having extra coupons people will try to share the discount or offer with their friends. On several occasions this has happened to me while waiting in line and the person in front of me used up the maximum coupons they could. And gave the extras to the guy standing behind him.
• Send an SMS to mobile phones of your customers
  Perhaps this strategy is newer and not everyone is trying it yet. But hey there is opportunity there then right.

Possibly Related Posts:

• HubSpot Study: Small Businesses That Blog Get 55% More Website Visitors
• Scarcity Selling Works
• Does your business have a Tagline?
• Using Customer Testimonials to Add Credibility to your Business
• Billy Mays the Unapologizing Direct Marketer

The best way to to sell is to create demand. Creating scarcity helps your business to create just such a demand. What we are talking about is creating a demand for a product or service, with familiar examples such as a sales promotion that says “sorry, no rain checks”. If the offer is big enough you can also generate some buzz and good public relations exposure. Which will lead to even more word of mouth marketing.

Typical Examples:

Why does this technique Work?

By creating a short or limited supply you are forcing consumers to make a decision. If they wait they will lose out it is as simple as that.
Think about this for a moment, what would you do? If you received a flyer in the mail about an invitation only event, or an offer that was only available to the first 30 shoppers. Would you be the first person in line to take advantage of that offer?

Recent Example

Probably the most recognizable example is the Apple iPhone. There was a huge demand for people wanting to buy them, but until a year after it’s launch the iPhone was not available in countries outside of the United States. Further you had to sign a contract with AT&T to activate one because of an exclusive contract. Then when the next generation was released only certain quantities were sent out to specific Apple stores. Again because of limited quantities they sold out in the first few hours of availability. And of course there were lines of people waiting to be first to buy them.

Share your Stories

What has worked in your business? Please leave a comment sharing your story.

Possibly Related Posts:

• How to get your Coupons to spread
• Using Customer Testimonials to Add Credibility to your Business
• Should a New Business start Marketing?
• How to Create an Ad your Customers will actually Notice
• How do you entice your audience?