Coupon Marketing Strategy: 6 Tips to Boost Sales
Understanding all the different factors for creating a coupon marketing campaign is essential for a successful brand. Although many industries use it, carefully planning a strategy is mandatory.
This article will help any company get the basics of creating and thriving using coupons to promote their business.
What are coupons?
Coupons are physical tickets or digital codes that offer a discount for a particular product to any customer that has it.
Coca-Cola first used this marketing technique in the late 19th century. Since then, it has managed to become more and more popular.
Digital vs physical coupons
Both do the same thing regarding purpose: giving discounts to the individuals who use them. Although their objective is the same, digital coupons are cheaper since they are not expensive. Thus, the virtual versions overshadow traditional ones in most cases.
Some industries greatly benefited from coupon codes
The perks of online offers are shown in the casino industry when exponential growth happened during the early 2000s once they started using digital coupons.
This is one instance that CasinoAlpha knows about coupon benefits and history in the gambling industry.
Another example would be bookstores which constantly offer discount codes to boost sales. Using them raises sales for some titles that are usually not bought often.
Coupon marketing benefits and disadvantages
Vouchers have many benefits for a business. Among them are achieving sales targets faster, increasing the number of customers, obtaining client fidelity, and possibly tracking your success rate.
One thing any business should know if they about how users perceive coupons is:
- 63% of consumers want more firms to use coupons, e.g. DontPayFull.com
- 90% of shoppers utilise some form of coupons
- Email marketing coupons have a 48% growth in profits for every email
The dangers of coupons
Although many advantages exist, problems may appear if not done correctly or conducted without the necessary research.
When overused, the business will have a lower apparent value. This means that the brand will appear inferior or deliver unwanted products.
Another thing that can happen if overdone is delaying sales since customers will wait in the hopes of a better offer.
Another thing that can happen is called shopping cart abandonment. It stems from the placement of coupon offers at the checkout, making the customers hunt for more attractive deals. Thus, abandoning their initial intention.
How to create a coupon marketing strategy
This is an introduction to creating a coupon strategy for any online business. Each step provided here will show the essential elements of a successful strategy.
1 – Determine if this approach fits your business
Before starting any campaign, analyse how users interact with your platform and products using this method. This investigation will show if this marketing fits your firm and if you should use virtual or traditional vouchers.
Remember that discounts do not fit all markets and, in some cases, can damage your brand’s image. That’s why one always needs to look at how customers perceive your business.
Firstly, start by seeing what commodities available in your shop are:
- Most Profitable
- Least profitable
Furthermore, look at your store’s shopping cart abandonment rate, customer fidelity, buying patterns, highest and lowest sales periods, and the number of one-time clients.
Likewise, always see what your competitors do; you can adapt and improve your strategy based on that info.
2 – Understand your customer base
Any successful marketing campaign understands the needs and wants of its customers. This implies thorough research on the individuals one’s clients and their fit patterns.
If you want to have a clear image of the people that come to your online or offline shop, find out the following information:
- Age group
- Buying habits
- Gender
- Political attitudes
- Interests
- Location
Knowing and using all this information when conducting a marketing campaign will increase its conversion rate. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg for understanding clients.
Some fundamental principles that must always be followed revolve around empathy, integrating feedback, talking with employees and identifying your brand’s trends.
3 – Where to offer discounts?
The internet offers many opportunities to promote goods and start marketing campaigns.
When it comes to coupons, there are a few ways where it’s ideal to do this. For instance, you can post your coupon and discount codes on websites like Earthweb, which can significantly aid in promoting your products and marketing efforts.
Social media delivers many possibilities since many individuals are present, and many companies choose this route.
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram or YouTube have millions of users that boost your reach exponentially.
Another efficient route is email marketing. This kind of promotion targets people who already are clients; hence, the company already has their email addresses.
This way, one can make them come back and become long-term buyers.
Other options include giving coupons through traditional media like newspapers or magazines. Although not as efficient as the other two, it solely depends on your target audience and the media they use.
4 – Define your targets
After defining your audience and where to offer voucher codes, the next thing is to identify a clear goal for your campaign.
Remember that without a clear-cut target, you cannot eventually say if that marketing campaign was successful.
The aim of a campaign can be anything important to your business. This can include increasing sales, promoting current clients to buy more, or reducing the number of abandoned shopping carts.
Coupon personalisation
You can personalise the coupons used for different groups for maximum efficiency based on the data gathered. It can range from age, gender, purchase habits, location and more.
Using customised vouchers for different groups will increase sales since potential buyers can purchase something that fits their needs or wants.
However, remember that personalised discounts must be done after gathering information beforehand. This implies knowing your market and dividing it into different sections.
5 – Plan the deals
To increase the conversion rate, a firm can offer other incentives that competent the vouchers. Some of the most efficient that build a stronger relationship between the customer and the shop are:
- Complimentary shipping
- Gift cards
- Feedback forms
- Referral bonuses
- Etc.
6 – Oversee the progress
After launching the marketing campaign, constantly monitor how it develops. Analyse each aspect you carefully build to see what works and is less efficient.
Consider that there are always more factors since every person has different and unique habits and needs.
During the period your promotions are available, look at how cost efficiency, how the vouchers increased the sales of a particular product, and close you are to the expected results.
Remember that a coupon marketing campaign will not boost your sales right away. Like everything useful in life, it will take some time.
Conclusion
Coupons are here to stay; they have become more and more popular since their introduction. However, as mentioned before, this marketing does not fit any business.
So, any firm should do an in-depth analysis to see what’s best for them.
One example that does not fit this method is exclusive products targeted at upscale customers who do not benefit from discounts.
In this case, the firm’s image centres around high-end manufactured goods.
On the other end, products that people constantly buy are perfect for coupon promotions. In this case, you can attract them to your business by having better deals.
For this reason, keep in mind that before doing any marketing campaign, a thorough analysis of your company and your competitors is necessary.
